Trick-taking games are certainly everywhere these days. We have trick-taking games based on some of the biggest intellectual properties in the world. Cooperative trick-taking. Trick-taking as action-selection in heavy euros.
Well, Lone Wolves is here to ask: would you like another? Specifically, a two-player trick-taking game that is also a lane battler, à la Battle Line or Lost Cities. So let’s take a look at how it works and see if it deserves a spot on your shelf in the ever-crowded category.
Gameplay Overview:
Lone Wolves will be very familiar to trick-taking fans. The deck consists of cards numbered 2-7 in five different suits. There is a board in the center of the table that divides the play area into five territories for your wolves to fight over. The first player can play any card to any lane, and the next player must play the same suit if possible, but can also play to any lane. There is a limit of six cards in each territory, regardless of which side they are on.
Whoever plays the highest card in the led suit wins the trick. Their card stays face-up and gives it value as strength in that territory. The loser flips their wolf card over, turning it into a lone wolf worth only a single strength. All is not lost; you also get a scar token, which adds a special ability or extra scoring opportunity for you. That token can be placed in any territory. Each lane has three scar tokens, one face up and two face down.
When the first territory runs out of scar tokens, it gets the moon token, making the territory worth 5 extra points. It also turns the corresponding suit into the trump suit. All cards played of that suit will win over any non-trump suits that are played. When a second territory similarly runs out of scar tokens, it gets the blood-moon token, adding three points and replacing the first as the new trump suit.
Once all 13 tricks are played, each territory awards its honor token to the player with the most strength. Players add those to points from scar tokens and the most honor points wins.
Game Experience:
The best thing about Lone Wolves is that you can teach anyone who is at all familiar with trick-taking how to play in about 2 minutes. Must follow. Loser flips their card and gets a token. Trump is established when a territory no longer has scar tokens. Ready… go.
There are a few restrictions on where you can play cards. If you have the lead, you can basically play any card in any lane, so long as it hasn’t reached the 6-card limit. The responding player can also play anywhere and must follow suit if they can. But unlike most trick-taking games where winning tricks seems like the sure-fire plan, losing is often much more valuable.
At least if it’s well-timed losing. Grabbing a scar token that allows you to play a lone wolf to a region from a portion of the deck that wasn’t used doesn’t seem like a big deal; it only adds a single strength. But if that adds the sixth card that effectively finishes off that lane for everyone out of nowhere, it can be game-changing. Or maybe you just want the blue territory to be empty of tokens so that blue becomes the trump suit, perfectl for your grip full of blue cards.
In my opinion two player trick-taking games can suffer a bit when they feel more like the players are simply playing cards and comparing numbers. That isn’t necessarily the most exciting, even if we are fighting over the various territories. But the scar tokens help save the game from this fate, at least in part. In my plays of Lone Wolves, at least half the points for each player came from their scar tokens rather than the honor tokens awarded for winning the lanes. While you certainly can’t just skip trying to win the lane battles, it isn’t the only factor in winning the game.
Final Thoughts:
As much as I love trick-taking, I’ve never really loved the two-player games that exist in this space. Lone Wolves is certainly among the best of them. The lane battling and special scoring tiles give the decision space some much-needed breadth. While this still may not be a game you’d want to play 100 times, the low rules overhead makes it something that I think is worthy of checking out.
Final Score: 3.5 Stars – An easy to pick up two-player trick taker with some interesting tactical choices throughout.
Hits:
• Easy to teach
• Lots of interaction with scar tokens.
• Beautiful art and well produced components.
Misses:
• Doesn’t fully escape the “compare numbers” feeling of two player trick-taking.
• Replay value may taper off after a few plays.
