Base price: $17.
2 – 4 players.
Play time: 20 – 40 minutes.
BGG Link
Buy directly!
Logged plays: 3
This is a whole thing, but I actually took a bit of a vacation this week! The first real vacation I’ve taken in actual years. Went to go see Moulin Rouge and Hadestown, had a nice little weekend. Still have to go to work on Monday, but I actually got a bit of time to just … relax! It’s been good for my system, though I do have to say, do not go to New York City in January during a bomb cyclone. It’s extremely cold. I think my current Being Outside record is around 10 minutes. I’ve never been this cold in my life, I think. But that’s not super relevant. I have taken a number of elevators, so maybe that’s the motivating aspect of this review. So let’s check out In Front of the Elevators, from one of my favorite publishers: Saashi & Saashi!
In In Front of the Elevators, well, you just don’t enjoy waiting. The elevators are coming and buddy, you genuinely want to be on them. You hate waiting on elevators and there’s a whole line and a whole thing now. Thankfully, society is well-ordered and follows a surprising set of rules. Unfortunately, those rules are mostly just people cutting in front of other people, ungrateful tools. Them’s the breaks. You can, however, turn that to your favor. Your family deserves to be at the front of the line. And you’ll get them there. Who cuts in front of who? How are you going to make your way to the front?
Contents
Setup
It’s not going to be too intense, this one. Each player gets a Family Card (two each in a two-player game).
Randomize the three Elevator Card stacks; it doesn’t really matter which goes where, but, you know, the principle of the thing. We live in a society.
Then, prep the Person Cards:
In a three-player game, you’re going to leave one color out and one card of the color that is nobody’s Family Card. Deal each player two cards of the same color as their Family Card to form their starting hand. At two players, give them one of each Family Card color. If both cards in a two player game are Lost Child cards, shuffle one back into the deck and deal them a replacement card of the same color. Then, set up the decks. At all player counts, you then make three stacks of roughly equal size and flip the top card of each stack. You should be ready to start!
Gameplay
Your goal here is simple. Your family needs to be on the elevators. They’re not currently. Fix that.
Each turn, you’ll play a card into one of the three Elevator Lines. They will immediately activate their ability:
- Girls cut in front of Boys.
- Boys cut in front of Moms.
- Moms cut in front of Dads.
- Dads cut in front of Grandmas.
- Grandmas cut in front of Grandpas.
- Grandpas cut in front of Girls.
A card, when played, always cuts in front of the person it would normally cut closest to the elevator. I mean, that makes sense. No point otherwise. You cannot choose to not cut line. Lost Children, on the other hand, play a bit differently. They pull one card of your choice of their color to the back of the line, behind them (to the right).
One other rule: if three cards of the same type (Moms / Dads / Lost Children / etc.) are in line together, they exit the line to go to the Cafe! The player who played the third card of that type takes all three. The Lost Child rule happens before the Cafe rule, in case that ever matters.
Once all three decks run out, each player plays one more card and then the round ends! Each elevator scores some number of cards based on their proximity to the elevator (usually the first three or four). Each elevator also favors certain types of cards; they score double points. Lost Children in line are worth 0. Each Cafe stack is worh 1 point, except for Lost Children, who are worth 2 points. Score and record your points; the player with the most points scored in the last round starts the next round. Remove the top Elevator Card from each stack, reset, and go again! After three rounds, the player with the most points wins!
Player Count Differences
The major difference is just that in a two-player game you have two Family Cards, scoring each separately. Scoring still happens as normal, but now you can optionally compete against yourself a little bit (or, more usefully, you have twice as many shots to get high-scoring Family membets in front of certain elevators). At higher player counts, you only use one Family. This means that you’ll far more frequently be likely to draw cards that aren’t yours; you’ll be focusing more on how to play your opponents’ cards uselessly than you would be trying to get cards into useful positions. I like the two-player game a good amount, though! You still have one dummied out color that is worthless to everyone and you have two cards’ worth of shots to score. With more players, the strategy becomes more cutthroat and intense. If you’re looking for that, well, you’ll find it here!
Strategy
- Cutting line isn’t always optimal. You may end up pushing an opponent’s card into a more valuable scoring spot, for instance. Be strategic about cards played, yes, but also incorporate timing into your strategy.
