Keith Baker has spent years making people gleefully miserable with Gloom and building worlds for Dungeons & Dragons, and now he has a banjo. The Banjo King, the newest game from his studio Twogether Studios, is one 40-card deck that quietly contains two different card games, both dressed in a warm Appalachian folk theme.
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See how it worksBaker co-founded Twogether Studios with Jenn Ellis back in 2016, and their calling card is Illimat, the moody set-collection game they made with indie folk band The Decemberists. The Banjo King shares that homespun, hand-crafted feel, but the design roots reach to Italy. The deck is modelled on traditional Italian regional cards, with suits of Banjos, Baskets, Pickaxes and Hatchets, and the two games inside are riffs on Italian classics. Moonshine is a card-collecting game in the mould of Scopa, where you sweep cards off the table to build your haul. Blessed is a trick-taking game inspired by Briscola, all about reading the table and timing your winners.
Both play with two or four players, take around twenty minutes, and suit ages 10 and up, so this is a proper family and pub game rather than a heavy strategy night. Getting two learnable, repeatable card games out of a single small deck is a neat trick, and it makes for an easy thing to keep in a bag.
Got a regular group? Create a private community, poll for the best date, vote on games, and let your friends RSVP in one place.
Set up your group for freeThe base game is up for preorder at 12.95 dollars, with shipping set to begin on 3 August. If you like a compact card game you can teach in a couple of minutes and pull out anywhere, round up your group and give it a spin.
Sources: Twogether Studios | Bleeding Cool | Tabletop Gaming
