Review: Sandbag (Bezier Games)

A lot of people picked up interesting hobbies over the last few years. In Sandbag from Bezier Games, you and your fellow players decided to join the hot air ballooning club.

Of course, merely flying the balloons and enjoying the view wasn’t enough for daredevils like you and your friends. You needed something with a bit more edge and serious competition. So you hit on an idea: You’d see whose balloon could fly the highest through some strategic sandbag drops, a bit of old-fashioned luck, and strapping on an occasional rocket.

Sandbag is a trick-taking game at heart, but it’s a dark and twisted heart. The game adds face-down plays, card swapping, and a mechanism that might change the trump suit after every trick. And for its final twist, it’s a trick-taking game where you don’t want to take any tricks at all.

Climb in and get ready to soar as we look at the top five things you need to know about high-flying balloons in Sandbag!

Exploring the Deck

#

Sandbag’s deck contains five suits of balloon cards (red, orange, purple, yellow, and blue). Each suit has eleven cards numbered 0 to 10. The deck also has ten rocket cards: five -5 cards and five -7 cards.

There’s also a handy double-sided reference card for every player. Hand them out at the beginning of the game because you will need them. Seriously.

Setting up a Game

#

The mix of card in the deck depends on the number of players.

With three players, you remove one balloon suit color and add four of the five -5 rocket cards. With four players, you use all balloon suit colors and all -5 rocket cards. For five or six players, you set up the deck like you did for four players, but use the -7 rockets instead of the -5 rockets.

With the deck ready, you shuffle and deal all cards evenly to the players.

Passing and Basket Building

#

Here’s where Sandbag leaves the world of normal trick-taking games and begins going down its weirdly unique path.

Players look at their cards, pick two they don’t want (typically high numbers), and pass one each to the neighboring players on the right and left.

Now it’s time to build your “basket.” Each player puts three cards face down in front of them. Two cards are played side by side vertically. These are your basket cards. The third card goes below the first two and gets played horizontally. That’s your sandbag.

All players flip over their two basket cards simultaneously. The color of the most face-up basket cards is the first trump. The player with the highest trump card in their basket becomes the first player.

Dialing up the Weirdness

#

Basic play in Sandbag works like a normal trick taking game. The first player leads a card, then everyone must follow suit if they can, but they have several ways of doing that.

Normally, you’d play a card from your hand, but Sandbag gives you three other options. First, you could play your face down Sandbag card (the one under your basket). Doing that counts as following suit, but without the peril of taking the trick.

You can also swap a card from your hand for any of the face up basket cards in front of other players. To swap, you take a face up card of the led color from someone else’s basket and replace it with a face down card from your hand. You then play the card the card that you took. It’s a nifty way to dump bad cards out of your hand.

The rocket cards we mentioned earlier add one more funky twist. Playing a rocket card or swapping for one in someone else’s basket also counts as following suit.

Changing Trumps, Counting Points

#

Since we figured out the trump suit by looking at everyone’s basket cards, messing with the basket cards might — and probably will — change the trump suit.

At the end of a trick where at least one player swapped a card, everyone looks at the remaining face up basket cards. Just like you did at the start of the round, players figure out which color has the most face-up basket cards. That immediately becomes trump. It’s possible that two or more colors could all be trump at the same time, which gets really wild.

Once all cards (including sandbags) have been played, the round ends and scoring starts. You get one point for each card you took in a trick and for each face down card in your basket. Face up basket cards give you their numeric value in points. Rocket cards you took subtract points from your total.

When you finish scoring, shuffle the deck and play two more hands. The player with the lowest final score wins.

Verdict

#

We had a challenging learning curve with Sandbag. By themselves, Sandbag’s basic game play, card swapping mechanic, ever-changing trump suits, and sandbag cards are easy to grasp, but it took us several games to mesh everything together and figure out how the individual pieces drive the game’s strategy.

Hitting that point was the proverbial light bulb moment for everyone playing. The game revealed more strategic depth than we anticipated, as well as plenty of surprising twists thanks to the swapping mechanic and the way it ties into trump selection.

If your group loves trick taking games and craves twisty mechanics, Sandbag will be a winner. Recommended!