- Don’t always just draw your own cards! You may not always be able to play them optimally, which can suck. If you draw your opponents’ cards, you can play them in terrible situations and give them nothing.
- The Cafe rule is also helpful. There are only five cards of each type anyways, so if the Cafe rule gets triggered for one type, it won’t happen again this round. That means it’s safe to play your cards to the row where they can potentially score double points. You can also use it to wipe out a ton of your opponents’ cards of one type and clear the way for yourself.
- Try not to set your opponent up. You should know who can cut who, so placing cards that can be cut by a card that scores double points for a row is a bad idea. Place it somewhere else.
- Lost Children aren’t useless. You can use them early to pull a card back to a more lucrative position, or you can use them late to fish an opponent’s high-value card out of a vital position. And even then, you can use the Cafe rule to score bonus points later for playing a bunch of them.
- Don’t let your opponent get big double scoring spaces. Push them out by any means necessary.
- Use the neutral player. One Family’s cards belong to nobody. Use them for offense and defense and spacing and setup; the world’s really your oyster because you don’t have to be concerned if they score nothing.
Pros, Mehs, and Cons
Pros
- The art remains delightful. I believe Takako Takarai handles the art for all of these and I love them. They look like some kind of family picture book for kids and it often belies the games’ challenging, strategic, or cutthroat natures. You do learn to see past it eventually, but I still find the art very pleasant.
- I also really like “polite” games about impolite things. I think No Thanks is another great example of this (and Obsession, to some degree). Here, you’re playing a nice and leisurely card game about people just absolutely rudely cutting in front of people. No Thanks is all about politely refusing points you don’t want. Obsession is all Regency manners and backstabbing. It’s not really that the game is deep enough that you can roleplay, but I think I enjoy the mild irony of a pleasant game about behaving badly.
- Extremely portable. I love all of the Saashi games that are this size. There’s so many things you can do with them and they’re just cards! It’s great.
- The game is pretty tricky. It’s not just a timing puzzle of what to play when, but even what to draw when can be important. Do you try to grab a card of an opponent’s color to play it uselessly? Or are you focused on trying to get as many points as possible? Are there times where you can align those two goals?
- The player aid is pretty invaluable here. Even so, the cards say who cuts in front of who as well; they really went overboard in making sure that you know how to actually play the game, and I respect that.
Mehs
- It would have been fun if all the families were dressed differently or something. Just a way to break them up a bit? I just like the art style a lot and want to see as much of the artist’s work as possible.
- There are a lot of edge cases in setup. It’s just mostly to avoid any dealing quirks, and they’re easily corrected, but it can still be vaguely annoying if you get caught by one or more.
Cons
- I never love the whole “play three rounds” gameplay conceit. I’m perfectly happy playing a quick round of this. Granted, this means that you suffer a bit more of the random card chance of who drew what when or what was initially played (which I believe is what the three rounds are meant to amortize out), but otherwise the only real difference is that the elevators increase in value and players are likely more wary of the player with the most points. Encourages a bit of dogpiling, which is never my favorite.
Overall: 8 / 10
Overall, I like In Front of the Elevators a lot! I think the theme is fundamentally silly, and that’s the kind of whimsy I’m looking for in a quick card game. You’re just all being assholes, to some degree, and cut not lest ye be cut in front of, I suppose. But that’s silly, and every time it gets cutthroat (because this game is obviously decently cutthroat) it also gets funnier. Did you just drag all the Dads to the Cafe? Monster. How could you do something so cruel as let a Dad have friends who are also Dads. Things like that. Takako Takari’s art, I think, helps sell the passive whimsy of the situation pretty well, as is standard for Saashi & Saashi games. Are you breaking out of jail? Whimsy. Going on a boat? Whimsy. Making a bus route? Whimsy. The art’s ability to capture the whimsical banality of life really speaks to me in all their games, but this is a great example of it. Plus the game’s just fun. Quick, interesting, and replayable. Who starts where can often influence who finishes where, and trying something new and interesting each round may win you the game or teach you a lot about your opponents. A good outcome in either case, I suppose? I’m a fan of In Front of the Elevators, and if you’re looking for a quick and fun card game, you like a bit of cutthroat play, or you just really like cutting in line, you’ll probably enjoy it too!
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