A deductive reasoning card game with a killer storyline? This week, we dive into AEG’s unique tabletop game, Love Letter.
- Love Letter Rules
- Love Letter Board Game Geek
- Love Letter Board Game Rules
- Felt Letter Board
- Love Letter Board Game Amazon
In a world where technology reigns supreme, it’s easy to forget that board games are a great way to spend time with friends. Whether you’re a trivia buff, strategist, actor, artist, dirty-minded, or anything in-between, there is a game out there for you. Join me as I play my way through tabletop games to find the perfect match for every situation.
This Week’s Feature: Love Letter
Love Letter is a card game introduced in May 2012 and designed by Seiji Kanai. Online slots no deposit. It is produced in the United States by Z-Man Games.
7 components Your game of Love Letter should include the following. If it does not, contact email protected alderac.com for assistance. 16 game cards. Alderac Entertainment Group (AEG) is the publisher of many best-selling tabletop games including Smash Up, Mystic Vale, Thunderstone, Edge of Darkness, The Captain is.
Ages: 10+
Type of Game: Cards, Deduction, Microgame
Love Letter Rules
Number of Players: 2-4
Love Letter Board Game Geek
Difficulty Level: Easy
Great For: filler, icebreaker (easy to talk during, not controversial so it is fine with people you do not know)
Love Letter Board Game Rules
Length of Play: brief (15-20 minutes)
Bonus: Extremely portable, super affordable
Manufacturer Description: “All of the eligible young men (and many of the not-so-young) seek to woo the princess of Tempest. Unfortunately, she has locked herself in the Palace, and you must rely on others to bring your romantic letters to her. Will yours reach her first? Love Letter is a game of risk, deduction, and luck for 2 to 4 players. Your goal is to get your love letter into Princess Annette’s hands while deflecting the letters from competing suitors. From a deck with only sixteen cards, each player starts with only one card in hand; one card is removed from play. On a turn, you draw one card, and play one card, trying to expose others and knock them from the game. Powerful cards lead to early gains but make you a target. Rely on weaker cards for too long, however, and your letter may be tossed in the fire.” (Alderac Entertainment Group)
What’s in the Box: instructions, 16 game cards, 4 reference cards, 13 tokens
The Gist:
Love Letter packs a big punch in a little package. It has a great storyline, is quick to teach and easy to learn, is incredibly portable, and is friendly on your wallet.Essentially, each player is a suitor who wants their love letter to get to the princess. Suitors are quickly eliminated one by one by following the directions on the card. The player left in the round with the highest value card wins the round and receives one token of affection (a red cube).
When your turn begins, you have only one card in your hand. You then draw a card and play a card face up. You and the other players must follow the directions on the card. For example, if you play a “guard” card, you can try to guess what card an opponent has. If you guess correctly, they are out of the round. When you are eliminated, you must discard your hand face up.
While there is always a bit of luck in card games, this one practices great skills of deduction. This is because all cards are discarded face up. Through the process of elimination and by seeing what your opponents are playing, you are more likely to predict their next move and find a way to eliminate them.
Skilled gamers, bluffers, and non-gaming individuals can all enjoy this game. Non-competitive people can easily play this on autopilot while making small talk or waiting for a movie/show to start. People who prefer deductive games or are more competitive will likely pay more attention and be more successful. Either way, this is a great way to pass the time and keep your friends and family members occupied for a bit.
Do you have a board game that you think we should feature? Let us know in the comments below!
Elizabeth Sanderson is a teacher, musician, and board gamer extraordinaire. She is eagerly awaiting her birthright to appear in a Hocus Pocus reboot.
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Welcome to Ars Cardboard, our weekend look at tabletop games! Check out our complete board gaming coverage right here—and let us know what you think.
Released in 2012 by AEG, Love Letter—a card game designed by Seiji Kanai—is set in the fictional realm of Tempest where players attempt to woo Princess Annette by… sneaking love letters into the palace and into her hand. (I know.. and there's even a wedding edition. But it's still good!)
This fiction gives way to a game of bluffing and deduction that moves incredibly fast and has a surprising layer of strategy within its small deck of 16 cards. The cards fit inside a small felt carrying bag along with wooden “tokens of affection” to keep track of your score; win a round, win a token. For 2-4 players, Love Letter has become an instant classic, yielding numerous variants—three of which discussed below—and homemade knockoffs as well.
Prior to each game, one or more cards are removed from the deck, mixing up the population of suitors in the game. Each player is dealt a card and then draws one other card, discarding one of the two and applying its effects, even if said effects are detrimental to the player. When no one can draw more cards—or only one player remains—all surviving players compare their cards. The high value wins an affection token. The cards are re-shuffled and a new round begins until a victor earns enough affection.
