Pecking Order is a pure bluffing+memory game for two players that plays one round in about 5 minutes. As a potential couples game, it warrants comparisons to Lost Cities. My verdict is Pecking Order is not as good as Lost Cities but may

There is no setup time, other than hand shuffling a deck of 13 cards.

The game can be explained in two minutes. Each player has an identical deck of birds numbered 1-12 and a jaguar. You randomly draw a card from your pile, and place it on a space (perch) ranked by score, 1-10. There are two 8 scores, and controlling both "8s" is worth 19 points. The 1 space is also a tie breaker space, which can be useful to control early on, and the 3 space is a vision perch, which allows you to look at an opponent's card. The game mechanic is a bit like Stratego except the attacker does not show their piece, only the defender shows, and the attacker must honestly say whether they win or lose. The loser is discarded (without showing the card if it's the attacker) and the winner stays. The jaguar acts like a "bomb," it will remove any bird from its perch and remove an attacker that attacks it.

After all 13 cards are played, the points are totalled up.

Theme

The theme of birds fighting for the best perch, is entirely pasted on; there's no real reason for the game to involve birds. It could just as well have been Greek gods, army officers, or primates (come to think of it, a competition between different primates might be a better theme). It could be played with an ordinary deck of cards, but it would be considerably less attractive. Sadly in the American version the cards for both players are exactly the same. A little variance of color and portraits might have added a little chrome. I also think I prefer the humorous German cards, though the birds' picture appear to have much less relationship to their strength.


These birds are not all real birds, unfortunately--using only real species might have also improved the game

The game box and board are oversized, while the cards are undersized. For such a simple game, it's not very portable. Component wise I would give an edge to Lost Cities.


The board and the box are pretty big

Gameplay

With only 13 cards to play and 11 spaces, the game will play very quickly. Despite its simplicity it has a few things going for it. Like Lost Cities, it's a good filler game or a light game for a quick play.
However, it is superior (depending on your perspective) to Lost Cities in that more skill and less luck are involved. Once you learn the strategy in Lost Cities, you learn you basically should start an expedition if you have a 10 card in your hand and not to ever give the card up. If you get far fewer 9 or 10 cards in the game than your opponent you will most likely not win.

In Pecking Order there is considerably less luck. You have the same cards as your opponent. The order they come up in is different and could have some effect on the game, but playing/guessing effectively can usually overcome it.

There are three elements of skill. Intuiting your opponent's strategy, remembering the birds in and out of play, and outplaying your opponent in placing birds. As there are only 13 cards, many birds will not be challenged. Towards the end of the game, your low birds may be able to hold a high perch. I'm also fond of the memory component. My memory isn't that great, and I like the fact that I need to remember which of my opponent's birds I've seen and where. In terms of bluffing, the game has a nice element of that. Because players have to lay the card down, they often will give a tell when they're bluffing.

My record so far is about winning 80% of the time, by trying to read bluffs, and effective control of the vision and tie breaker perches.

There's also less downtime in calculating the score at the end. No need for a piece of paper to do multiplication.

In spite of these things, I think Lost Cities has more replay value than Pecking Order. Pecking Order does get repetitive after you've played it several times. There are ideal and predictable moves. Your 10, 11, 12 ranked bird cards should end up sitting at 10, 9 or 8 spaces and so will the jaguar. The identical hand makes it predictable as well what you will see (perhaps removing a card from the hand at random could shake things up a little, if only there were one more bird). Lost Cities can be replayed more as well because there's less confrontation and the game requires less concentration required as well. If you win regularly, as I do, your partner will not want to play Pecking Order anymore.

All in all, I'd say it is a pretty good game and a decent change from Lost Cities from time to time. It isn't very deep however.

I would give this game a 6, but for the fact it can be found at a bargain priced, I give it a 7.

Did you accidentally cut off some words in your 3rd sentence?



Nice review, although I personally prefer Pecking Order to Lost Cities. And I find that the shuffle of the cards helps it not become too repetitive. There is a nice metagaming aspect once you've played the same person several times, that adds to the bluffing. As long as you also try new opponents every now and then - if you've only played this against one other person, that may be adding to the repetitiveness you describe, as you get used to each other's strategies; try it against some other opponents to spice things up!

Great review!!!!You are absolutely right in the bargain price.I picked mine up at TUESDAY MORNINGS for $3.00 plus tax. Gamegrunt called me when he found six copies. We ended up buying all of them and giving them as gifts....the game keeps giving & giving fun and light strategy. I sold away my Lost Cities...I didn't enjoy it!!!!!

By the way, the game designer Richard Garfield, designed RoboRally & Magic:The Gathering!!!

I think the third sentence should read: "My verdict is Pecking Order is not as good as Lost Cities but is still pretty good."

Yep, I also got it from Tuesday Morning. It is nice to play with others, I still have the high win ratio against all players.

I enjoyed the comparison to Lost Cities as that is the game my GF and I play the most often besides Fjords while waiting for dinner to be done, etc. Great coffee shop games.

I agree that a lot of the game is purely extraneous. So much so that I modified the game. My GF has troubles shuffling cards, so I got little wooden discs, painted numbers on one side and now you just draw the discs.

It makes the game far more portable when you redo the board as well. That said, even the minimal production values that they did give the game made me feel it was horrendously overproduced.

Tie breaker perch has to be the most contest perch in all the games I have played with many people.