Malabares Review – Trick-taking, juggling brilliance

Ladies, gentlemen, children, and everyone in between. Roll up, roll up! We have a brand new Lacerda game to look at today. That’s right, a new Lacerda game, and it’s a Lacerda game you probably haven’t even heard of, let alone played. Malabares is here, and it’s brilliant. Read on to find out more!

Okay, first of all, apologies for the clickbaity intro. When a name like ‘Lacerda’ is on the box, a game gets a lot of attention. Vital Lacerda’s games get a lot of love, and rightly so. They’re amazing, lavish, heavy Euros which people seek to collect as much as play them. The Lacerda in this case, however, isn’t our friend from Lisbon. The designer in question is Arthur Lacerda, and it’s a name you should pay attention to.

Malabares translates to ‘juggling’ in English, and this is an 18 (plus a few more) card game based around multiple people trying to keep knives and burning torches aloft between them. Accidents happen, though, and items get dropped. It’s a trick-taking game of sorts, with a basic ruleset that belies its tactical nuance and enjoyment.

The idea is pretty simple. Over the course of two rounds, you play a card from your hand (two cards if playing with two players) on your turn. It’s a must-follow game, so if someone plays a torch, you have to play a torch if you can. When everyone has played, the person who played the highest-value card into the trick chooses a card from the ‘in the air’ market, which is a selection of cards which is always one fewer than the number of cards in the trick. In descending order, the others do the same, but the player who played the lowest card has nothing left to pluck from the air and add to their hand. Instead, they take the highest value card from the trick and place it in front of them. It fell to the ground, in the game’s parlance.

You keep doing this until you reach the end-of-round trigger, which is one player having a certain number of cards left in hand (two in 2-player, one in 3-player). Then all the dropped cards in front of you, and all of the cards left in your hand, are scored. There’s a daytime and a nighttime performance, so each card has two different point values.

Keeping all the balls in the air

On the surface, it sounds like a simple game. And in fairness, the rules really are simple. You can easily teach someone how to play in a couple of minutes. Once you have a couple of games under your belt, that’s when – in the spirit of all the best trick-taking games – it really opens up, and you start to understand how to play. Malabares, much like real juggling I expect (I’m terrible at juggling), is about thinking ahead.

The cards you end the daytime round with are the same cards you start the nighttime round with, so there’s that to consider straight away. Cards also have a top (light) and a bottom (dark) end. Any cards you haven’t played in the current round are great in theory, as it’s hidden information, and the other players have no idea what you have left to play. These cards are dark-side up, though, and worth negative points at the end of the round. Hey, if you’re doing a combined juggling act, it’s only fair that you throw everything from your side in at least once, right?

Anything you pick up from the table, either ‘from the air’ as a reward, or those dropped on the floor, go light-side up. At least they’re not negative points, but at the same time, savvy players can make sure the only things being dropped on your toes are worth nothing. There’s also another sneaky little thing thrown into the mix, as if you didn’t already have enough to consider. There’s a single, green, ‘club’ card.

If you have the club card at the end of the performance, it’s worth negative points, regardless of it being dark or light. However, if you find yourself holding the club and either no knives at the end of the daytime performance, or no torches at the end of the nighttime, it’s called a Piolin move, and all of your cards are worth four points each. If you pull it off, it can transform a terrible round into a game-winning one, and it’s immensely satisfying.

Final thoughts

I probably would never have even heard of Malabares or Arthur Lacerda were it not for Ben from Travel Games, who kindly sent me this copy to review. Brazil struggles to get its designers’ games out to the world en masse, and although that’s changing now, thanks to publishers like MeepleBR, a lot of potentially brilliant indie games are doomed to obscurity, in the same way a lot of Japanese games that don’t cause a stir at Tokyo Game Market are.

Put simply, Malabares is excellent. I ended up sleeving it, and I don’t sleeve anything unless I think it’s going to get handled a lot, so that probably tells you all you need to know about how much I like this game. There’s very little to dislike about it. The graphic design is clear, colourful, and cheerful. The rules are extremely easy to understand, and there are even a couple of mini-expansions thrown in. The first adds two more cards and opens the game up to four players, instead of its base two or three player options. The second adds in a new Cobogó (breeze block) card, which replaces the club card, and offers a new, instant win scenario.

Considering this is technically an 18-card micro game, and a trick-taker at that, it manages a very credible job of carrying the theme. You genuinely do have to juggle your cards. They get thrown into the mix, taken back out by someone else. Three cards get thrown into the air, but only two people get to grab one, so one lands on the floor. And I love the idea of suddenly throwing and trying to deal with a breeze block in the Cobogó module. If you manage it, you win!

I was given this copy of the game, but in all honesty, if I hadn’t been given it, and I’d have played it somewhere, I’d have taken my phone out and ordered it right there and then. Super stuff, and yet another designer who’ll doubtless lighten my wallet in the coming years. People in the UK and Europe can order a copy right here from Travel Games. For those of you further afield, check with your favourite importer.

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