Base price: $9.
2 – 10 players.
Play time: 5 – 10 minutes.
BGG Link
Buy on Amazon (via What’s Eric Playing?)
Logged plays: 2
Full disclosure: A review copy of Fairy was provided by Allplay.
I’ve been doing this thing lately where I’ve been sleeping a ton instead of doing the writing that I’ve needed to do, which, whoops. That’s on me. But sleeping is just a lot of fun, y’all. It’s an ongoing thing. But now I’m getting through some reviews for the next couple weeks and making that work. There’s a lot to cover and it’s going to be a fun few weeks. We’re going full-in this week, so let’s check out Fairy, from Allplay!
In Fairy, you’re trying to reveal cards based on your predictions. It’s easy, relatively speaking, so your friends are getting into the prognostication business as well! Higher, lower, same suit? Easy. Trying to catch an actual fairy, though? That’s pretty challenging. Guess and hope for good luck if you want to score big!
Contents
Setup
None, essentially. Shuffle the cards:
Give each player a score card:
They should hold it between their index finger and thumb, like this:
You should be ready to start! Flip the top card of the deck face-up to start the discard pile.
Gameplay
Super simple, this one. You want to get the most points before the deck runs out, but if any player hits 25 points, they win!
The game takes place over multiple rounds. In each round, players have a choice to make: will the next card be higher, lower, the same suit, or a Fairy? Before the card is drawn, each player will make a gesture to indicate their selection.
- Higher: Thumbs-up
- Lower: Thumbs-down
- Same suit: Hand pointing sideways, palm towards the player.
- Fairy: Hand in a grasping position
Once everyone is ready, do a 3-2-1 countdown and then show your gestures! Then one player flips the card. If you’re right, you get points! If you’re wrong, you lose 1 point.
- Higher: +2 points
- Lower: +2 points
- Same suit: +4 points
- Fairy: +7 points
Play continues until the deck runs out or any one player hits 25+ points. The player with the most points wins!
Player Count Differences
None, really. All choices are made somewhat independently, so having more or fewer players isn’t really going to affect play. There are just only ten scoring cards, so, ten players max. I don’t have a preference for player count, here.
Strategy
- Probability is your friend, here. Keep track of the numbers you’ve seen so you know what you can bet, and, you know, don’t make obviously bad bets (higher on 21, lower on 1, same suit on the seventh card of that suit; things like that). The fewer numbers of a color you’ve seen, the more likely the next one being that color becomes.
- If you haven’t seen a Fairy by a certain point, it honestly may make sense to just go all-in on Fairy catching. If you guess Fairy every time, it close to zeroes out. If you wait until halfway through the game and guess Fairy every time after that, you have eliminated a ton of options and now you’re close to 3 out of 10 or 11 (at most) cards left in the stack that could be fairies! The expected value of guessing Fairy every time goes up by a lot! You probably still wouldn’t win (unless you’re starting from a good spot), but it’s a good demonstration of how probability works!
- The game ends with the third Fairy, so keep in mind once the second Fairy appears, the game might end at any point. It’s completely possible that the first three cards could be the Fairy cards! Would make for a somewhat boring game, but a fast one. In general, you should just be mindful of the second fairy since it could indicate a rapid end of the game.
- If you’re consistent, you can score most of the points you need with just guessing high or low every time. If you manage to do that, that’s 2 points per correct guess! If you manage to do that 12 or 13 times, you’ve essentially won the game. Granted, if you’re able to do that you might be some kind of probability witch, but you get the general idea.
Pros, Mehs, and Cons
Pros
- The art is extremely pleasant! Sai Beppu does a great job with the art. The color work is great, the icons are adorable, and the whole game looks good. It’s a nice-looking game, which, for a small card game, isn’t necessarily critical, but it’s nice.
- I really like gold accents on cards; they make the cards pop. You want a quick and easy way to class up any cards? Add some gold accents to them. You want a way to make your game box harder to photograph, add some gold accents. Gold accents really accomplish a lot.
- Plays super quickly. It’s a very short game! 20 card flips, max.
- The actual gestures can be a lot of fun! You need to lean into it a bit, but I think it all works.
- High portability games are great. This is the kind of game you can really just break out anywhere, given how small it is. Allplay’s tiny game line is really working out. They’re all quite fun, too!
- The game is so easy to teach that you really can play it just about anywhere. Especially given that players never need to set down their scorecards, you can play it on the plane, in the bar, and anywhere else.
Mehs
- The game really is helped if you have someone getting really into calling the cards. It’s kind of Ready, Set, Bet, in that manner: the more excited your announcer is, the more fun the game is. They just have to figure out how to sell the specific cards as they’re flipped as such.
Cons
- It can be hard to tell what score players have, just because, for instance, my fingers are a bit too big for the card’s spaces at times. It’s the tragedy of slightly-reasonably-sized hands, I guess? My thumb and forefingers are just a bit too big for the spaces. Not the biggest deal, but it does make it hard to track other players’ scores sometimes as well.
Overall: 8.25 / 10
Overall, I think Fairy is a ton of fun! It’s kind of the ideal pre-game night game or bar game or something where you’re looking for a quick and light and easy game for everyone. There’s a little addition, sure, and the deck’s configuration can lead to certain strategies or bets becoming more worthwhile, but it hardly matters. The game is fast! Just, if you’re going to play the game, get into the game: it’s funnest when you have a player playing the auctioneer or the horse racing announcer with their whole chest. You have to add a little spice when you’re playing! If you’re not really into vaguely silly party games, well, this is almost certainly not going to be for you. It’s almost entirely some light speed gambling with some silly hand gestures, and I’m impressed that such a small game is so compelling. It’s got some great art, a quick and satisfying gameplay loop, and it’s just fun. I appreciate that. If you’re looking for a great bar game, a solid warm-up title, or you just want to make a bunch of silly hand gestures, Fairy is going to be right up your alley!
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