High Society

16th November 2019

​Saturday night gaming at 'Matakishi's' continues.

The second game of the evening was 'High Society'.

Some people are just obsessed with reputation, luxury, wealth and prestige and will pay anything to elevate it. Well almost anything.
These are the trials and tribulations 'endured' by the aspiring wealthy and privileged, where image is everything.
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What's in a game?
High Society has broadly speaking 2 types of card.

• Bidding decks: There are 5 of these, one for each player. Each deck consists of 11 cards, with values from 1,000 Francs to 25,000 Francs.
• Status cards: There 16 of these oversized cards. 10 luxury cards that score points(Valued from 1-10.), 3 prestige cards that double a player's final score and finally 3 disgrace cards that lower the player's score in different ways

The version that we played is themed to the 'roaring 20's' in Paris and has gorgeous Art Nouveau illustrations on the status cards.

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Some bidding cards.

A luxury card to go with bidding cards.

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How's it play?
First give each player a 11 card bidding deck. Then shuffle the status cards to form a deck and determine a starting player.

• Play begins by drawing a card from the status deck and placing it face-up in the centre of the playing area.
• What happens next depends on which type of status card is drawn. If a luxury or prestige card is drawn, then normal bidding begins with the starting player.
• Bidding works in a more or less familiar method: The starting player makes an opening bid by playing one or more cards from their card face-up. Play will then progress to the left, players that follow must raise the bid by playing a card (Or cards.) face-up of a higher value. When it comes to a player increasing their bid, they can only add​ to their bid, they cannot take back a card they already played (They cannot make change). Alternatively, a player may choose to pass, in this case any bidding cards they played are returned to their hand and they are out of the bidding. Play continues until all but one player has passed. The winning player discards all the cards they used in the bidding and collects the status card. Whoever wins the bidding is the starting player for the next status card.
• If a scandal card is drawn, the bidding is slightly different. Members of high society want to avoid scandal. So now players are bidding to avoid taking the card. Bidding works as normal, but the first player to pass collects the scandal card and also collects any bidding cards they played. All other players must discard all cards they used when bidding to avoid the scandal card.

And that's it for the rules.

Endgame
4 cards in the status are coloured green, they are the 3 prestige cards and one of the scandal cards.
When the 4th green card is drawn, the game ends immediately - there is no bidding on the 4th green.
Next is the game's sting in the tail. The player who has the least amount of money in their hand is eliminated from the endgame!
The remaining players total the value of their luxury cards and modify them by any prestige/scandal cards they have. Highest score wins.

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All 11 bidding cards.

Final score: 21 with 26,000 Francs remaining.

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Overall
There's a few clever little things to think about here.

Because a player can only add to their bid, players will be faced with tricky choices. If you really want a card a card, do you bid low hoping other players won't try and out bid you? Or do you start with a high bid hoping to discourage others and use less cards. For example: Using a 4 and 6 is worse than using a 10, even though they have the same value, in the first case you're using up 2 cards instead of 1 - and you can't bid if you don't have cards.
Also; there's nothing more infuriating then when you want to push up a bid by 1 or 2 and you've got nothing less than a 5 in your hand.

The endgame mechanic adds an extra level of unpredictability to the game. A game can last anywhere from 3 to 15 rounds. Players will know when there's a chance that the game will end because they'll see that 3 green cards have been played, but they won't know exactly when the end is coming. All of this can affect how you bid.

Finally, there's the player elimination in the endgame. The sting in the tail that constantly niggles and lingers in the back of every player's mind when they're playing.
It doesn't matter how well a player has done in the bidding if they're eliminated for having the least money. It is painful.

All in all, High Society is a quick to learn game that is quite fast to play and makes an excellent filler game. It's mechanics push players into making meaningful and tricky decisions. Other than constant stress, what's not to like?