The real meat of Love Letter is the interaction of the cards and trying to discard low-value cards to obtain higher-value cards while at the same time eliminating other players. Because on each turn players will have to discard a card, sub-optimal decisions may force one’s hand. For example, holding the 8-Princess early in the game will likely result in your demise, as you cannot discard her (its effect is “lose if discarded”), but another player unknowingly targeting you with a 3-Baron (effect: “compare hands, lower hand is out”) will be in for a sudden shock.
Playing the odds is also required, as discards are played—and stay—face-up on the table. Thus, when playing a 1-Guard (effect: 'guess another player's card; if correct, player is out') and attempting to guess another player’s card, some strategy is required. Blind luck works, too; many times the meta-game at our table starts with a 1-Guard asking for a 5-Prince and taking a player out immediately, sometimes before he or she gets to play. And that’s alright, as Love Letter moves blisteringly fast. Getting knocked out of a round is, at most, a 2-3 minute setback until the next round begins.
Advertisement The game's quick-hit fun meant that Love Letter 'versions' began appearing almost immediately, each re-theming the game to appeal to a different geek interest.
Love Letter: Batman Edition
What, Batman can’t write love letters? Actually he doesn’t; the conceit here is that the cards represent captured villains having escaped Arkham Asylum, topping out at 8-The Joker. Whoever reveals the most heinous captured villain at the end of the round wins. (This is a little strange as 4-Robin, 2-Catwoman, and 1-Batman are also in the deck; just roll with it.)
Felt Letter Board
Thematics aside, the draw of this version is the comic artwork and the clean card design. (Plus, cool yellow Batman victory tokens.) This is the easiest version for younger players to pick up and play, understanding right out the gate the hero/villain concept, although the idea of wanting 8-Joker in your hand is a bit suspect.
While Love Letter: Batman is identical with the original in card breakdown and abilities, it does use a unique scoring method in that if you correctly guess another player’s card with 1-Batman, you knock them from play and immediately receive a scoring token. In this context multiple players can receive tokens in each game, separate from the round winner. This has a nice effect of speeding up play.
This is most colorful and kid-friendly version to pick up; plus you can sneak in lines from the Batman movies in your best Bat-growl.
Love Letter: Star Wars
In this variant, the 'princess' is the exactly who you would expect—Han. (Kidding. It's Leia.) You have to get inside the Death Star and sneak her out of prison while dealing with Darth Vader, stormtroopers, and a 'walking carpet,' among others.
Unfortunately, you'll be doing it in Russian, since the game was only released last year in Russia due to some quirk of licensing.
Once You Go Blackmail.. (Archer theme)
Yes, it's Archer-themed Love Letter and yes, it will involve the 'danger zone.' According to AEG, 'Your mission is to dig up dirt on Malory Archer and sell it to the highest bidder. To succeed you’ll have to deal with secret agents, the HR department, ocelots, and a mad scientist.'
Advertisement Munchkin Loot Letter
“Loot Letter,” get it? That, unfortunately, is as good as this Munchkin variant gets. The card breakdown and rules are identical to the core game with merely the names and artwork changed to conform to the Munchkin IP. The art and text are uninspired, making this version forgettable. Its non-standard-sized cards are particularly annoying.
If you want to buy one version of Love Letter and love Munchkin, this might be the one to get. For everyone else, pass.
Love Letter: The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies
At the risk of removing all drama, this is the variant you should buy. The production values are solid (although the linen-textured box is more than you’ll need; the cloth bag used in other Love Letter games would be welcome here). Instead of plain wooden tokens for scoring, you get sparkling acrylic gems! The graphic design of the cards is a cut above the other variants as well—although all imagery is from the Peter Jackson movies and Tolkien purists may shriek in geek-horror.
Love Letter: The Hobbit also plays differently and in keeping with the series it emulates. 17 total cards in the deck represent ten different characters. Two of the cards introduce new mechanics and ways of mixing up the strategy of a typical Love Letter game. For instance, the 3-Legolas Greenleaf (1) and 3-Tauriel (1) cards standing out, as Legolas compares hands (the lowest one going out) while Tauriel causes the higher hand to go out. It’s a simple change that makes the semi-predictable nature of the 3-Baron in other games more of a gamble.
The new card here is 0-The One Ring, which has no effect when discarded but at the end of any round counts as a 7—just one below the Arkenstone. It doesn't make for a huge difference in play, but this type of iterative change to the game is what I had hoped to see in the other Love Letter variants.
Love Letter Board Game Amazon
Whichever version you pick, a few bucks gets you many hours of play in the geek-themed world of your choice. And if none of those get you going, there's always homebrewed theme replacements.