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From:Cheapass Games
Cost: $6
Players: 4-7
Playing Time: 5-10 min. per hand
Type of game: Card
Skill level: 6
Complexity: 4
Reviewed by: Peter Sarrett, Issue 6.2 (22), January 2000
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James Ernest likes gambling games. Two of his earlier Cheapass titles, Ben Hurt and Starbase Jeff, were designed to use chips or coins and are reportedly played for cash within his own gaming circle. Renfield is the third and strongest game in this series, offering the unusual combination of trick-taking and pot-building in the same game.
Components this time around include a rule sheet and a deck of 54 black-and-white cards on better-than-normal (for Cheapass) coated cardstock. You’ll have to provide your own chips or money.
Renfield is a thematic sequel to Parts Unknown (reviewed last issue), purporting to be what that game’s gravediggers play when they’re off duty. The cards therefore come in three suits: gravestones, parts, and tools. Each suit is numbered 0-17, although the zeroes perform a special function and are never dealt to players.
Players receive a hand of six cards and must bid (once around the table) for the right to order the suits. The winner pays his bid to the pot and arranges the three zeroes on the table so that they overlap each other to indicate the ranking of suits for that hand. This typically leads to much grumbling around the table as everyone rearranges their hands and reassesses their chances of winning the pot. There are only six possible ways for the suits to be ordered, so there’s some chance you’ll luck out and get your desired order without paying for it. But odds are if an order is good for you, it’s bad for most other players. The trick is in deciding how much it’s worth to set that order. You only get that money back if you win the pot, so it’s usually unwise to pay a lot unless you’re very confident about your chances of winning. Far better to let someone else enrich the pot and then take it away from him.
Play is like most trick-taking games, with players required to follow suit if they can and permitted to play anything else if they can’t. The highest card of the highest suit played wins the trick and leads to the next one.
Each card in Renfield has two extra bits of information. The first is a cost ranging from 0-5. The winner of a trick must pay to the pot the total cost of all cards in that trick. The second bit of information is the card’s value (0-6) in bugs. Cards taken in a trick are arranged in front of the taker such that all the bugs on them are visible. Bugs are bad. The winner of the hand is the player with the fewest bugs among all players who have bugs. So you have to take at least one bug to win, but you want to take as few as you can.
There can come a point in the hand where any card you play would take a trick for you, giving you far too many bugs to have any hope of winning and sucking money away in the process (because you have to pay the pot whenever you take a trick). If you’ve already taken bugs that hand, you’re mercifully allowed to fold and avoid having any more money sucked out of you. If you’re bugless, however, you’ve got to keep playing.
The ability to fold leads to dramatic mid-hand shifts in standings. It might seem like you’re in lousy shape, only to have the two players with fewer bugs than you fold rather than take another trick. Or you can play a card that seems likely to get beaten, only to have the players after you fold and stick you with the trick instead. Folding also means that tricks get smaller as the hand plays out. An attractive strategy, then, is to try to avoid taking anything until the last trick which is likely to be the cheapest and least bug-ridden. If it weren’t for the pesky doublers.
Some cards (the twos) double the price of the trick they’re in. Others (the twelves) double all of the taker’s bugs- not just from that trick, but from all tricks taken during the hand. And yes, doublers are cumulative. Unsurprisingly the bug doublers often get saved for later tricks to make them less helpful to opponents. In a very annoying production gaffe, the doubler indicator was inadvertently left off the twelves. It is therefore very common to forget about their special function. You’d be well advised to mark these cards with white-out or adhesive labels to avoid problems.
Renfield is a difficult game to get a bead on. Beginners have a rough time choosing the best suit order for their hands. Ideally you want to take exactly one trick, so a long high suit can be problematic. But you need to have at least one card high enough to take a trick, and you’d like to be able to choose which trick that is. I haven’t quite figured out the best approach.
The outcome of each hand can feel a bit random, in the sense that it’s hard to predict how well you’ll do. The cascade of folding players often leads to unexpected results. I sometimes feel like the hand ends too fast with just six tricks, but I haven’t yet tried playing with a larger hand size. There doesn’t appear to be any reason why it wouldn’t work just as well to deal out more cards. With a six-card hand enough cards remain undealt that it’s impossible to count cards effectively- your 14 might be the highest tool in play. As long as enough cards remain undealt, a larger hand size should be workable.
I always play Poker for money. Playing for “fun” isn’t fun for me, because the character of the game changes when real cash isn’t at stake. Players become more cavalier, bluffing gets more difficult, and the game loses its edge. I haven’t yet found a group willing to play Renfield for money, and I’m not sure I’d want to- I don’t have a firm enough grasp on the strategies. Without real cash, the pot-based scoring system leaves me a little cold- it’s difficult to track your standing and there’s no clear endpoint. Players with similar concerns might like to set a target amount or number of hands to play to. Twice around the table seems about right.
Renfield offers a unique mix of trick-taking and wagering. The generally inverse ratio of card cost to bug value provides some fun tactical choices during play. Play a high card, increasing the trick’s bug count and possibly taking the trick? Or play a low card to duck and make the winner pay more to the pot? Like Poker, Renfield becomes more interesting when all players are experienced in its subtleties.
I think Renfield is the best of the Cheapass card games. It‘s not a great game, but a good one- especially given the price. A low price does not necessarily mean a good value. But when that price includes this kind of original and entertaining gameplay, it’s a bargain indeed.
Note: the editor/reviewer playtested Renfield for Cheapass Games
Published in TGR 22 but not included online: Renfield strategy tips from James Ernest