Overthrone

From: R & R Games List Price: $16 Players: 3-6 Playing Time: 60-90 minutes  Type of game: Card Skill level: 6 Complexity: 6  Reviewed by: Matthew Baldwin, Issue 23, April 2000

I was somewhat dubious of Overthrone when it first arrived in my local game store. I did not care for Guillotine (even though everyone else did), and here was another one set in 17th Century France, also billing itself a "Revolutionary Card Game." (Get it?). But if Uwe Rosenberg has taught me anything it's to never judge a game by its theme, so I picked up a copy, took it home and read over the rules. And then I put it on a shelf for several months. Overthrone looked interesting, but the Byzantine ruleset quashed my desire to either play it or teach it.

Recently though, I decided to give it a go. Having now played it several times I regret not trying it sooner. At its heart, Overthrone is actually quite simple. The game is played in a series of rounds during which each person plays a card to the center of the table. Usually these cards will fall into one of four Suits: Gold, Courtiers, Provinces and Musketeers. The cards feature ranks from 1-7, and after all cards have been played the person who played the highest card in each Suit collects all the cards of that type. Captured cards are then placed into a person's "structure", which shows all the elements of a player's court. At the end of the game and at various points during play, a player scores points based on the value of the cards in his structure.

But Overthrone is much more than a routine trick-taking game. Although Suit cards make up the majority of the deck, the remaining cards give the game considerable complexity and flavor. An Event card may be played just like a Suit, but at the end of a round the Event's effects take place before anyone captures Suits. Most Events allow you to steal cards from foreign structures, and many award you points in the process. Special Person cards are played like Events, and are taken into somebody’s structure after the Suit cards are distributed. Each Special Person has a power which takes effect when the card is claimed, so taking the Captain allows you to eliminate a face-up card, and when the General is recruited he brings with him one Musketeer from everyone else's structure. Interrupt cards can be played at any time, even when it's not your turn.

While all this transpires, the King will be traveling the land. Each player starts with a Noble, and the King visits each Noble in turn. Whoever has the King in his court gets to play last that round— a considerable advantage. Later in the game, the play of Rebellion cards may cause the King to stay in a court for several rounds. Rebellion cards are special Events that cause a number of effects: players score points equal to the value of the Provinces in their structures, they fill their hands back up to seven cards, and the person who played the Rebellion card keeps the King. The King remains in the player's court until a Special decree (or another Rebellion) sends him elsewhere.

So the crux of the game is building up your structure. And if you fail to get what you want via skill, you can always resort to naked aggression (I love games with an educational message). Prior to playing a card on your turn you may take one of three actions: attacking an opponent's Province card with your Musketeers, bribing someone's Person card with Gold, or challenging a rival to a Duel. A successful Attack or Bribe means you steal your opponent's card; a successful Duel means you kill the player's Noble. The game starts peacefully as players usually attempt to acquire Provinces in anticipation of the Rebellion scoring. Since most Province cards have the same rank, ties are routine and everyone simply claims the card they played. But this is the French Revolution, after all, so it doesn't take long before things go from placid to militant. Eventually someone initiates a Rebellion or steals another player's card, and the bloodletting begins.

Once the attacks start, things can get pretty cutthroat. Thankfully, Overthrone proves to be a lot more balanced than one might expect. A person with many Provinces will score copious points as the game goes on, but another player with Musketeers will probably swipe a territory or two. Getting dealt the powerful Special Person cards is a decided advantage, but unless you also have a lot of Gold they will be Bribed away immediately. In short, a successful structure must contain a little of everything. And if you don't get dealt a good mix of cards— why, just steal someone else's!

A nice feature of Overthrone is that some cards pull double duty: they are intrinsically valuable and also provide some kind of secondary function. Musketeers are worth their value at the end of the game, but they can be used to guard (or attack) Provinces; Courtiers are worth points as well, but are also used to break ties. Province cards, on the other hand, only increase your score— they serve no other function— but are the only cards that can earn you points throughout the game. And Gold cards can only be used for Bribery, because they are discarded before calculating your final score. I especially like this last bit. I don't much care for games where money is an end rather than a means, so I appreciate the fact that the Gold is purely utilitarian. In Overthrone, you can't take it with you.

If you think this sounds like a lot to keep track of in a "light" card game— well, you’re right. And I haven't even mentioned the exceptions, such as when two Rebellion cards are played in the same round, or what happens when a player loses his Noble. Ironically, the folks who will enjoy this game the most are exactly those who are the least likely to wade through a 12 page rulebook, a fact that will prevent a lot of beer-and-pretzels players from ever getting Overthrone on the table. Which is a shame, because it's definitely worth playing.

And despite my misgivings I actually came to like the setting, although there are some strange discrepancies between the theme and the rules. Why would starting a Rebellion earn you the loyalty of the King? I mean, who are you rebelling against here, mom and dad? And you can sic an Executioner on the Queen, but only if the King is in your court, which strikes me as a little odd (but perhaps a more historically accurate representation of royal marriages than I'd care to think about). Don't get me wrong, I don't think Overthrone needs more rules to account for these cases, but just anchoring it in Renaissance France without the "French Rebellion" setting probably would have been sufficent.

No one is going to accuse Overthrone of elegance. Nor is it for everyone. One person I played it with announced that he would never play it again, as he felt he spent the whole game just waiting for the deck to run out so he could score his points. Someone described Overthrone as a "Snowstorm Game"— you'd be glad to have it if you got snowed in with a group of friends, because then you'd have the incentive to buckle down, learn the rules and play it a number of times. Indeed, no one seems to dispute that Overthrone would be fun to play with experienced players, but teaching it (and learning it) is such a chore that you may never cultivate such a group. But I intend to try.