Xylotar Review

boardgamequest.com:

We review Xylotar, a trick taking game published by Bezier Games. In Xylotar, players are trying to win tricks, but won't quite know the value of the cards are in their hand.

Bobby McColdsnap is a synth loving polar bear who wanted to play the keytar. According to the rulebook he acquired this love from some fictional song… I presume the real truth is he jammed out to Edgar Winter Group’s Frankenstein. That small fact check aside, it’s undoubted that the polar bear had keytar-jamming aspirations.

But, paws. Not good for keys. So, he commissioned a synth-xylophone that would be easier for a polar bear to operate. But now Bobby is wanted by Canadian police after a mysterious disappearance, and we’ve come across the xylotar plans. Players will be trying to put together the raddest sounding Xylotar. 

In reality, this is a trick taking game. With cards and numbers on them. The theme only matters insofar as they dedicated like 10% of the rulebook to it. Which, honestly, I think is amazing.

Incredible Xyolar lore aside, the game itself is at least partly a very standard trick taking game. You’ll have a hand of cards from 8 different suits of varying lengths (one suit has only 0-3, another 0-10 for instance). Someone will lead a card into the trick and you must follow suit if you can. If you can’t, you can play any card. Red suit, the longest suit, is always trump. Highest trump card wins or highest card in the led suit.

So far, that describes a large percentage of trick taking games that exist. Here’s the hook—you don’t get to see the numbers on your cards. The player to your right will sort your cards from highest to lowest for you and then you will lay them out, face down, in order. The suit is shown on the back and you know the relative order of cards, but not the actual value. And of course, everyone else at the table can see it too. 

Any time during the hand, after you play a card, you can look at any two adjacent cards that remain in your hand and choose