Base price: $18.
2 – 5 players.
Play time: 20 – 30 minutes.
BGG Link
Logged plays: 2

Full disclosure: A review copy of Beasts was provided by Pandasaurus Games.

I remember an idyllic time when I wrote like, five reviews a week. It’s kind of wild thinking back to how little I had to do on a regular basis back then. What happened? I think there’s definitely a certain ease to writing these reviews, yes, but that’s developed from experience, and it certainly took me longer to write them in the past (and edit the photos and take the photos). Part of it is that I do think that I had more gaming opportunities than I do now, though I’m playing where I can (thank you, BGA pals, Susan, Sanj, Suz, and other people whose names don’t start with an S). I think sometimes I’d get so jazzed about a game that I’d just have to write about it. That still happens sometimes, granted. but some of the shine has worn off after a thousand of them or so. Maybe it’s the inevitable question of will I still be writing these in 20 years. Who knows. Anyways, I’m not burdened by that existential dread today, though all I did today was write, take and edit photos, and watch some TV while editing photos. That’s a restful Sunday. Let’s see what’s next up on the docket. How about Beasts, from Pandasaurus Games?

In Beasts, you’re just counting as high as you can with your animal friends. Unfortunately, the Beasts have other plans. Representing halves of common suits (Whole Diamonds, Broken Hearts, Whole Spades, Broken Clubs; you get the idea), these wild animals can block your progression and make your life a lot harder if you’re not prepared for them when they arrive. So work cooperatively to play an ever-increasing set of cards and keep the Beasts away while you can. Can you make it through the whole deck?

Contents

• Setup
• Gameplay
• Player Count Differences
• Strategy
• Pros, Mehs, Cons
• Overall

Setup

This one’s also pretty easy. Set out the three big (tarot-sized) digit board cards. Remove the Beast Cards from the deck and shuffle it, then deal each player five:

Then, pick four Beast Cards and shuffle them into the standard cards:

Set aside three discard tokens and you should be ready to start! For a more difficult game, add more Beast Cards or fewer discard tokens.

Gameplay

Your goal here? Play every card. Much easier than it sounds, though! There are apparently beasts throughout the deck that will seek to thwart you.

On your turn, choose a suit and play every card in your hand of that suit. If you have a Beast Card, you must play that Beast’s suit. When playing a card, you can play to any digit as long as the resulting number is higher than the previous one. Also important: if you increase the 10s or 100s digit, you can clear the cards to the right of that digit (resetting them to 0). If a Beast is above a particular digit, you cannot play cards of that Beast’s type to that digit (noting that a Beast represents either the Broken or Whole version of that suit). If you don’t like a card in your hand, you may spend one Discard Token to discard it, but remember: you only get three per game, as a team.

To play a Beast, place it above the rightmost digit in play (it’s placed splayed upwards if there are multiple Beasts there). If the card in that digit’s spot is that Beast’s type (Broken Spades, for instance), then move the Beast one card to the left. If they’re all the Beast’s type, the Beast is removed from play and no longer affects play.

After your turn, you must draw back up to five cards. If you draw a Beast, place it face-up in front of you as a reminder (but it still counts as a card in your hand).

If you cannot play a card and any player still has cards in their hand, you lose! If all cards are played, you win! The number at the end is your score.

Player Count Differences

There are some, here, mostly revolving around how the Beasts work. The key insight is that with fewer players, you have fewer cards in play between players’ hands, but you also get less notice if a Beast is coming up. At two, either I have it or you have it if someone’s drawn it. With three, you can set up better protection and prevention techniques because there are just more people until the Beast has to be played. You can even occasionally force them out of play if you’re not particularly precious about the 100s digit (or you’re lucky). That said, that might work against you at times. If multiple players have Beasts in waiting, you’re not going to be able to pull that off and you might end up having to increment the number a lot more than you want. So player count affects play, here, but not in a particularly negative way; it just means that luck of the cards may impact your player experience more at higher player counts just because there are more people getting cards. I wouldn’t say I have a major preference though.

