Blaze
Under the spell of the legendary firy bird.
Amazingly beautiful and high-quality-made not only artistically, the game Blaze, which belongs to the series of card games, starting with Spicy and continuing with the sequel titels of Coyote and Anansi, offers us a variant of the classic and traditional card game “Durak”, meaning “stupid one”, a game that is a favorite in Russia. The reference to Russia can be found also in the title graphic, which refers to animal and adhers to the basic idea of the card game series by focusing on the spectacular fabled being, the firy bird.
Illustrator and artist Nadezhda Mikryukova has picked up on the topic with pleasure, the result is an eye catcher and the background story on the firy bird that must be caught for its feathers seams even more colorful. Well, who will collect most feathers?
Getting rid of cards, assess cards correctly and taking a trick now and then, those are the basic ingredients of Blaze. Not unusual and not promising a lot of novelty , but this assessment is wrong - unless you are familiar with “Durak”, and even then you will notice substantial differences.
You play with 18 number cards - two times values 1-9 - and two firy bird cards, all in three colors, over two rounds of two phases each, with players alternating the rules of attacker (challenger), defender (target player) and supporter. There can be maximum five attacks in a turn which are decided by leading cards and adding cards. Totally independed in the first lead, the defender must trick the card, either with a higher card in the same color or using trum, or the attack cannot be repelled. In case of sucess a further attack can happen, albeit only with a card which resembles the previously played two cards as recards to value. The goal: to improve your hand for phase two while not collecting too many cards. You collect cards if you cannot repel all attacks and have to take all open cards. When all attacks have been repelled, the cards are set aside and all replenish their hand to five cards.
So, what to do? Trick with abandon, improve your hand or collect after all? A question difficult to answer and surely influenced in a tactical/strategic sense, especially as the timing is important for what makes more sense. It seams clever get rid of a lot before cards are drawn because then you need not replenish. A method, but not without risk. Because if you you have only low cards at the end of phase 1, necause you have repelled everything and lady luck was not on your side in the replenishing, you will lose the attack and get a lot of cards in the critical phase. One after the other, players play their last cards to receive a feather card and thus points - the first one more, the others consecutively less. Only the last one comes away empty-handed and is the Durak who must begin the second, round.
Immediately before the second phase you also guess. “Who will win” is the obvious question - and if you guess correctly, you score an extra point, which otherwise remains with the supposed winner. A balancing element which opens up another dimension of the many-layered card game, but sometimes also triggers discussion.
A few introductory games are necessary and recommended before you can get a valid impression and are able to develop a real strategy. The more players the more stringent, albeit the less predictable, is the unusual tricking game, which does not come across as such at all. To memorize what was played but not discarded, to keep a good hand and don’t get „torn“ , even if you have to suffer a few bad cards, is a good start - a many-layered game, but not really a filler game.
Thomas Bareder
Players: 3-5
Age: 10+
Time: 20+
Designer: Team Heidelbär
Artist: Nedeszhda Mikryukova
Publisher: HeidelBÄR Games 2021
Web: www.heidelbaer.de
Genre: Card game
Users: With friends
Version: de
Rules: de en it
In-game text: no
Thomas Bareder: 5
Tactic (turquoise): 1
Strategy (blue): 2
Creativity (dark blue): 0
Knowledge (yellow): 0
Memory (orange):
Communication (red): 0
Interaction (brown): 3
Dexterity (green): 0
Action (dark green): 0