I want to state this first, for the record: the container for Matches, the trick-taking-ish game by Daniel McKinley, is maybe my favorite board game box in recent memory. It slides open like an actual box of matches! Its color palette is dingy and slightly burned! The sides are embossed to look and feel like striker strips! Ten out of ten. Yeoman’s work.
If only the game within the box had been better.
Matches isn’t a trick-taking game, isn’t even a shedding game, although it feels so close to both that there’s no point disputing either term. This is a game about lighting fires. When a round begins, the lead player places a single card from their hand in the center of the table. This card is now the blaze. Sparked with a single glowing gem, it’s also the target everybody else will strive to match.
Match. Get it? Making matches is right in the name of the game, and true to form it’s what whips that initial spark into an inferno. Playing the same numbered card will add another gem to the blaze. Wildcards, called flares, do the same. Other cards can be played, provided they sum to the target number. These do not add to the blaze, but keep their owner in the round a little while longer. Eventually you’ll sputter out, depleted of cards you can (or want to) dedicate to the fire. Around the table it goes until only one person remains.
Something wild happens while playing Matches. Like cave-dwellers fascinated by the fire they’ve harnessed and determined not to let it go to ash, withholding fuel from the fire feels wrong. In many cases, matching the blaze will be a poor move. That’s because matches increase the value of the blaze — but only for the player who claims it in the end. Everyone else can still score points, but their potential pool is smaller, limited to the pairs they’ve played over the course of the round. Matches again, although a different sort this time.
But it’s almost impossible not to add to the fire. When your turn comes round and you’re holding one of those flares, it’s oh so tempting to dedicate it to the flames. Even in cardboard, the fire calls to us. Life-giver. Death-bringer. When we look into the shimmer, we know that there are not many fires in the world, but one window into an encompassing flame. And it is hungry.
That a board game can invoke some primal urge to fan the flames is nothing short of noteworthy. What feedback it is, to helplessly throw tinder to the fire even when the blaze benefits somebody else. Matches makes pyros of us all. It’s a pleasurable game, process-wise.
But the problem isn’t the process. It’s everything else.
Let’s talk about burn cards. These are optional, but also more or less essential. When the game opens, four of them are placed in a market of sorts. Their price is a spark — the very same glowing embers that are your victory points. And the cost increases by one for each card you step from left to right. A high price indeed, especially in a game where a decent score might hover between ten and fifteen.
But burn cards are necessary for disrupting the randomness of the deal, an otherwise tyrannical presence that smothers the game’s decision space. This is not a fine-tuned trick-taker: there are too few rounds to cool off the luck of the draw, and point tallies tend to be swingy. The solution is burn cards, with their nasty inflictions. One might purchase gasoline, good for doubling the number of gems on the blaze, or a golden match, which forces everybody to toss two of those gems onto the fire. Or there’s the opposite: a water bucket for dousing the blaze entirely, or third-degree burns that remove a player’s pairs, or an explosion that draws a few cards from the deck to potentially keep you in the round a little while longer.
These are game-altering effects. But they’re so darned expensive that purchasing one is a real investment. Entire rounds might pass without anybody splurging on one. Then, usually near the end of the game, two or three might be purchased in sequence. Now the target number for the blaze is altered, or cards are worth one fewer pip when making matches, or pairs are worth double. This is when Matches gets exciting.
But the underlying issues never fully disappear. If anything, they grow more pronounced. The luck of the draw is still omnipresent. Worse, the game’s setup doles out starting victory points in such a way that in larger groups some players will find it almost impossible to win. As I noted, a score of fifteen is rather good. But when the last player in sequence receives an opening five points, while the lead player gets none, that’s, um, quite the opening advantage.
Look, we’re getting technical now, which isn’t necessarily helpful. The point is that there’s one huge advantage to going first. You get to set the blaze card. But sitting later in turn order is more lenient, as your hand is likely to hold out longer than those going earlier. That isn’t all. The extra points in your pool confer a significant head start, not to mention the ability to purchase burn cards right away. The resulting spread of advantages is downright peculiar: a bit of control to the lead player, a whole lot to those near the end of the circle, and heaven forbid you’re sitting second. Nothing feels properly tuned.
One can easily imagine a world where Matches receives fuller development. There’s a good game under there somewhere. At its best, it evokes the primordial thrill of gathering round the communal fire and tossing combustible elements into the flames. In those moments it feels good enough to become borderline addictive, even if it remains light on decisions.
For now, though, Matches is dysfunctional. Nothing quite works. Like a mad arsonist it burns bright. In the end, it burns itself down.
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A complimentary copy was provided.
