David & Goliath is a trick-taking card game by Reinhard Staupe, recently reprinted by Playroom Entertainment.
Players: 3-6
Playing Time: 30-60 minutes
Difficulty: 2 (of 10)
The Components
David & Goliath comes with a deck of 90 cards and a rulebook.
The Cards: The cards are all printed on medium-weight, slightly glossy cardstock. The cards themselves are quite simple. There are five colors (green, yellow, blue, purple, red) and each suit has cards running from 1-18.The number is shown at all four corners, on a wide border of the appropriate color, and in the middle there's a picture of David or Goliath.
The pictures are actually quite clever because they show an evolution. The "1" is clearly a young lad, while the "18" is clearly a fearsome giant, and all the cards in between show a slow progression from that boy to that giant.
Rules: The rulebook contains rules in English, French, German, and Spanish. The English rules are just five pages long, and are well illustrated with helpful pictures, examples, and sidebars, that overall make these rules easy to follow.
The cards for David & Goliath are generally a pretty average production and thus it earns a "3" out of "5" for Style.
The Gameplay
David & Goliath is many ways a standard trick-taking game. A deck of 45-90 cards (depending on the number of players) is shuffled together and then 15 cards are dealt to each player to form a hand. Players play cards in tricks, following suit, and each time the high card wins. At the end of each hand players score points based upon the cards they've taken.
However David & Goliath features three notable variations from normal trick-taking play. These differences appear in: out-of-suit play; card taking; and card scoring.
Out-of-Suit Play: As with most trick-taking games, you have to follow suit. However if you're out of a suit you can play any card, and this is generally a good thing. Because, unlike most trick-taking games, the highest card takes a trick no matter what suit it is. (Likewise, the lowest card does something special, no matter what suit, but more on that in a second.) In cases of a tie the last card played is considered the winner.
Card Taking: Low cards can be good in David & Goliath. The lowest card in each trick takes the highest card. Afterward the highest card takes all the rest of the cards and will then lead the next trick.
When you take cards you lay them out in front of you in neat rows, by suit, to help other people keep track of your current scoring possibilities.
Card Scoring: At the end of a hand each player scores for all the cards he took. If he took two or less cards in a suit, he scores the face value of the cards. This can make cards won due to the play of a low card particularly valuable. However, if he has three or more cards in a suit, he only scores the number of cards he won in that suit. Generally two cards in a suit will be considerably more valuable than having more, and thus late game play often revolves around giving people a few more cards in their low suits.
Ending the Game: The game goes for a number of hands equal to the number of players. The winner is then the player with the highest total of points.
Relationship to Other Games
David & Goliath is a pretty pure trick-taking game with just a few bells and whistles to keep things interesting.
However, those bells & whistles are quite interesting for their uniqueness. Sometimes it feels like you're playing Spades, trying to grab tricks, and sometimes it feels like you're playing Hearts, trying to duck them, but this variability is entirely organic thanks to the simple, but clever, scoring mechanism.
David & Goliath is also a pretty unique game where it's great to have middling cards, not just high cards or low cards, because you can earn the most points in a game by taking a bare minimum of cards, and you often do that by skating the middle.
The Game Design
Overall, David & Goliath is an extremely clever trick-taking game. I think it's a fine alternative to more standard trick-taking game. It's elegant, it's fairly simple, and it's smart. You have to really think about what tricks (or high cards) you're taking and plan ahead in order to maximize your scoring.
On the downside, David & Goliath can be a little chaotic, particularly in the late game where you can accidently pick up colors that you weren't expecting due to lots of people having voids. Some of our players felt like 3-6 rounds of play wasn't enough to offset the randomness of a card game, but I personally felt like there was always the alternative to make smart moves no matter what hand you were dealt.
Beyond that David & Goliath isn't extremely deep, but I wouldn't say Spades or Hearts is either. It does well for its category and such earns a "4" out of "5" for Substance: above average due to its cleverness and smart play.
Conclusion
David & Goliath is a simple trick-taking game with some elegant variations for how you take cards and earn points at the end. If you enjoy the occasional card game, this is a good alternative to Farfalia or Trump, Tricks, Game!, some of the other light-weight trick-taking games produced in the last few years.
Review Summary