Here’s my four word review of Filou: Mostly harmless, mostly random.

What! You want more? Slavedrivers!

Okay, this is a bidding filler from Friedemann Friese, the Man in Green, which debuted at Essen. The subtitle of this game translates to "The Cat in the Sack", which is evidently the German version of the English phrase "a pig in a poke". (The parallels between sayings in different languages and cultures are most interesting. Last year, we found out that the German equivalent of "a bull in a china shop" was "an elephant in a porcelain shop". One wonders how these differences came about, particularly given the extreme scarcity of elephants in Germany.) Either way, the meaning is the same: making purchases sight unseen, which goes a long way toward describing the game.

Each player is given his own deck of cards showing various animals. Five of them are cute kitties with positive values (3, 5, 8, 11, and 15), two of them are mangy cats with negative values (-5 and -8), one is a zero-point bunny (I have to wonder if the use of a rabbit is some kind of inside joke), and two are hungry dogs (a big one and a small one). There are also five sack cards and a number of these equal to the number of players is laid out in a line in the center of the table. Each sack card shows the number of chips that are placed on it prior to every round (in the five-player game, it’s 0, 2, 3, 4, and 6 chips). Everyone starts out with some chips (15 in the five-player game).

For each round of the game, the players secretly and simultaneously select one of their cards and place them face down beneath the sack cards. The first player places her card under the first sack card, the player to her left places under the second card, and so on. The first player then begins the round by revealing her card and bidding some of her chips.

In clockwise order, each player must either raise the bid by at least one chip or must drop out. When a player drops out, he reveals the next card in line and takes the chips from the sack card above it. This continues until all but one player has dropped out. This last player pays her bid to the bank, collects all the cards, and places them in her scoring pile, where they will be revealed at the end of the game. She will then be the first player of the next round.

If the cards in the sack are all cats and rabbits, their worth to the winning player is the total of their values. The mutts have mayhem on their mind, however, so the appearance of one or more dogs means that something’s gonna die. If there are two or more canines, the mindless beasts attack each other, so they are discarded and the point cards are placed in the scoring pile. However, if there’s only one pooch, it will take out one of the other cards. Big dogs attack the animal with the highest value (which is usually positive) and small dogs attack the animal with the lowest value (which is usually negative). Just in case the game needed more chaos, if there is more than one animal with the highest or lowest value, all of them are discarded. Only the remaining cats and bunnies go into the scoring pile.

This continues until either there aren’t enough chips in the bank to place on the sack cards at the start of a round or until the players have played all their cards. The players then reveal their scoring piles, total up the values, and add their number of remaining chips to it. Highest score wins.

The essence of Filou is hidden information and as you can see from the description, there’s quite a bit of it. The only person who will ever know exactly what’s going on is the last player each round and he will only be able to take advantage of it if he’s one of the last two players left bidding. Thus, players are trying to deal with the limited information they have and there is scope for considerable bluffing.

At least, that’s what’s being said about the game, but I have my doubts. Based on what I’ve seen first hand, there just doesn’t seem to be too much opportunity to effectively bluff. For one thing, the bidding rounds are usually short. Even if everyone just increases the bidding by one each turn, the last players may only get one bid in a round (since high bids are usually very dangerous). It’s hard to establish a bluff with just one bid. And the better way to play is to start the bidding at a higher level, say 3 or 4, in the hopes that some players will drop out early, leaving you a better award should you decide to fold.

Another reason why bluffing can be dangerous is the likelihood of cascading drops. A typical pattern for a bidding round is for the bids to increase steadily and then, following either the first or second player folding, to have each successive player drop out. There are other games that feature this kind of behavior, including For Sale and Age of Steam. All of these games share a system where players get better rewards as more opponents drop out of the bidding and where the last player (or last two players) have to pay more of their bids than the ones that dropped out earlier. Thus, a single player dropping out can trigger a wave of opportunism, as each player is happy to accept the suddenly greater reward (and fears being the one left holding the bag at the end). It can be tricky enough knowing what the level of pain is that will set off this cascade, but it can make a bluff extremely dangerous. I’m not saying it can’t happen, just that you have to be lucky to pull it off and you frequently don’t have enough information to truly call the bid a bluff anyway.

Finally, bluffing is only significant if it’s important to be the last player left standing (as in Poker), but that’s not always the case in Filou. Getting chips with no chance of loss isn’t always a bad deal. The penultimate player in the bidding walks away with a risk-free gain of 6 chips and that’s a wonderful result in this game. It’s often better than what the final player gets, even if the value of the sack is more than six higher than her bid. For one thing, the winner of the bid is the first player for the next round and that’s the player who has the least knowledge about the hand. More significantly, you have to pay your bid in chips, which lowers your supply and makes it harder to compete in the auctions to come. Often, your lowered supply means an early fold, giving you less chips as a result. All of this makes bluffing difficult to pull off and less valuable when you do.

So what we have left is a game with a little bit of judgment whose appeal is mostly of the experience variety. The enjoyment comes mostly at laughing at the player who was stuck with multiple negative cards, or groaning as another player scoops up a couple of 15s. The antics of the dogs can also lead to cheers or cries of dismay, particularly since they can lead to such unexpected results. This can be fun in a game that plays quickly and Filou doesn’t outstay its welcome. But don’t expect too much control over your fate.

Filou is one of those games that I’ll never suggest, but which I don’t mind playing if others are intent on bringing it to the table. I should note that the rest of my group is more enthusiastic about it and several of them have already purchased copies. However, even the game’s greatest supporters in our circle admit that there isn’t a shred of strategy to it. It’s just fun to play.

As has been the case with 2F Spiele’s recent games, the components are quite nice. The cards and chips are all of professional quality. The illustrations are again by Maura Kalusky, whose unique style contributed so much to the hilarity of Funny Friends. His illustrations on the cards add much to the humor of the game. Plus, the box cover, featuring an adorable and a grumpy kitty in the sack, is great.

I should note that my tepid reaction to Filou seems to be pretty much a minority opinion. Almost everyone I’ve spoken to who’s played the game, either when Friedemann was showing the prototype at the Gathering or since its release, has enjoyed it. And the ratings at the Geek are solid, if not Agricola-esque. So it has to be considered a success. Actually, I hope he sells a million of them. Then maybe he’ll have enough money to release the game of his I wanted to see at Essen, Fortuna. After playing that excellent game, purchasing it would represent anything but a cat in the sack!