My Favourite Things: How Well Can You Rank Them?

Is Batman a better superhero than Superman? And where does Green Lantern fall in that lineup? Which card will win the trick when there are truffle mushrooms and Agatha Christie on the table?

Published by Play for Keeps, My Favourite Things is a trick-taking party game, designed for 3-6 players with a 30-minute playtime.

Gameplay

Each player has six cards. Five of them are numbered one through five, while the sixth card is the heartbreaker card. Each card is put into a plastic card cover, with an overlay card that covers that card’s number. A player then passes all their cards to the person on their left and chooses a category to go with them. Each player will choose their own category to go with their own cards.

When you receive a player’s cards, you will come up with things within the category you have been given, writing them on the overlay portion of the card, attempting to put them in the best order, from best (number one) to worst (number 5). When writing the items on the cards, you do check which number is on each card, but then return the overlay so that it covers the number. On the heartbreaker card, you put something you do not like in that category.

Once everyone has finished filling out all the cards, and the numbers are all hidden again, the cards get passed back to their original players. Each player then reads out loud the things written on all their cards.

Next, the trick-taking portion of the game begins. The game follows fairly standard trick-taking rules – each person plays a card onto the table. However, the lower numbers are better than the higher numbers, and the heartbreaker can only win a trick against a one. After everyone has played a card, the cards’ values are revealed. If multiple people play the same number, whoever played it earlier in the trick wins. The challenge, however, lies in the fact that players do not know for sure what card number they are playing into the trick. Did one person choose the category vacation destinations and now has Scotland in their hand? Where does that fall in numbers one to five? And maybe they don’t want to play their best card if they think someone else has already played their best card based on their own categories?

Whenever a player wins a trick, they take a heart token. Players play two rounds, with new categories being chosen each round. The player with the most heart tokens after two rounds wins the game.

Review

Blending party game and trick taker together is a clever idea and a very fun combination. Trick-taking is also such a familiar concept, even for people who don’t play lots of games, that it doesn’t overcomplicate the game, or make it less accessible.

It is easy to get a bit confused between one or five being the best-numbered card, and the heartbreaker can take a minute to explain to newcomers to the game, but it is interesting to see how each person interprets the heartbreaker and how they interpret it for each category.

Enabling each player to choose their own category is also a smart mechanic. It ensures that everyone always gets to select a category that they find fun to play with and enables the game to adapt to the group playing as well as the individual players.

It’s not a seamless meeting of party game and trick-taking, however. There is something a little clunky about someone else having to select the answer on each card. For the game to work, players really need to follow the honor system and fill out each card in such a way that they believe the other player will be able to follow their logic and play their cards. However, there is not actually a mechanical reason for a player to do so, it’s just the only way the game can be fun.

This does lead to some interesting ideas for a trick-taking game, though, as each player knows exactly what card one other player is putting down, with only a guess as to their own card’s value. This leads to some interesting decisions and gameplay.

Ultimately, My Favourite Things is a little bit of a messy game but is still a thoroughly enjoyable one that feels like a fresh take on the party game genre.

Pros: Nice blending of two genres, players getting to pick their own category ensures everyone gets one they enjoy playing with

Cons: No mechanical reason why a player should try to fill out cards smartly