#complete polls

Spot it!, or Dobble, is a party matching game, released in 2009 by French designer Denis Blanchot, based on the prior work of Jacques Cottereau. The players aim to be the first to identify the matching symbol present between two cards, where amongst all the cards, only one symbol will ever match between any two given cards.

…yeah that’s pretty much it. It’s a quick party game that’s not very complicated. So instead, let me try to give a maths/history lesson as to how that works, noting I am not a maths person: Cotterau devised the original design of the game in 1976 on the Kirkman’s Schoolgirl Problem, and made a deck of 31 cards that featured insects instead of assorted objects like in Dobble. Blanchot would later find copies of these cards, and from there develop Dobble.

The maths of how to determine how many cards and symbols are needed can be thought of using some geometry: if we have a triangle, and we put a point at each corner of the triangle, then the points would represent the different symbols on each card, and the lines connecting the symbols would be the cards needed. In this case, we would end up with a very simplified version with 3 cards, and 2 symbols on each card. If we wanted to add more symbols onto each card, then the diagram goes from looking like a triangle, to a grid of labeled points on a hypothetical finite plane. We still want to draw a line between all those points, and we can use the equation (n²-n+1) to tell us how many cards and objects we’ll need, with n being the amount of points/objects. In the case of Dobble, there are 8 objects per card, so the equation looks like (8²-8+1), which comes out to 57 cards. In Dobble’s case, however, there are actually 55 cards, not 57, as 55 is the amount of cards standard decks of cards are printed with.

Sagrada is a dice-drafting puzzle game, released in 2017 by designers Adrian Adamescu and Daryl Andrews. The game was nominated for a handful of awards in 2017 and the following years. In Sagrada, players take on the role of glaziers and designers building stained glass windows for the Sagrada Familia basilica in Barcelona.

The game starts by players selecting a set of restrictions that are slotted into their player boards, followed by a player taking two dice per player from the bag, rolling them, and putting them in the display to be chosen from for that round. Then that player chooses one die, places it on their board following the slotted restrictions, with orthogonally-adjacent dice of the same number or colour being illegal. The next player than chooses a die to take from the display, and so forth, until the last player’s time to choose. That player then gets to pick two of the dice to place, and the selection order reverses, with that round’s starting player being the last to choose a die as well. Play continues until each player has chosen 20 dice, and slotted them according to their restrictions, the public objectives, and their private objectives. Points are tallied on the scoreboard (pictured above), with most points winning.

Obverse and reverse of piece shown.

Machi Koro is a card drafting game for 2-4 players, initially-released in 2012 by Japanese designer Masao Suganuma (菅沼 正夫). Players take on the role of mayors of competing small cities, with the objective of being the first to sufficiently-develop the infrastructure of their small cities crowned the winner.

Machi Koro has five suits of cards, which all have different buildings on them: green, blue, red, purple, and some with a gray side and an orange side. All the cards have different timing based on when dice are rolled. When a player rolls the dice, if there are cards in play that have that result printed at the top, those cards will activate. Green cards activate on one’s turn, and typically grant that player coins (like the 5 coin, shown above). Blue cards active on anyone’s turn, and grant anyone coin who has that card. Red cards activate on one’s opponent’s turn, and steal coins from the current turn’s player, before other cards pay out. Purple cards only activate on one’s turn, but have varied effects and are generally very powerful. The gray/orange cards are the “landmarks”, which start in play for every player with the gray-side up.

After cards activate and money is distributed, players may then buy cards from the market. Buying multiple of the same building means the effect will activate multiple times when that number is rolled. Players can also pay to flip their gray landmark cards to the orange-side, activating their effect for that player. Being the first to build all four landmarks by flipping them to orange wins one the game, and the distinction of best mayor!

A variation in the setup has the market divided into 3 decks instead of every card being available at all times: cards with an activation number of 1-6, cards with an activation number of 7-12, and the purple cards. Players then build the market by drawing 5 unique cards from the 1-6 deck, 5 unique from the 7-12, and 2 from the purple. The market is replenished with a unique card from the corresponding stack when one is purchased. This variation leads to more interesting card selection, and aims to prevent players from only buying certain cards.