Normally I don’t move out of the realm of gaming and technology but every now and then something comes along that catches my eye and I just have to talk about it. In this instance, it’s a game of sorts, although it doesn’t require a controller or a monitor with a decent refresh rate. Get ready to go old school as we check out the Aussie-made card game called “Lady’s Choice”.
The basic premise of the game is to impress the lady enough to win her hand in marriage.
It’s a game of English Gentlemen in the 1890s all playing for the affection of a lady, The Catch or Catches depending on the number of players. She is looking for the “dandiest” suiter and players need to show off their best attributes while trying to disguise their flaws in the hope that the Lady will choose them.
As the designers of the game will tell you “Lady’s Choice is a light bluffing game about the ugly side of romance.”
The game can be played from 2 to 9 players, but the optimal number is somewhere in the middle. The rules change depending on how many players you have, the 2 to 6 players version, and the 4 to 9 that have some additional rules which all help the game flow better under those different circumstances. The rules all come in the box as booklets that are easy to follow for a quick set-up.
In many ways, the game plays out like a confusing game of poker as you attempt to combine luck with a good bluff to win. You hide your cards only revealing them at certain moments of the game and then at the end the winner is decided by the catch but this is after the three phases of play, The Setup, Romance and then the Proposal phase where each player ends up paired unless you have an odd amount of players in which case the “Happily Single” card comes into play.
The combination of the rules and a very well put-together video by Love 2 Hate to explain how to play really helped with the learning process of playing Lady’s Choice, and from there as you gather more people in to play it can take a few rounds to get everyone playing with confidence but once they get it, it’s a hard game to put down.
The game is actually really funny, in a similar way that party games like “Cards against Humanity” and “Exploding Kittens” make you laugh out loud. The humour in Lady’s Choice comes from the card combinations and discovering the character that you become or the players characters that you meet across the table.
The artwork brings the game to life as it captures the era perfectly, but also with modern undertones that bring out the comedy aspect. The cards are printed in a way that everything feels like it comes from another time. If you found it in an old drawer or sitting on a coffee table at someone’s house you’d be forgiven for thinking it was “vintage”.
Lady’s Choice is a really great execution of an idea and we found that the more confident we became with the rules, the more fun we started to have. In the beginning, we were constantly referring to the rule book and scratching heads over card types, but after the “learning phase,” we really had a lot of fun and even more healthy laughs.
There are many ways to play this game for free, but I’d highly recommend spending the small amount of money on purchasing and supporting the creators with a properly printed version of “Lady’s Choice” here.
