Love Letter is a game where the goal is to be the first man to woo the princess of Tempest, by eliminating your opponents or by having the highest card in your hand at the end of the game.
Players: 2 - 4
Age: 10+
Gamelength: ± 20 minutes
Price: ± € 10,- / $ 9,- (varies per country)
Boxsize: 12,2 x 9,5 x 2,4 cm. / 4,8 x 3,7 x 0,9 inches
Princess Annette has locked herself up in the palace after the arrest of her mother on suspicion of high treason. To let your romantic letter reach her, you have to rely on others in the palace.
Princess:
If you discard this card, you are out of the round.
Countess:
If you have this card and the King or Prince in your hand, you must discard this card.
King:
Trade hands with another player of your choice.
Prince:
Choose any player (including yourself) to discard his or her hand and draw a new card.
Handmaid:
Until your next turn, ignore all effects from other players’ cards.
Baron:
You and another player secretly compare hands. The player with the lower value is out of the round.
Priest:
Look at another players hand.
Guard:
Name a non-Guard card and choose another player. If that player has that card, he or she is out of the round.
There are 16 cards in this game.
Every player starts with 1 card in his hand and picks up another card at his turn. He then decides which card to keep, and which one to play. The card that is played, will be put face-up in front of the player. The action on that card has to be executed by the player.
The round ends when you have eliminated every opponent or when the drawing pile is empty, in this case the player with the highest card wins the round. That player gets a token.
To win the entire game, you have to win 7, 5 or 4 tokens, for 2, 3, or 4 players.
Personal opinion:
Love Letter is as simple as brilliant.
When someone enthusiastically told me about this game and mentioned it only had 16 cards, I said: “How can it be great with such low amount of cards…”. But the game is a bit different every time you play it and it always brings fun to the table.
To win a round you have to play strategically. You can have some bad luck with the cards but in general you win by strategy.
The rounds are very short. When you are out of the round you only have to wait 1 or 2 minutes for the next round because it’s a quick game.
It’s playabe with 2 but the more players the better because it brings more variety to the game.
The box is small so you can bring it wherever you want when you know you have to kill some time.
Dave
Previous reviews:
Card games:
The Game
Dice games:
Qwixx
Gambling games:
Manila