Strategy

• Use your Discard Tokens to thread the needle. You can use them to get rid of one card that would otherwise make a big play unplayable, for instance. Don’t do that too much, though! You really need to keep them for if you’re in a bind so that you don’t have to bump the number up by, like, 500.
• Mess with different orders of magnitude. If you have 1159 in hand, you can play the 5, then the 9, then increment the 10s to be a 1, clear the 0s digit, and play the second 1, for instance. Don’t forget how much the digit to your left opens up your options; sometimes even playing to the 100s isn’t the wrong choice (especially when you’re looking at a number in the 70s to 90s range.
• Don’t be too precious about the 100s. There is a lot of space in the 100s. You’ll need it later to deal with the Beasts, granted, but there are a lot more numbers between 100 and 200 than there are between 10 and 20. That’s what we in the business call “math”, but also, it’s important to remember that if the Beasts are messing with you.
• Try to avoid placing both Beasts of a suit on a digit. I suppose it’s fine if its the 100s, but you really don’t want to make it so that you can’t play an entire suit to one of the digit spots; that can really mess you up and force a lot of incremental movement if you’re not careful.
• Communicate! You’re not allowed to talk about the cards in your hand, but you can communicate certain things (like telling other players to play Diamonds or that you don’t have a great play available or to clear a certain digit). That can help other people plan or potentially leave a certain play for you so that you don’t have to take a big hit.
• Towards the end of the game, just do what you need to do. You shouldn’t necessarily jump up 300 just to prove a point, for instance, but you shouldn’t worry about a 100+ jump, especially if you’re down to the last few cards. They can’t all be 9s.
• It’s pretty rare to not want to clear a digit when you increment the 10s or 100s. The only time I can think of it being useful is if a Beast is coming up and you’re trying to punt it. Otherwise, it helps your co-players to have a 0 available and likely helps you too.

Pros, Mehs, and Cons

Pros

• I really like the art a lot, here. It’s pretty excellent! The Beasts aren’t just the Beast Cards; they’re also the numbers. It’s a bit silly, but very cool.
• I think this hits a nice spot that The Mind didn’t hit for me where I feel more actively in control of the strategy, even if the game throws the occasional curveball at me. I like the structure of this game giving you three digits to manipulate in an always-increasing path. The suit restrictions keep things interesting each game and gives us something to shoot for. Successfully preventing one Beast entirely was a great feeling, for instance. I like the fine-tuned control in the game. The Mind is a bit more free-form in terms of just trying to predict who should play when, and that completely unstructured no-communication style of play doesn’t land as well for me.
• Still pretty portable, which is also nice. The box is a bit larger than it needs to be (could have just been Tarot-sized for the Digit Cards), but I assume there’s some marketing reasoning behind that. Plus, the cover art is nice; I do get the desire to show it off.
• Other than some rules about the Beasts, this game’s pretty easy to explain also. You’re just trying to keep playing cards so that the number goes up. I’m like, 30% sure that’s how the stock market works.
• I appreciate that you can tweak the difficulty to your preferred state. You can add more Beasts or use fewer Discard tokens until you’re at a place where you’re winning or losing as much as you want!

Mehs

• Do we want a high score or a low score? The rulebook doesn’t say, so I guess it’s fine, but it would be worth knowing if we’re doing well or poorly.
• I do love gold in cards and on box art, but it makes it challenging to photograph. I’m still working on that.

Cons

• We were confused as to how the rulebook explained startling. I think that the issue for us is that Beasts cannot become Startled, as you can’t play a card of their type below them. Instead, they are Startled when they’re played to a digit where the top card is of their type and are subsequently pushed to the left. It’s more just a “you have to move a Beast if they’re getting played to a banned spot”, and that was confusingly phrased in the rules.

Overall: 8 / 10

Overall, I think Beasts is great! It’s pretty much exactly what I want from a game like The Mind, in that it’s a lot closer to The Game in terms of structure and gameplay style. I really like the framework and strategy that a well-scaffolded game provides, and while I didn’t get what I wanted from The Mind, I think Beasts offers some interesting flexibility and strategic play that is wholly unique from The Game, but perfectly reasonably compared to it. For one thing, Beasts has infinitely better SEO than “The Game”, a game so generically-named that I actually can’t find it in my reviews and am not entirely sure I did review it in the past. For another, while these games all have great art, Beasts’s art is fantastic; really leveraging an almost Alice in Wonderland-style vibe for the creatures and the numbers that they contort into. The colors are great and the addition of the gold foil to mark the Broken cards is particularly fancy, even if it makes photography harder. I just need more lights, probably. I also like that this lands perfectly in the “card game for people who aren’t into board games” category. You don’t have complex rules or resources or fidgety little wooden pieces; you just have to play cards and work together. It’s a great gateway to other cooperative games or other card games, depending on what about Beasts that players like. I’d certainly look forward to playing it again, regardless of player count. If you’re looking for a nice introductory cooperative game, you’re a fan of games with great art, or you just want some fancy cards, I’d definitely recommend checking out Beasts! It’s a bunch of fun.

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