Bayou Boss is a card game designed by Simon Weinberg and published by R&R Games. It’s made for 2 to 8 players, ages 8 and up, and takes about 45 minutes to play. You can find it on Amazon, and we played with a copy provided by the publisher.

Down in the Big Bayou, you’re just starting out, trying to make a name for yourself.

Bayou Boss is a clever trick-taking card game with two big twists:

• You don’t want to win tricks! The person with the fewest tricks at the end wins. Your job is to trick everyone else into taking more tricks than you.
• There are cards sitting face-up in the middle of the table. When the round is over, people take turns picking what they want. You need to plan ahead, because you don’t want to be left with the bad cards.

Outsmart your friends, outplay them, and become the Boss of the Bayou!

Bayou Boss is a fun game where players compete to take the least tricks possible. During the game, players also compete to take good cards from a central area called the Swamp. But the only way to make sure you get the good cards is to win tricks… which is exactly what you don’t want to do! With special characters from the Bayou, players can change how tricks work to help themselves – or get stuck with a character that makes you win a trick or changes the trump suit. The game is very replayable with 10 different character cards, and it works well with 2 to 8 players.

To start, you need to prepare two decks of cards – the game deck (which has numbered cards in 6 suits) and the Character deck (with different characters and some ravens). To start a hand, shuffle the game deck and deal 7 cards to each player. Flip the top card of the deck up to determine the trump suit. Then, shuffle the character deck into the game deck. Place a number of cards face-up equal to the number of players – this is called the Swamp.

The player to the left of the dealer leads the first trick. The suit of the first card sets the lead suit for the trick. If it’s a Character card, the first card played with a suit sets the lead suit. All other players must follow suit if they can. If they can’t follow suit, they must play a trump card if they have one. Otherwise, they can play any card they like. Character cards can always be played, and their ability takes effect right away.

The trick is then resolved. First, check if any Characters were played that affect who wins – if so, follow those rules. If not, the highest trump card played wins. If no trump cards were played, the highest card of the lead suit wins. Keep your tricks where everyone can see how many you’ve collected.

If there are cards in the swamp, the trick winner picks a card from the Swamp and adds it to their hand. Going clockwise around the table, the other players do the same. The winner of the trick then leads to start the next trick.

The round ends when all players have played all their cards – you get one point for each trick you took. The new dealer is the player with the highest score. Keep playing for 4 rounds or until the end of a round when any player has 12 or more points. At that time, the player with the least points wins.

Bayou Boss is an interesting trick-taking game because unlike most of them, here you’re trying NOT to win tricks. There are plenty of special animal abilities that also make things more complicated. The game is fun because your hand keeps changing as you swap cards from the Swamp. The only good thing about winning a trick is that you get to pick first from the swamp and get the best card for your hand.

As cards come and go from your hand, and the trump suit can change multiple times, it’s hard to keep track of everything. A very smart player might remember all the cards everyone has picked, but most people can’t do that. This means there are always surprising plays when opponents show you a card you forgot they had! The game forces you to play trump when you don’t have the lead suit, which can cause unexpected tricks to be won. Also, many of the animal card abilities change the rules for the trick.

When talking about the animal cards, you’ll definitely need the double-sided reference sheet for them. There are tiny action pictures in the bottom corners to remind you what each card does, but they’re very small and hard to see from across the table. Also, while the reference sheet has the cards in alphabetical order, the cards themselves don’t have their names printed on them! So you have to match the card art with the tiny picture on the reference sheet.

While you’ll eventually remember what all the animals do, the pictures are all very similar – mostly dark green colors. So I often had to pick up the card to figure out which animal it was. I would have much preferred a card like in other games with a name at the top and half of the card telling me what the action does.

The game will take between 45 to 60 minutes because you go through the entire deck each hand. You have to approach it differently since you’re trying to lose tricks, but you also have to decide when it’s best to win a trick you can’t avoid. Usually, I’ll try to win a trick if there’s a card I really want from the Swamp. If you’re looking for a trick-taking game that’s a bit unpredictable, check out Bayou Boss.