Game: Martinis & Men

Thread: Dating, dice and a shocking good time

Gnomekin — 2008-07-21T23:49:04+00:00

The only reason I own Martinis and Men is because Tanga sold it cheap with High School Drama and Tom Vassel had said decent things about High School Drama.

However, when I read through the rules, Martinis and Men didn’t strike me as a bad game. In fact, although it was clearly very luck dependent and light, it looked like the rules slotted together rather well.

Martinis and Men is a game about pairing up people who have at least one thing in common and marrying them off. The game ends when one player gets three couples married and whoever has the most married couples at that point wins the game. It is also, in essence, a dice-driven game of Go Fish.

The game comes in a small but sturdy box that’s actually about the size it needs to be. Inside, you get a deck of cards made up of men and women in blue and red, along with two matching dice. The dice are six-siders but instead of having pips, they have three hearts, two martini glasses and one lightning bolt.

Each card shows an artsy picture of either a man or a woman, along with two traits. Really, the traits are an adjective and a noun, examples being things like a shy music-lover or a cultured yuppie. Each trait also has an associated icon and those icons are on the upper left corner. That is a really nice touch. That means you can fan the cards and still see all the relevant information and you can easily tell what traits a card has no matter its orientation when it’s on the table.

There are also special cards. You play a special card after the dice are rolled to force one of the dice to get rerolled. That’ll make more sense in a minute.

Each player gets six cards. On your turn, you choose a card from your hand and place it down. Everyone else then has to place a card down that is the opposite sex that matches one of the traits on the card. If no one has a matching card, the card is placed in the middle of the table, in the dating pool, which means their up for grabs later on in the game. You can also match a card in the dating pool or even two cards from the dating pool but you can never match two cards from your own hand.

After you have a potential pair, you then roll the dice. If both dice come up hearts, congratulations, they got married. You place them face down in front of you as part of your scoring pile. If the dice are any kind of combination of hearts and martini glasses, including two martini glasses, they are interested. You place them in front of you, face up, as a potential couple. However, if either die is a lightning bolt, things didn’t go well. The card that got the lightning bolt (Remember, they are color coded), gets discarded. If only one got the lighting bolt, the other card goes into the dating pool.

However, if you successfully married off a couple, that sets off wedding fever. Every player gets to roll again for each interested couple they have sitting in front of them. Thus, it’s possibly to set off a wedding fever that could lose you the game. Or, if you want a more positive spin, you can win when it’s not even your turn.

As I mentioned before, one player getting three married couples triggers the endgame. Well, okay, the rules themselves ACTUALLY say that the first player who gets three married couples automatically wins. I just like to to play out the wedding fever because I think its more fun.

Okay, that’s how the game is played. How good is as a game? That’s the real question.

First off, let’s get one thing straight. This is not a gamer’s game. This is not a game you pull out at game night and say “Let’s play this instead of Power Grid.” This is a light and fluffy game where luck of the draw and the dice are going to have a lot to do with whether or not you win the game, particularly the dice.

That said, for the right audience and the right situation, this is a surprisingly good game. It is easy to teach, particularly since everyone knows how to play Go Fish and that’s one of the building blocks of the game. However, the dice make it interesting and keep the game from just being about card counting. The ending conditions also mean that a game will go by a lot faster than Go Fish.

The theme of the game also makes it a good game for parties (it plays up to eight) and for dates and the like. There is no denying that, as light as the rules are, they are tightly tied to the theme, which is pretty cool for rules this light. The artwork is a fun and a touch risqué but nothing terrible. It’s not PG-13 and I’d show it to my parents without a second thought but it might not be suitable for everyone.

And, while luck is the biggest deciding factor, there are some decisions to be made. Do you try to reduce your opponent’s hand? Do you try to reduce the dating pool? Do you play a card you’re pretty sure no one can match and hope that it stays in the dating pool long so you can try to match it with another card from your hand?

If you’re looking for a light and slightly mature party game that doesn’t have anything to do with trivia or drawing, Martinis and Men is a surprisingly solid game. I’m glad that I picked it up. However, if luck and fluff aren’t your style, you can probably give it a pass without too many regrets.

Me, I brought it along on a date and the game got played five times, which certainly isn’t bad. We had enough fun with it that I know we'll play it again. That's probably the best thing I can say about Martinis and Men. We had fun and will play it again.

Thread: Re: A Fast and Fun Light Party Game

The Schaef — 2007-09-19T15:07:48+00:00

Which podcast?

