Game 411: Rights

Japanese publisher Oink Games has produced many titles with tiny footprints, with some of those titles being picked up by other publishers (Kobayakawa and Dungeon of Mandom) and some being available solely through Oink.

The newest title from Oink and designer Jun Sasaki, who has designed or co-designed most releases from Oink, is Rights, which debuted at the Tokyo Game Market in May 2015. Rights is reminiscent of Parade or Reibach & Co., card games in which players build collections of cards in the hope of scoring points (or not scoring points — it's all the same when you flip a scoring system on its head).

Super tiny cards to fit in the box with the 46 point tokens

The deck in Rights consists of 45 cards numbered 5-10, with five 5s, six 6s, etc. Each number corresponds to a particular pattern. Each player starts with a hand of three cards and tokens worth 10 points. On a turn, you draw a card, then you either:

• Play a card in front of you to add it to your holdings, or
• Pass a card face-up to your left-hand neighbor.

In the former case, the player to your left takes the next turn. In the latter case, this neighbor either keeps the card (adding it to their collection and taking the next turn) or places 1 point on it and passes the card left. The player who receives this card now has the same options as before.

Why would you want to pass a card or not keep something handed to you? Because it's poison, of course, point poison. The game ends when a player has 7-10 cards on the table — and since players can pass cards during the game, not everyone will have the same number of cards (since you lose your turn if you choose to pay and pass). As someone nears the game-ending threshold, you sometimes wonder whether to pass something as that could trigger the end of the game.

Endgame holdings and all the points I won!

Once the game ends, players add the three cards in their hand to their holdings, then you determine who has the rights to each pattern/number. for each number, you see whether one player has more of that number than each other player; if so, then each other player must pay 2 points for each such card to whoever holds the rights to this pattern. (You might not have guessed, but you're all fashion designers fighting for monopolistic rights to particular patterns. Yes, in this game you can own the rights to stripes and force others to pay you to stripe something on their own.) If two or more players tie for the ownership of a pattern, then no one pays anything for this pattern since the rights to it are clearly in dispute. After all of the payouts, whoever has the most points wins.

I've played Rights six times on a copy I purchased at TGM, thrice with five players and thrice with four, and in some ways the game feels 20% too short. You want a few more turns to dump the cards that have suddenly become poison because someone else has stacked up several on their own turf. You want more turns to lay out cards of your own to fight for majorities. You want more time!

But that's the nature of most good games, starting small with one holding, then two; feeling out who might be going into which patterns; fighting the tide of time and opposing forces who don't know enough to leave you alone. Adding more turns might just move the goalposts without adding more to the story arc of the game, to the quick rise and fall of your hopes as you wonder whether an investment will pay out once everyone drops their secret holdings onto the table. After all, we played six times in one sitting — "just one more time" we all said, eager to try our luck once again...

Stack o' Oinks

(In the U.S. and Canada, you can call 411 to help you find a person or business, so 411 is sometimes used as a shorthand for information. In "Game 411" posts, I present an overview of a newly released or obscure game to you, the BGG News reader. —WEM)