LogFAQs > #897467628

38. No Thanks!
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/12942/no-thanks

Genre/mechanics: Push-your-luck, bidding, set collection
Rules complexity: 1/10
Game length: 5-10 minutes
Player count: 3-5
Experience: 4+ sessions (10+ rounds) with 4-5
First played: 2015

No Thanks!, like 6 nimmt!, is a game about trying to acquire the lowest points via numbered cards. Each player starts with a number of red chips, and one by one, numbered cards turn up to be bid on. The thing is, you bid the chips, worth negative, points in order not to take the cards. Take the card, and you gain the point value on its face, but also the red chips on it. If you have no chips, you must take the card. However, if you take consecutive cards - 18 and 19 - then you only score the lowest one.

Design - From the summary above, you can pretty much see where all the tension comes form in No Thanks! - the surest way to win is never to take a single card, but that's a near-impossible strategy to execute, as high-face-value cards will go multiple times around the table and drain you of your red tokens. Taking low-valued cards can also be good, since you score relatively little and give up no red chips. There's hate-drafting available, if someone has 18-19 as well as 21-22-23, but taking a 20 straight-up is a tough call to make in a more-than-two-player game. And of course, if you wind up with the highest 33 card and a 32 turns up, you can try bleed your opponents for their treasured red chips for a few turns around the table before taking it at zero cost and getting all those benefits (as long as no one else decides to eat the hit instead).

Enjoyment - The first time I played No Thanks!, it wasn't that great, in large part because one of the players kept telling others to take the hit. (Like in many other multi-player games, you can screw over an opponent if you know what you're doing, but often that means suffering yourself - which means that the true beneficiaries are all the other players you didn't target.) Alas, I haven't played No Thanks! that much. Part of that is certainly because the only person who owns it moved away.

Future - The other reason I don't already own NT! is that it fills a somewhat strange spot. It's a filler game that plays super-fast, but it doesn't play more than 5 players, so you can't necessarily use it for a group. The scoring structure and high variance also seems to suggest that you play it multiple rounds, which might lengthen the experience - and the game doesn't seem suited as a centerpiece, either. Nonetheless, I think it's incredibly clever and playable and would love to play it again.

Bonus question - What's your favorite non-party-game filler?

Hint for #38 - I'm hungry.
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness