Slay Ride: VAMPIRE QUEEN review
Instead of our usual Easter feast in Acadiana, surrounded by family enjoying deviled eggs and ponce bourrée, we scooted up to Broken Bow, Oklahoma, home of the rippling Mountain Fork River for a long weekend of relaxation. Of course, anytime Cajuns get together in a cabin, there are going to be card games played. In the dim lighting of the manufactured-home-turned-log-cabin, I spied a wide wooden table perfect to toss some cards around.
I brought a box with a few different card games stuffed inside, but the one to which the group gravitated was the new version of Vampire Queen from 25th Century Games. Designed by one of my favorite designers, Wolfgang Kramer, Vampire Queen is a ladder climbing, card shedding game that plays in about a half an hour. If you’ve played Scout or The Great Dalmuti, then this rule set will be a breeze.
Players have a hand of cards each with vampires and numbers assigned on them. The lead player drops a vampire or two (or even three or four), and then the rest of the players must best that play using the same number of cards but with a higher value vampire set. If I started with two cards with three power vampires, the next player would have to play higher (like two fours or two fives, for instance). Whoever plays the highest set in the round starts the next round, after discarding all of the cards that were played. Whenever one player runs out of cards, the points on the remaining cards are tallied and assigned to each player. After five rounds, the player with the lowest score is the best vampire. Or should it be, best vampire?
Sounds pretty familiar. But there are two twists: the deck contains Vampire Queens that are a devastating 14 points if you are stuck with the card at the end of the round, a fatal error on many levels. But they also copy any other card played — turning two Tens into three nearly unbeatable Tens for instance — OR if played alone, counts as the highest card in the deck. Knowing when to play the Queens, and when to hold them for a better play, makes for some cool decisions.
And there are two Vampire Slayers that can only be played as the lead card of the round (with a value of zero when played). Once played, everyone else MUST play that round — no passing allowed. The winning player has to KEEP all the cards that are played in that round, including the Slayers (which are worth either 15 or 20 in your hand, a really big blow to your score). Since the object is to get rid of your cards faster than everyone else (or to have very low value cards in your hand when someone else does), the Slayers are the chaotic element that keeps everyone on their toes.
What a perfect little card game to play at the end of each day in Broken Bow. There are so many strenuous activities to do in the area — hiking the nine mile Skyline Trail along the river or playing Tapple at the Beavers Bend Brewery can really tax the group — that it was nice to relax with a pint of Front Porch Peach laughing with the family as someone timely plays the Slayer to wreck another player’s plans. I admit that when we read the rules, it felt like we were playing yet another twist on a card shedding game, but the introduction of the Vampire Slayers really amped up the interaction.
Vampire Queen is a keeper for me. I like that 25th Century Games is bringing some of these card games that I missed out on in the last ten to twenty years, games that I can easily introduce to family, or new gamers, or even the game group as the last palette cleanser of the night. The artwork is fun, too, lots of different vampire poses.
So is Broken Bow. It’s a keeper of a destination and only a few hours down the road from us. I’ll be returning in August for a pre-wedding celebration for my son, and I am definitely bringing card games like Vampire Queen with me.
In fact, I am going to use this blog as a marker for history. A new casino opened up in Hochatown (the little village next to Broken Bow where we stayed), and there was a lot of construction going on around that area. I want to come back to this blog in a few years if I make it out to Broken Bow then and compare. Will the area still be a two-lane road with tons of local restaurants, shops and breweries? Or will it become the next Pigeon Forge, filled to the brim with pancake houses and the same tired restaurants and t-shirt shops that you can find in any strip mall across America?
One thing’s for sure. I’ll find a nice quiet cabin in the woods, invite my family to join us, and have a big box of card games to play. But, next time, I’ll pack an ice chest with some smoked meat and two dozen dyed eggs, too. I enjoyed the card games, but I missed pacqueing eggs!
Until next time, laissez les bon temps rouler!
— BJ from Board Game Gumbo
** A complimentary copy of Vampire Queen was provided by the publisher. **