I received this from KSensei who visited the West Coast a week or so ago. How he picked Escalation! out of the dozens of games we were interested in, I'll never know, but I'm happy to report on this cute little Knizia filler.

The rules on Escalation! fit on one of the cards in Escalation! (front and back), and this put me off a little at first. I wondered how original it could be with so few rules (I hadn't seen so few rules since "Pennywise" from James Ernest, "the Cheapass game that fits on a business card"). As is the case in so many games, the playing brought out much more than the instructions would indicate.

Game Description

Escalation! is a cross between Poison and The Great Dalmuti. Each player starts with six cards. You have a running stack of cards in the middle which you try to avoid taking. Eventually, someone must take the middle cards (basically a negative trick), and then a new stack is formed. The player with the fewest cards wins.

The stack is built based on addition. A card or group of cards is placed in the center of the playing area. Any card is fine to play first. If a group is played, each card in the group must be the same number (there are "wild" 1-7 cards which can count for any of those numbers to form a group). Each subsequent play must add up to more than the one before. The player who can't play cards adding up to a higher total or is unwilling to play (in some cases, a good strategy) must take the middle cards.

There is one exception, of course. There is a "Neighborhood Watch" sign which can be played on any stack to equal the previous total. This card is basically a "pass" card. There are two in the deck, so watch out!

Once you play, you onto the middle stack, you replenish your hand back up to six cards. Any taken "trick" cards are left on the table in front of you and never constitute part of your running hand. When the draw deck runs out, the first person to empty his or her hand triggers the scoring. Ignore the unfinished stack, and add your remaining hand to your stack of taken cards. The player with the fewest cards wins.

For example, the following would all be legal plays:

Player A: Plays a 3 and says THREE
Player B: Plays a 5 and says FIVE
Player C: Plays two 4s and says EIGHT
Player A: Plays a 10 and says TEN
Player B: Plays a Neiborhood Watch and says TEN
Player C: Plays two 6s and says TWELVE
Player A: Plays two 7s and a 1-7 and says TWENTY-ONE
Player B: Says CRAP and takes the middle stack; then plays a 1 and says ONE.

My Opinion

In short, Escalation! is fun. For me, it answers what didn't work about Poison. Poison, another addition-based game, is interesting and fun, but no one in our gaming group wanted to replay it. We almost never finished a game. You're supposed to play as many rounds as there are players; if we got halfway before moving to a different game, that was pretty good.

In Escalation!, you are more or less guaranteed to have a pretty good five to ten minutes. It boasts nothing more beyond its hilarious artwork and simple number crunching.

One of the reasons it works so well is the time to completion/satisfaction ratio. Most game players know intuitively when a game has passed their threshold, when its close to the line, and when its well within the boundaries of acceptability. If for example Tic-Tac-Toe took six hours to play, it would have been lost to the sands of time long ago, and we'd never know about it. Concerning Escalation!, I think it plays just the right amount of time for its complexity.

There is a little strategy concerning when to hold your cards and take the middle and when to play them. Holding anything that adds up to fifteen or more is a good thing to save, the neighborhood watch is actually something to look out for, and if you're ahead of your opponent(s), it might not be a bad idea to just take the center cards.

If you're into quick games or are looking for a new filler, Escalation! wouldn't be a bad one to add to the list.