The Mind Review
Look into my eyes. I’m thinking of a number.
It was 69. Tee hee hee!
Players: 2-4
Time: 15 mins
Ages: 8+
Designer: Wolfgang Warsch
Artist: Oliver Freudenreich
Publisher: Nürnberger-Spielkarten-Verlag
The Mind is the insane new card game from publishers of The Game. Thankfully they decided to come up with something moderately better named this time. So well named that they’ve earned themselves a Spiel des Jahres nomination, and I reckon it’s going to win.
We’ve got 100 cards numbered from 1 to 100 in a deck and we’ve just dealt out 1 card to each player sat at the table. The mission is painfully simple: put these cards into a pile in numerical order. Anyone can play a card whenever they want. The catch, that’s so stupid as to make you doubt the designer’s sanity? No one can say anything to indicate the value of their cards.
I love it when I can set up a game quickly and with just the components I’ve given to the players I can explain the game and just start playing. I love it even more when that explanation leaves everyone around the table dumbstruck. The Mind is perhaps the ultimate example of this. Painfully simple while seeming impossible to resolve… and yet it’s anything but!
You know what is in your hand and you know roughly how likely you are to be next. Have the ‘1’? Slam that baby down before someone blunders into a mistake. Have the ‘6’? Then you’re probably first, start feeling out the table, put your card out ready to go. 23 just gone down and you have ‘32’? Ooo maybe it’s you, better keep an eye on everyone else.
That first round will flash by immediately and everyone will get it. But that is only the start of The Mind. A series of levels need to be completed, with each level increasing the number of cards players start with by 1, all the way up to a maximum level of 12. 12! Even if that is technically only the top level for 2 players, that’s an impressive pile of cards to play through. The more cards that are in play, the more The Mind shows off its utter brilliance.
The moments of unbelievable brilliance in The Mind occur when two players think they might be next. At that point you have a bizarre, silent standoff. You look your fellow player in the eye. “I’ve got 43,” you’re thinking (not saying) “am I next?” The tension builds. The other player looks slightly more eager. You let them play. They play the 42. You don’t believe it. You play your 43. The table erupts in cheers.
Sure, you think. It’s 50/50. And yet it will happen that way more than 50% of the time.
Playing The Mind feels like magic. Every close play that comes out perfect is a magic trick in which you were both the magician and the audience at the same time. That’s a feeling unlike any I’ve ever had!
Both bemusing and exhilarating, accessible yet incomprehensible, The Mind is the stupidest, ingenious game I’ve had the pleasure to play this year. There is a trick to it, or at least an explanation, and I’ll leave you to discover it for yourself at the end of the rules sheet. But it is a good one, a believable one. Certainly you’ll have seen for yourself that there is something going on!
Obviously you’re not psychic… unless maybe you kind of are? As much as body language can key you in, me dumping my cards on the table and wandering off to put the kettle on is a pretty clear sign I don’t have any low cards, there’s something deeply subconscious about it all. And so no one ever feels like they truly ‘know’ in the logical, deductive kind of way, when the numbers get truly close. In sitting at this special intersection of deduction and gut feeling, The Mind let’s you feel like geniuses when you get it right, but as though it’s no one’s fault when it goes wrong. After all, how were you supposed to know?
If you hadn’t already guessed, The Mind is getting an absolute recommendation from me. Pick it up as soon as you can get hold of it (it’s primarily only available in Germany at the moment, but it is easily mocked up using a copy of The Game or 6 Nimmt). As much as I enjoyed Azul and while I haven’t even played Luxor yet, I can’t imagine anyway in which The Mind does not take home the Spiel des Jahres. It is the cleverest, most entertaining, most surprising, most accessible game from at least the last year and is perfect family material, without in any way being only for families. Don’t think. Just get it.
Leave a Reply