A trick-taking game based on a short story? Does that make any sense?
Well, if you haven’t read The Bottle Imp, I’ll give you the very brief version. There’s a bottle, it grants wishes. Literally your every desire. However, if you die with the bottle, you forfeit your soul to hell. A true push-your-luck game.
The trick-taking stakes are lower. But normally we don’t get to talk about the theme in our trick-taking review, so it’s a nice change of pace.
Gameplay Overview:
Originally published in 1995 as The Bottle Imp, the more recent printing is just Bottle Imp. There are a few differences, but let’s start with the basics, which are the same. The deck is composed of cards 1-37 distributed in three suits: red, green, and blue. Red cards are towards the lower end of the range, green are higher, and blue are fairly evenly spread throughout. There is no 19 card, as that is the starting price of the bottle. It’s important to understand that each number appears once: the 18 is red, the 8 is blue, etc…
After dealing the hand players will first each discard one card under the bottle. These discarded cards become “The Devil’s Trick.” Then, players pass one card to each neighbor and play begins. The lead player can play any card, and then players must follow suit if possible. After everyone has played a card, you determine who won the trick:
- If all card values are greater than the current price of the bottle, the highest card wins and the bottle ownership and price are unchanged.
- If anyone played a card with value under the current price of the bottle, the highest value that is lower than the current price wins. The player who wins takes ownership of the bottle and the new price is the value card they played.
So for example, if the opening trick where the value of the bottle starts at 19 and players play: 30, 23, 10, and 14—the 14 would win the trick, because someone played a card below the bottle price and thus the highest card below the price wins the trick. When a player wins the trick they take all the cards in the trick as points. Each card is worth a different number of points, with higher value cards generally being worth the most.
When all cards have been played, players score the points from the cards they won. However, if you ended the round with the bottle, you instead score negative points based on the value of the cards discarded to The Devil’s Trick at the beginning.
This new printing adds some new cards with half point values: 16.5, 14.5, etc. to accommodate up to 6 players as well as a team variant. With five or more players, there are now two bottles, and having either will mean you score negative points. The bottles move in a similar way, always the higher-priced bottle selling to the winner of the next trick. The cards are also beautifully illustrated and have red foiling that literally shines.
Game Experience:
I love a good trick-taker. And I love press-your-luck games. And I love Bottle Imp. Maybe I haven’t loved it since 1995, but I’ve played the old version plenty and knew that this much prettier version was an upgrade worth having.
Deciding how quickly to drop the price of the bottle is key. If you have a hand of high cards you can try to drop it quickly to increase your chances of winning tricks where only high cards are played. In contrast, you often want to sluff off your low value cards into tricks where someone else is undercutting the bottle’s price. However, because you have to follow suit, leaving yourself short-suited with low cards can spell disaster.
There’s a good deal of card counting you can do here. The cards discarded into The Devil’s Trick make that exercise imperfect but it still important to remember, at a minimum, which of the lowest values have made an appearance. The tension at the end of a trick on who is going to be stuck with the bottle makes for swingy-but-fun moments.
That tension is really best with three players. It’s the perfect amount of information and planning without often being forced to follow suit in a way that just destroys any plan you might have had. I did try the double-bottle variant with five players and found it “meh-inducing”. It’s similar enough and it’s great that you can include a couple more people but having two bottles just takes a bit of the teeth out of the whole experience.
Final Thoughts:
If you have been looking for a great trick-taking game based on a 19th-century short story, Bottle Imp is perfect. And if you’ve just been looking for a great trick-taking game, well, it’s still probably for you. It feels unique in a crowded field of card games and still gets regularly pulled off the shelf.
The new edition is worth checking out for the card quality alone. The extra half-point values accommodating more players isn’t my preferred way to play, but it’s hard to complain about having the option. The only thing holding Bottle Imp back is the restrictive player count. It’s near-perfect at three players, good at four, and just fine with more than that.
Final Score: 4 Stars – A great trick-taking game combining some press-your-luck elements.
Hits:
• New edition has beautifully foiled and illustrated cards.
• Great tension and big swingy moments
• If you like card counting, you’ll love this
Misses:
• Really at its best with three players
