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Quick Look: Ultimatch
Designers: Justin De Witt, Anne-Marie De Witt
Graphic Designer: Justin De Witt
Publisher: Fireside Games
Year Published: 2024
Cooperate to match cards and make your way up the pyramid as a team in this exciting, colorful, addictive game. Make clever matches by number or color. Will you use 1 card or 2? Addition or subtraction? Mix colors (yellow + blue = green)? Will you risk a card now or save it for later? Can you guess what card the other player needs? Make a perfect match of both number and color to feel the thrill and gain the rewards of an Ultimatch!
Ultimatch includes both public and private cards and requires the kind of clever decision making about when to use cards that seasoned card players enjoy. Silently trading 1 card facedown with 1 other player keeps all players engaged throughout, introduces a push-your-luck element, and calls on players to read each other. Will you risk trading a card with another player? If so, who is likely to know what you need? Is your card better to keep for later use? The thinking goes quickly as do the turns. Every match is a mini-win, and win or lose, players keep coming back for more.
Review:
Overview:
Card games tend to be fairly short and simple (I know, I’ve designed a few) so I went into Ultimatch with this expectation. I’m also not a real fan of cooperative games, but I’ll play them. After reading the rules, the game seemed a little intriguing. I wondered how easy it would be to win the game, seemed easy, but looks can be deceiving. The game was enjoyable, and is a good ice-breaker or more party type game; however, I am more likely to play it as a solitaire game.
The rule book is a simple quad-fold single sheet of paper, but that is all that is needed to fully explain the game, provide examples, and describe alternate play options. The rule book provides Setup instructions, How to Play instructions, Match examples, and Game End conditions. The instructions are easy to follow and the ruleset is easy to teach and remember.
The setup is simple, not time consuming, and based on the number of players. Start by shuffling the cards and then lay out a pyramid structure of 5 or 6 rows, with only the bottom row face up. Then deal each player a number of cards based on the player count. The players then contribute 1 card to an Alta Hand available to all players. A Start Player is then determined/chosen.
Ultimatch doesn’t really have a theme, it is basically a match game. The main mechanic is to match cards based on color, number, or both with the ultimate goal of clearing the tableau of cards from the play area.
Gameplay:
Ultimatch is played over an indeterminate number of rounds. Players take turns playing 1 or 2 cards from their hand, from the Alta Hand, or from both to match the color, number, or both of a face-up card in the pyramid tableau. If the color and number match, the player has performed an Ultimatch, which allows the player to draw 2 cards and add 1 to their hand and 1 to the Alta Hand. If a face down card is freed because the match removed a cover card, that card is turned face up.
If a player can make a match, they must make the match, unless the only option is using cards from the Alta Hand. If a player can’t make a match and does not want to use cards from the Alta Hand, they can pass. In this case the player simply draws a card to their hand and ends their turn.
If all players pass in succession, the game ends in a loss. If players are able to remove all the cards from the tableau, the game end in victory.
I really like the card layout. You can tell very quickly what color the card is, and the numbers are large and highly readable. In addition, the numbers in the corners have an outline of the first letter of the color surrounding them, thus you can also match by that if colorblindness is a hinderance. Also, the secondary colors have letters of the primary colors that make up that color on the card as well. If that’s not enough, each of the colors has a distinct and different background that can also be used to match.
It is fairly hard to get an Ultimatch for some combinations. For primary colors, since there is only 1 of each number (1-8) in the color, only 2 Ultimatches are mathematically possible. For example, if I use a Blue 2 with a Blue 5 to Ultimatch a Blue 7, the only other Ultimatch for Blue is 1 and 3 to Ultimatch 4. There are, however, more Ultimatches for the secondary colors, but each Ultimatch reduces the likelihood of an Ultimatch for the primary colors.
Some may find it difficult to remember that number subtraction is a possibility in the game, I know I did. Most gamers are used to mix and match by putting bits and pieces together, thus gamers are conditioned to the additive principle. Subtracting is a less common concept for games. It’s not that subtraction is bad, just that it’s less common and will take some effort to remember.
The box insert can be a bit unwieldy. The box size is more consistent with a larger card or multi-deck game, but Ultimatch is only a single deck. The game comes with an insert to hold the cards in place in the bigger box. This is a bit of wasted space and can sometimes be hard to extract from the larger box. Also, cards can slip under the edges and if you are not careful, they can be left behind when pulling out the cards.
I enjoyed playing Ultimatch; although, I would have preferred to have more cards and more options in the game, sort of an extended version of the game. There is a bit of strategy in that the game is cooperative so you don’t want to mess up your fellow players, but if all players don’t plan well, you can quickly get to a point where everyone passes and the game ends. This game will be on my shelf as an ice breaker game, a lite game for a younger audience, or for anytime I want to play a good solitaire type game.
Players Who Like:Card games, matching games, cooperative games, and even solitaire games
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Thomas Shepherd – Reviewer
Grew up loving to solve puzzles, play games. In younger years he had fun playing pencil games, playing D&D with friends, and hanging out with others. His favorite thing to do was to make puzzles, mazes, word games, picture games, etc. Sadly his career took him in a different direction. Gaming came back into his life, though, about 15 years ago & held onto it since. He enjoys designing games and has 9 published titles, through, Toresh Games. Sadly he wasn’t able to sustain the company. He would love to see a return to games as the best social media platform for the masses.
See Thomas Shepard’s Reviews HERE.