Designed by: Anja Wrede,Christoph Cantzler
Winston (previously published as the snake-based Konig Kobra) is a game of making dogs. A deck of cards contains multiple types of dog – or to be more accurate, multiple colours of dog – and you’re trying to collect the most and longest of them. The majority of the cards are made of body cards, but there are also three head cards of each colour.
Each player is dealt 5 cards and, on your turn, you play one or two cards onto the table. Collectively the players build the dogs together by overlapping body cards to make the dogs in question longer and longer, like sausage dogs in a hall of mirrors. But as soon as any dog has at least two body cards and a head, the player who completed it keeps the cards as points. Head cards don’t score anything, but each body card in a dog scores more points than the previous one: thus, a two-card dog only scores you 3 points (1+2) but a dog with five body cards scores a whopping 15 points! (1+2+3+4+5)
What this means is there’s a bit of luck-pushing going on, as having a dog head means you can complete a dog – but the longer you leave it the more points it may score you: players are not permitted to start a new dog if one of the same colour is already out on the table. On the other hand, the longer you leave the dog to ‘grow’ the more likely it is that another player may play a head card before you do…
After your turn you draw back up to five cards in your hand. When the cards run out the game is over, and points are added to determine the winner.
No deliberate targeting here, but you can certainly find a dog you had one eye on snapped up before your eyes...
Minimal to non-existant.
None to speak of, outside of the simple decision of take now, or risk taking later? And oftentimes your hand of cards doesn't even give you that option either.
It's not a game with much variety at all, but then it's very brief, portable and sweet-looking.
2-5
Players
6+
Years
5-15
Mins
Sam says
The art of Winston is nice and the rules are simple (once you get them; they're not brilliantly written) but to me it feels both too luck-dependent and repetitive. I love luck-based games where they are kind of tantalising (the aptly-named Can't Stop is a brilliantly simple example, or the luck-pushing of pulling coals from the devil's cauldron) and I don't mind repetition if there is something else going on, for instance the tactical deployment of racing cards in Flamme Rouge or Downforce. But with Winston I felt the interesting part of the game - the should I/shouldn't I of completing a dog - surfaced too rarely to make the experience stand out in a market with an abundance of options. Oftentimes your decisions are made for you by the cards, so maybe one for the youngsters only... but even then, there are better options out there.