Game Preview: Hats, or Be Tops on the Rack to Win

For most conventions that I attend, I bring a game or two with me to play at the show, often a game that I've played and liked but haven't experienced enough to do a decent overview. Lost Cities: Rivals was that game for me at Gen Con 2018, with my video overview going live in mid-August 2018 after teaching it to people in Indianapolis.

At other times, I've already covered a game, but I just want to play it more. The Mind was one such game, and for Gen Con 2019 that game of choice will be Gabriele Bubola's Hats from ThunderGryph Games. Here's a succinct description of the game from an earlier post of mine:

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In this 2-4 player game, each player starts with a hand of nine hat cards. On a turn, either you place a card face down in front of you as a "black hat" for 1 point, or you swap a card from your hand for a card from the tea table board; the card that you play must be either the same type (color) as or a higher value than the card originally on the tea table board. When you swap, you place the newly acquired card in your collection.

At the end of eight rounds, the final card in your hand earns you points for all collected hat cards of the same type, while losing you points for the value of that particular card, and the placement of cards on the tea table board determine the value of matching cards.

Okay, that description might be too succinct in that it describes the actions without giving you any feel of what the game is like. In some ways, Hats feels like Naoki Homma's Parade, another tricksy card game that relies on "Alice in Wonderland" imagery. In Parade, you have a small hand of cards, and you're trying to play cards to take (or not take) cards already on display in a line. Collected cards count against you, and you want the smallest score possible. One way to reduce your score is to have the most cards of a color as then those cards count as only 1 point each instead of their face value. Every card can be good or bad depending on the circumstances of the game.

Gameplay in Hats reminds me of that Parade feeling, even though the two don't share any elements other than cards. Hats lasts only eight rounds, with you collecting exactly eight cards. The value of those cards depends on what everyone plays on the tea table board, so you're sort of creating alliances with others (when playing with more than two) to boost the value of a color you're both collecting. Low numbers are good for holding as a favorite color at game's end and for placing on the board as bait that can be easily removed in the future; high numbers let you claim (nearly) anything on the tea table board to transform it into your ideal scoring layout.

I've played Hats four times on a review copy from ThunderGryph, and I dig how much is packed into its short playing time, with every card mattering (Mad Hattering?) in how the game plays out. I've yet to play with four players, though, so I need to get more games in. With four, you're teamed with the player across from you and all the cards are in play. Instead of being able to discard a card from your hand to draw something new — which you can do with two and three players to fish for info or for better cards (whatever "better" means in your current situation) —you instead trade cards with your teammate, ideally trading info so that you can synch up in your plays and scoring.

I go into more detail about Hats in this overview. If you happen to be going to Gen Con and find me standing around looking lost, I'm might be trying to find players for this game. Grab a table with me!