Base price: $12.
2 players.
Play time: ~20 minutes.
BGG Link
Buy directly!
Logged plays: 2
Full disclosure: A review copy of Squabblin Goblins was provided by Button Shy.
We’re back with more Button Shy! I got to play this a few times at ShyCon and really enjoyed it, so, here we are. I do think Button Shy is an alarmingly consistent publisher, and I was so excited to see them at Gen Con this year. I hope they had a great year and come back! More people should try some of these wallet games. In particular, fans of the site will note that I’m a big proponent of Sprawlopolis, but I like other games too! There are some particularly cool ones coming out this year, so look forward to those. In the meantime, let’s squabble!
In Squabblin Goblins, your goal is gold! You crave it, you love it, and you particularly love making big piles of it. Unfortunately, your opponent wants to have a bigger and more valuable gold pile than you. That cannot stand. That’s injustice probably. So the squabble begins. Add to piles, sneak piles around, lie, cheat, steal; all the best parts of life. Get your special gold gloves and a shovel or two; it’s time to win big! Will you get the most gold?
Contents
Setup
Not a ton! That’s what we love about Button Shy. Shuffle the cards and deal six face-up into the center with three facing each player. Aaaaand that’s about it! Each player draws three cards to start.
Gameplay
This one’s not too hard. You’ve got three piles; your opponent has three piles. Who knows who will get enough treasure?
Each turn, you play a card! You can play green or orange cards face-up to any pile, or any card face-down under any pile (make those cards perpendicular). Green cards have active effects that happen when they’re played; orange cards activate at the end of the game if they’re face-down! Orange cards’ effects don’t activate if they’re played face-up.
At the end of your turn, draw back up to three cards. Play until every card has been played.
Once all cards have been played, secrets are revealed! Start with the leftmost pile in front of the starting player and resolve one player’s leftmost pile, then the other’s, and so on. After doing so, each player scores all face-up cards in their piles (not face-down, now-revealed cards). The player with more points wins!
Player Count Differences
None! Two-player game.
Strategy
- Mind games! Ideally, your opponent should never be totally sure what card you just placed. Bonus points if you can confuse them about the card you just played face-up. Gaslight, gatekeep, girlboss. It’s the code.
- There are usually only max two of each card type. If you’ve seen two of a card, you’re usually just about spent on that card. You don’t have to worry about it popping up and messing with you again. This is pretty important for switching cards and cards that move things around.
- Watch out for stack-flipping cards. You can easily flip an entire stack over with a single card, which is a great way to check to see if your opponent has been burying terrible cards in your pile. If you have the right cards, you can even flip it back!
- You can do a lot by hiding high- or low-value cards. There are +3 and -3 point cards; hide them at your leisure and see what happens. Just be mindful that your opponent likely knows that those cards exist.
- Destroying an entire pile can be a lot of fun! Or pointless. One card just blows up a pile! It’s a lovely gift to bury in your opponent’s most valuable stuff if you’re a jerk. Or you might accidentally swap it into your pile and blow stuff up that you actually like? That’s … less useful.
- You can also do weird and unpredictable stuff. Behaving unpredictably is a strategy; it’s a useful way to counter an opponent’s well-laid strategy. It’s also super annoying, which can be fun in it of itself.
Pros, Mehs, and Cons
Pros
- I really like the art! It’s goofy. I think goblins should be, ideally, as goofy a possible. If they’re realistic it kind of bums me out. Especially if they’re in any sort of British wizard book. Don’t love that. But goofy goblins with huge shields and explosions are all great. Big fan.
- We love a two-player dueling game. It’s one of my favorite genres; you can just sit down with another player and go at it for a while. I’ve got another one of these coming down the pipeline maybe next week? Keep an eye out for it; it’s fun, but I keep losing.
- The entire game is mind games. I love playing mind games during a game! It’s mostly just “can you pretend like you don’t know anything particularly useful”, but as an art form. It’s very fulfilling and I wish I could make it my entire career.
- Very portable. The Button Shy advantage, as I always say.
- Easy setup and play makes things simple. You’re not doing a ton of rules or setup for this one, which is great. Makes it a great introduction to bluffing games with minimal cognitive load.
Mehs
- There’s a certain level of memory to this one, so be prepared for that. You will have an immeasurably worse experience playing this game if you don’t remember where you put key cards. It might work out in your favor, but it’s pretty equally likely to not.
Cons
- This is a very particular type of game and, if you’re not into bluffing and mind games, you’re almost certainly not going to like this one. This game is almost wholly about mind games and bluffing. If you look at this and you don’t think it’s for you, you’re probably not going to enjoy it and there’s very little that you can do to change that. It’s just a distillation of a particular genre of game.
Overall: 8 / 10
Overall, I think Squabblin Goblins is great! It’s quick and punchy, with a ton of mind games that give echoes of In Vino Morte and my longtime lost favorite, Cake Duel. I love placing cards and forcing my opponents to guess if I placed a card that would help me, hurt them, help them, or hurt me. I’m all over the place. I love chaos. Honestly, sometimes you can just shuffle your hand and place a card face-down randomly. Can’t give information for things you don’t know or understand! Wouldn’t recommend it as a strategy! But it’s those kind of moves that give Squabblin Goblins life. It’s a game about playing games, specifically mind games. There are also a ton of mini-expansions, so there’s a lot of ways to grow the game. If you love this sort of back-and-forth second-guessing, I think you’ll have a great time here. Plus, it’s a quick game with the occasional thrilling outcome. If that’s your thing, you love hoarding gold, or you just want to mess with your friends, Squabblin Goblins might just be the game for you!
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