Game: Fiasko

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Ceryon — 2008-01-26T17:24:31+00:00

Box front

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Ceryon — 2006-12-26T14:30:03+00:00

One other german cover

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pakeleive — 2006-10-26T19:00:37+00:00

Some cards of goods

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pakeleive — 2006-10-26T18:49:43+00:00

Aetsch cards

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pakeleive — 2006-10-26T18:48:29+00:00

Fiasko cards

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pakeleive — 2006-10-26T18:44:57+00:00

Back cover

Thread: Two-player session

jm100 — 2006-07-30T16:34:52+00:00

The wife and I tried Fiasko for the first time last night. It's an interesting press-your-luck filler with some clever twists. Choosing when to score is a multi-factor analysis: you're estimating whether to press your luck a little further to maximize scoring for a given good, but you're also analyzing whether you can win the bonus points for that good and when you should shoot forward and try to end the game. In addition, you have to stay tight with your opponent so that he or she doesn't end the game before you've had a chance to score for as many goods as possible.

In our game, I scored my first good -- sardines -- too fast, allowing my wife to clobber me with an unbeatable combination of slightly outdoing me on the sardines, and whallopping me on the good she was already accumulating (milk). In an attempt to gain back the momentum, I pressed my luck a little too far twice, losing two nice hands. From there, my wife easily expanded her lead, taking 3 of the 5 goods, and tying the fourth good. She beat me by about 200 points.

The game plays fast, and involves some light decision-making mixed with a good dollop of luck. We both thought it played very well as a two-player game; you can track and respond to your opponent quite well. I'm interested to see how well the game works with more players.

Thread: Re: Session Report

ssmooth — 2006-03-17T08:55:02+00:00

Thanks, Ray. We tried the game with the correct rule, either scoring your hand or drawing exactly one card on your turn, and it made a lot more sense!

Thread: Re:Session Report

EYE of NiGHT — 2005-03-27T19:46:01+00:00

RayMulford (#28283),
We have now played Fiasko with Wolfgang, who translated the rules from the German properly. We missed the Catastrophe not hurting yourself, but everything else was much better. The translation I had originally was terrible. The new one on the geek above is much much better. Totally changes the game, my rating goes from a 4 to a 7 and Reinhard is right back in my favours.

If you're looking for a game to re-issue, this is it.

Thread: Session Report

ssmooth — 2004-01-11T04:12:43+00:00

Ward had another new purchase and asked if Jack and I would mind trying Fiasko. Not as long as it doesn't live up to the name, said I. This turned out to be a little card game from Reinhard Staupe, who is probably best known for Basari and Edel Stein & Reich. Published in 1997, it is repeatedly described on the 'geek as a card game with a Can't Stop element to it... but on close and careful reading of the rules translation, we couldn't find anyplace where it said a player had the option to stop! We decided to put a stop rule in anyhow, since otherwise the game didn't hang together... because, if you had to keep drawing until you either hit a Fiasko card (forfeiting your entire hand of cards) or decided to score, how could anybody ever have any cards in his hand during another player's turn, which if they didn't, the card you could draw which made all the other players lose their cards wouldn't make any sense. After that the question was, do you just draw one card on your turn or score if you'd rather, or do you keep drawing as many cards as you want? Still in keeping with the Can't Stop model, we opted for the latter.

It was a weird little game but it actually did work. There are five different suits and you're allowed to score only once in each suit. The game ends as soon as one player has scored all five, so there's a race to get it done first, but of course if one player has humongous scores in three suits he could beat a player who has merely ordinary scores in all five. You score for the number of pips in the scoring suit multiplied by the total number of cards in your hand, and the example in the rulebook shows an 88-point hand being scored. We quickly found ourselves in more difficult arithmetical realms, scoring hands of 102, 156, 168, and eventually as much as 228 and 231. Jack got the early breaks, though, and with four suits scored while Ward and I had only three was able to close the game for the win, taking a paltry 24 in his final suit for a 740 to 699 edge over Ward while I brought up the rear at 536.

I actually liked Fiasko enough that I'll look for a copy of my own. The play of the game was interesting enough -- obviously very driven by luck, but with some target numbers you can shoot for once other players have put up scores in a suit, plus a perfectly viable "outside lane" strategy of going for five fast scores -- and the cartoony artwork on the cards, I thought, was wonderfully matched to the gameplay, which was well seasoned with drama and slapstick as the Fiasko cards inexorably claimed victim after victim.

Thread: Session Report

EYE of NiGHT — 2003-08-18T13:59:29+00:00

I decided to finish on a card game and scrabbled around to choose something. You'd think I'd do some preparation, wouldn't you?

I'd just got Coloretto and unwrapped that. It has English on the box, so I hadn't bothered printing the english rules off the Geek. Whaaat? No english rules in the box ??!

So I ran upstairs and snagged Fiasko. I've got a box of these FX schmid card games and wanted to try this one. What a disappointment. Totally relying on luck of the draw, one player gets lucky and doesn't draw any Fiasko cards and romps away. Don't bother.

Ian was the sucker first game, totally busting out and scored nowt, Richard built a huge hand and scored hundreds.

So we played again and this time Richard busted out and Ian scored tonnes. In my opinion, a waste of time.

The scoring rules don't make sense either. You're obliged to score if you have 13 pts in one product, you score each product once only. Fine. So what happens if you draw 13 pts in a product you've already scored? Do you declare the cards and discard them?
It's a Reinhard Staupe game, I really like his games but this is rubbish.

So we finished on a bit of a downer and Ian and Richard left. Heyho.

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EYE of NiGHT — 2003-08-01T11:41:36+00:00

Fiasko - box cover