Xylotar & Unhinged expansion review — Playing the right notes can get tricky!

In the past few years, it seems we have been inundated with a plethora of different trick taking games, each trying to bring something unique to the table. From cooperative and solo outings, to thematic IP skins and various twists on what is that trump suit and how you can play it. Xylotar hits the scene with the hidden information mechanic that truly sings when it hits the table. We were able to take a look at the base game and the brand new expansion!

Xylotar

Xylotar comes from designer Christopher Wray and publisher Bezier Games and plays from 2-5 people. Xylotar is themed around an 80’s music loving polar bear musician, Bobby McCool, who enlists a local inventor to create a xylophone/synthesizer hybrid instrument suited for polar bear paws. When the inventor goes missing, and the polar bear is targeted as the culprit, Bobby McCool goes into hiding. The plans for the mysterious instrument have resurfaced and it's up to the players to decipher the schematics and put it all together. A trick taking game at its heart, Xylotar enters with the the twist of only knowing the suit and a general idea of the actual value when laying the card. Over the course of three rounds players will play “notes” from their displayed instrument to try and win tricks.

Each round the deck of skinny, half-sized cards is dealt out to the players around the table. One of the sides of the card denotes the suit of the card and the other side has a value. Each player will then sort the deck into numerical order, lowest to highest, ordering any duplicate values in whatever order they’d like. The deck is then passed face down to the left with the new owner placing the cards out in front of them with their highest card to left and the lowest card to the right. This tableau gives the player a small idea of the values underneath each card as each suit has a different number of cards ranging from zero all the way up to ten.

As in most trick takers, the lead player will pick a suit and a card and flip it face up into the trick. The next player must follow the suit if they have a matching color, otherwise they can play anything they’d like with red being the trump suit, beating any other cards other than a higher red. Each trick a player wins earns them a point at the end of the round. Immediately after playing a card, a player can make a bid to try and earn some bonus points. When bidding, a player flips over any two adjacent cards,choosing one as their bid and returning the other card to the tableau. If a player can win the same amount of tricks as their bid card, they’ll get a bonus five points for the round.

At the end of the round, players will tally their points. The next round progresses in the same way as the previous round with the player scoring the least amount of points from the previous rounds leading the first trick. After three rounds, the player with the most points wins!

There are few alterations made for two and three player games. In a three player game, the red and orange suits are eliminated from the game and the yellow suit becomes the trump. In a two player game, four hands are dealt out with a non-player hand in between each of the players. These non-player hands will flip their middle card over for their bid and will always play their lowest card of the current suit when it comes to their turn. If the one non player hand hits their bid, then the human players can’t get their bonus and if both non players hit their bids, then the players score no points that round!

Overall Thoughts

Xylotar is a great little trick-taking game with some fun elements that separates it from others in the genre. The production is great and has accessibility designs woven throughout. Each suit is denoted not only by its specific color, but also by a different sized note bar on the back and a specific musical notation on the front allowing vision impaired players a better experience. The cards are the same height as a typical deck of cards but split in half width wise, which is necessary when spreading out up to 15 cards across the table in front of you. That being said, this game does require a bit of space to play correctly. Even 15 half sized cards will take up a lot of table room, especially at the max of five players. 

The gameplay of Xylotar is unique in the genre and adds a fun spin to a classic mechanism. Players have to use the information from their instrument tableau to determine the values of their cards. As they play cards to their tricks, they can start to deduce what values, and the values of other players, they still have available. This is crucial when making bids and trying to steal or let tricks pass by. There is also some strategy to dump cards of a specific color to allow you to play trump suits or shed unwanted cards.

In my many plays of Xylotar, I’ve been able to introduce the game to a lot of different players and most, if not all, have walked away with a positive experience. Xylotar is easy to teach, quick to play, and has enough character to be one of my top trick takers in my collection.

Xylotar: Unhinged Expansion

In Xylotar:Unhinged, the first expansion for Xylotar, the creator of the original Xylotar has come out of hiding and the polar bear prodigy Bobby McCool has left his arctic home and is going on tour. Along with his music, McCool brings two new modules for the base Xylotar experience.

Bonus Beats

In Bonus Beats, each player is dealt two power up cards that allow the player to activate special abilities once per round. Players keep their cards faced down and may use one card per round. These special abilities include viewing cars in your row, modifying bids, and other various abilities. Cards have specific times they can be played during each round and any unused cards at the end of the game will give a player bonus points during final scoring.

This module was a lot of fun and added some different ways to change your situation if dealt a hand of lower cards. I especially liked the cards you could over/under shoot your bid by one and the sneaky 11 card you could throw in to beat the red 10 trump card. This is definitely a module to add with experienced players who know the flow of the game.

Off-Key

In this expansion, a new card from each suit is dealt into the deck. These cards are valued ½ number down from the highest value in the deck. For example, the red deck will gain a 9 ½ card and purple a 3 ½ card. After shuffling, one card from each suit is removed from the deck and set aside for the round. The ½ cards give players an edge when trying to win tricks, but each ½ card in a won trick will negate an earned point at the end of a round for being sour notes.

This module helped even some scores out from a few runaway players in games. In one game, my mother kept hitting her five bid, getting her a whopping 10 points a round, but with the off-key cards, we were able to shave some points off the total each round. This is a module I would add with more novice players and it may just live in my deck from now on as most players can pick up on the mechanisms.

Overall Thoughts

These were two great modules that made a fun game even better. When adding expansions to a game, I’m always looking for added value. The Off-Key modules deepens the strategy a bit and the Bonus Beats adds some variation I often need in these smaller games so they don’t get stale. This is a great expansion to pick up for fans of the base game!