That Old Wallpaper Review

boardgamequest.com:

We review That Old Wallpaper, a pattern-matching card game published by AEG. In That Old Wallpaper has players auction for cards in the hopes of claiming cards to create patterns.

Arlo Guthrie’s “The City of New Orleans,” relates the travels of the eponymous train as it heads south down the Mississippi from Illinois to Louisiana. For me, one specific couplet has always captured the romance of playing card games on a long train trip:

Dealin’ card games with the old men in the club carPenny a point, ain’t no one keepin’ score

When you travel, you’re playing cards to pass the time, and it’s fun… enough, but who wins and who loses isn’t really the point of the exercise. It’s just an excuse to hang out without having to have the conversation carry itself as the miles drift by.

This is how I feel about That Old Wallpaper, a new card game from AEG, designed by Danielle Deley and Nathan Thornton. It feels like the kind of game you’d be happy to find at a rented beach house if you forgot to bring any games with you and were dreading a weekend of having to actually talk to your family, or something perfect for a long train ride, but not something you’d look forward to for your weekly game night when you could be playing something you could really sink your teeth into instead.

Mechanically it’s quite simple to learn and easy to teach. Players each choose one large card numbered from 1 to 10 each turn (for 6 turns) and do this for 3 rounds, so the game has a total of 18 turns. Each turn you’re trying to avoid picking the same number as any other player and using those numbered cards to bid on smaller cards with wallpaper patterns on them. You then place the wallpaper cards you win onto a tableau you’re building. You are trying to