Claim Review – A Two-Player Duel of Dead Kings and Sewing Socks

When I first bought Claim I did so without knowing what a trick-taking game was. So it promptly went to the back of the closet. Now that I’m a couple of years old, and a couple of years wiser, I’ve finally cracked the code on trick-taking games. It’s time to put that experience to the test.

Claim takes place in a world where the king has died, found face down at the bottom of a wine barrel. Nobody knows if it was foul play or foul alcohol that caused his demise. Either way, who cares?! The important thing is the throne could now be yours, but only if you can convince the different factions to back your claim.

How to play

Given I spent a ludicrous amount of time creating pretty pictures in my how-to-play trick-taking games article, I won’t cover that in depth. However, here’s an extremely brief and general introduction to the genre.

In trick-taking games, every player must play a card to a central area; this is known as a trick. Rules govern what card you must play during that trick. Usually, you must play a card that matches the same suit as the first played card of the round.

So in Claim, if the first player puts down an Undead card, you must also play an Undead card. Then whoever played the highest-numbered Undead card wins the trick.

There are a few more rules than that, but that’s the gist.

Now, Claim follows these standard trick-taking rules but adds its own fantasy flavour to it. First, all five of the factions have different amounts of cards and different abilities. For instance, there are 14 Goblins in the deck and because there are so many of them they don’t have a special power. Meanwhile, there are only 8 Knights in the deck, and if they are ever played against a Goblin – they win the trick.

With this in mind, you play through two rounds of 13 tricks. Before each trick in the first round, you draw a card from the top of a deck. Whoever wins the trick, recruits this card to their hand for the second round. With the loser of the trick receiving a card randomly from the deck instead.

In the second round, you use all of the cards you won or drew randomly to play another 13 tricks. This time the winner of the trick keeps all of the played cards for their score pile.

At the end of the game, each faction will only support your claim to royalty if you have more of their cards within your score pile than your opponent. Then if three or more factions support your claim, you win the game.

Just like sewing socks

The first thing that strikes you about Claim, outside of its super fun artwork, is it’s a two-player trick-taking game. Usually, these types of card games require more players to fill out the tricks, as two people playing one card each just isn’t exciting.

However, the faction powers within Claim, along with the changing stakes of each trick, show that this conventional wisdom needs to go the way of the king – face down in a barrel of wine.

While tossing up whether to deplete your goblins so you can play your knights, you must also think about the rest of the cards in your hand. Undead cards always go into your score pile if you win the trick (even in the first round), Dwarves support the loser of the trick they’re in, and Dopple-Gangers can be played no matter what the leading card was.

These abilities create a lot of fun interactions and decision points. Especially, when combined with the usual regulations of trick-taking.

On top of these though, there are also the ever-changing stakes to each trick. In the first round, you’re recruiting a card on display. So if it’s a great card, you want to be playing your best cards to guarantee you get it for the second round. On the other hand, if it’s a low-ranked Goblin then you need to figure out how to lose the trick. Making your opponent pick it up instead.

These scenarios are straightforward, but what about everything else in between? This question is how Claim twists and turns those little cogs behind your ears. Because you’re constantly weighing up each card’s value. Both those you’re trying to win and those remaining in your hand.

It’s enough to give you pause before each trick, and tough enough that you won’t get right every time. But Claim has such a short feedback loop that you must quickly let go of a bad decision, and focus on the next one. With only two players, you create an up-tempo cadence of playing cards and making choices. Eventually creating a beat both players are dancing to.

When this music plays, everything else falls away, allowing you to focus completely on getting this question right. As a result, Claim felt a lot like Lacuna, where the gameplay isn’t mind-blowing but there’s a meditative quality to it.

So much so it was difficult to stop playing. I always wanted one more game to either fix my mistakes or lose myself in the cadence of play. And if that isn’t a great recommendation for Claim, I don’t know what is.