Recently Berry Plays Games was gifted a package from Niche City Games. Inside were three card games: mishy match, Pickles & Poppycock, and Overlap. We were very excited to get to try these out and dedicated a whole game night to playing them.
We first played mishy match. This might have been one of the most difficult card games I have ever played. It gave me vibes of Anomia but somehow harder? Each card is made up of 4 squares and a color word. Each of the squares are gray, blue, red or yellow and contain a whale, sun, rose or berry. In the middle of the card is a color word. It spells one of the four colors but is most often a different color than what is written.
To play mishy match, divide the cards as evenly as possible between all players. The person to the dealer’s left will go first. When it is a player’s turn they must flip over one of their cards and correctly say two words. The first is the color of the word in the middle. Not the word that it spells out but the actual color it is written in. The second word is the picture on what color the word spells out. For example if the word gray was written in red, a player would have to say the word red first. If the sun was on the gray square, the player would then have to say sun.
Play continues until someone flips a card that gives one the following answers: red rose, gray whale, yellow sun, or blue berry. These are called “slap phrases.” Should someone put one of these cards down all players will try and quickly slap the center pile of cards. The player whose hand ends up on top must put the center pile of cards to the bottom of their pile. Play continues until one player runs out of cards, and is the first person to correctly slap the next slap phrase that occurs.
When flipping a card a player must try and say the word quickly. The table is to decide if someone hesitated too long or if the player says the wrong words. Also, if someone slaps the cards and it was not a slap phrase, that player must add the cards in the center to the bottom of their pile. No peeking! Players must not view their card before revealing it to the table. Finally, if a player recognizes the slap phrase card before it is said, they may slap the card.
I am not gonna lie, mishy match was a difficult game for me. I tried to go as quickly as possible without tripping up the words but… more often than not I was picking up the center pile to add to my stack.
The next Niche City Games game we tried was Overlap. This game touts itself as “a deceptively simple strategy game.” This one was a thinker! To set up Overlap, shuffle the deck and deal 7 cards to each player. Players may look at their own cards. The remaining cards go face down in the center of the game play area to form a draw pile. Turn over the top card to start Overlap (if the card is a special card, discard it to the middle of the draw pile and pick another card to start). Each card has 9 squares on it. You are going around the table layering the cards on top of each other. For each square that matches the below card, you must pick up one card from the face down deck. The goal is to shed all of your cards first, but there are some additional rules to this one.
The player to the left of the dealer goes first. Play passes to the left at the beginning of the game. On a player’s turn they may rotate their card 180 degrees if they choose to. In order to win a player must play their last card and it should not have any overlap with the previous card. If the draw pile is getting slim, shuffle some of the discard cards into it to keep going. There are also Special Cards that have different effects. The special cards can cause the next player to have to draw double the number of cards, they can reverse the play order, be a wild card, or skip the next player. Choose to play these cards carefully, as they can drastically change the outcome of the game.
The final game from Niche Nation Games we played was Pickles and Poppycock. This is a “game for bluffers and pickle lovers” that plays similarly to BS, for those in the know. There are 48 cards in the deck: 5 each of 9 types of pickles and 3 wild cards. Cards are dealt according to how many players are at the table and any remaining are put back into the box, as they will not be used. Players may look at their own cards. Play starts with the person to the dealer’s left and play continues to the left. The center of the table is called the Pickle Jar. On a player’s turn they may choose to discard any number of cards, but they must state the type of card they are intending to discard. The subsequent players will choose the same type of card to put down and state the number. For example, a player might say “Two Dill” and place two cards in the Pickle Jar.
At any point in time, a player may choose to bluff. Say they didn’t have a Dill Pickle Card but still wanted to shed a card. The player may choose to bluff and state “One Dill” but actually have put down a Pickle Chip, or other type of card. If the next player suspects you are bluffing, they say “Poppycock.” If they called your bluff, you must take the cards in the Pickle Jar back. If they were wrong, they then have to take the cards in the Pickle Jar. Game play continues until one player is out of cards. They are the winner of Pickles and Poppycock.
What I enjoyed about all three games is as card games, they are small and compact, easy to travel with, and perfect to toss in a purse or back pack. Mishy match and Pickles and Poppycock are the size of a standard deck of cards and Overlap is the size of 2 standard decks of cards. I’ll admit that mishy match was the hardest sell for me. However, once I got into the groove of how it played I did enjoy it. Overlap was the winner for me, as it was the most different from other games I have played recently. Pickles and Poppycock was a challenge because we all know each other so well at the table and no one wanted to pick up the Pickle Jar.
I also enjoy that the games can be played with a variety of ages at the table. Sometimes we play with younger players and sometimes it’s a table of all adults. These games all feel like they would scale very well regardless of who is at the table. This also holds true for the number of players. All three games are rated for 2-8 players. We played with 3, and while it felt good it could have easily been just as much fun with more people at the table. We have decided that all three games are coming with us on our next camping trip. It is easy to picture playing them all while gathered around a picnic table while you grill up some dinner!
Thank you to Niche City Games! These games were gifted, however; opinions are my own.
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