Thread: Re: A Fast and Fun Light Party Game

daniinnc — 2007-09-19T13:00:40+00:00

Thank you for this overview of the game. I heard a brief interview with the designer on a podcast that intrigued me. Now I know that I definitely want the game. It would be perfect for my group; we like to make a whole meal out of fillers

Thread: Re: A Fast and Fun Light Party Game

hughthehand — 2007-07-09T15:35:33+00:00

It also didn't hurt that the woman trying to lure the guys in to play, had a very nice pair of....eyes. Yes, the one in the red shirt.

Thread: A Fast and Fun Light Party Game

The Schaef — 2007-07-09T03:56:13+00:00

I had the pleasure of sampling Martinis and Men at Origins 2007, and I have to say I was quite pleased with this title. It's quick to learn, fun to play, durable, portable, and a nice "gateway" game for people who fall outside the traditional "gamer" stereotype (women in particular seem to be a target audience for the game).

The gameplay mechanic is quite simple, and was described to me by the lead designer as essentially, "Go Fish, with dice". And it really is just that simple. The deck of 80 cards is evenly split between male and female, each with two descriptors printed on the card. Each player starts with a hand of six, draws a card at the beginning of each turn, and presents a card from their hand, in search of a match. Any other player with a card of the opposite sex, who matches at least one of the two descriptors, must lay down that card in response. For example, if player A presents a male "Shy/Geek", and player B has a female "Shy/Club-Fiend", she lays that down since "Shy" is a match. Player C has a female "Laid-Back/Geek", so she lays that down because "Geek" is a match. Player D has no females with either of those qualities so she lays down nothing. Player A would then select a female card as a potential match for that male card from the ones presented, if any. If no players have a match, your card goes into the "Dating Pool" instead. On subsequent turns, if no players can match your card, you may match it from the cards tossed into the Dating Pool. In this way, you could lay down a card that already matches one in the Dating Pool, knowing that if no player has a match, you're guaranteed one from the Pool. You can even match two cards directly from the Pool in lieu of playing out of your hand.

Okay, so you've laid down a card and someone has laid down a match for your card. Now you roll the dice, one for the male, one for the female. The dice have three values etched on them: a lightning bolt means you're shot down, a martini glass means you're dating, and a heart means true love. If the two dice have different values, the "lowest" value wins, so if there is only one lightning bolt, the couple breaks up, while two hearts are required to marry them off. A lightning bolt sends the card to the discard pile, and any "surviving" card goes to the Dating Pool. Dating couples go to your side of the table, face-up. Married couples go to your side of the table, face-down, and count as one point. Three married couples wins the game.

The last wrinkle in gameplay is that when any couple gets married, all the dating couples on the table get "Wedding Fever". The players re-roll for each dating couple to determine their new status: break-up, still dating, married. The same rules apply as when you first rolled their matchup. In this way, based on the rolls, there is the potential for a single wedding to cause a lot of points to suddenly appear on the board.

The game is surprisingly fun to play, and mostly I say that as a manly man who can't be seen fiddling with cutesy art on cards, or telling my other manly man friends that I'm playing a card game about dating couples. But many a gaming snob would scoff at this game and walk by, only to return a half-hour later, sit down "just to see what it's about" and end up getting sucked into a rousing game. In its own amusing way, I watched it turn into a sort of geek matchmaker tool unto itself, with gaming girls sitting at the table beseeching nearby guys to sit and play with them. Even my wife, the consummate roll-her-eyes-at-me non-gamer, learned this game in a flash and had a great time playing (even better when she won).

The game components are just right for this game: the cards are thick and sturdy, but not cumbersome. You can shuffle them with relative ease, and yet not worry about spilling a bit of your drink on them. With no complex bits or extra assembly, the cards and dice fit into a small, neat box that can be easily carried, stored, or even tucked into a woman's purse.

It's easy to get drawn into comparisons about bits or mechanics or theme (yet make no mistake, the theme is strongly incorporated here), but lest we forget, a game first and foremost should be fun to play, and an experienced to be shared with others. As a light party game, Martinis and Men fits the bill nicely.

(7.5/10)

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tablestar_rob — 2007-05-07T23:22:13+00:00

Lots of cards

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tablestar_rob — 2007-05-07T23:21:43+00:00

The Game

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tablestar_rob — 2007-05-07T23:21:12+00:00

The cards and dice

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tablestar_rob — 2007-05-07T23:20:22+00:00

Girls at a party

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jamesdavis — 2007-04-09T10:49:56+00:00

Box