Description
Designed by Uwe Rosenberg
Limits is the game of taking it to the edge!
Each colour can only be played a certain amount of times before its limit gets broken. Keep track of how many cards have been played of that colour and call out the person who went over the brink! If you’re right you’ll score high and cost them points, but be prepared to face the consequences if you are wrong!
The catch is that each player gets to secretly increase one limit at the start of the round, so you can never be sure just when someone goes over the edge. Are you ready to take it to the limit?
* memory reinforcement
* hand management
* probability and strategy
Ages 8 to adult, 2 – 6 players, 45 minutes playing time.
REVIEW by Ben Rainbird
I hadn’t before heard of Uwe Rosenberg, but a quick bit of Internet research reveals he’s responsible for quite a few interesting card games, Limits among them, and judging from its quality I’d certainly like to try some more!
The game is played in rounds. Each round, up to 6 players are each dealt five coloured cards, and a Limit card is turned face up. The Limit card shows how many cards of each colour (five different colours in the game) can be played in that round, and the goal is to try and catch out the other players when they break the limit.
Everyone places one of their colour cards face-down in front of them. Each of these cards raises the limit for that colour by one, and only the player who placed it knows what colour their card is. Then they take it in turn to play their colour cards onto an ever-growing deck in the middle of the table, which continues until one player suspects another of breaking the limit for the colour they’ve just played, wherupon they call out and stop the game.
The cards in the deck are taken out and counted, and if the challenge is correct, the challenging player gets a ‘+1’ point card. If, however, the challenge is wrong and the other player hasn’t broken the limit, then the challenging player takes a ‘-2’ point card, which can seriously damage their score.
The next round begins with a new Limit card, and play continues until all of them have been used up, at which point everyone totals up their scores and determines the winner.
Memory is one of your best weapons in Limits. As the deck of colour cards grows ever higher, so it becomes harder to remember how many cards of each colour have been placed. And of course, you can only see the card at the very top of the pile. However, the secret card play at the beginning of the round makes this more than a mere memory game, and adds a dimension of bluffing to the proceedings.
As I mentioned before, each player plays one colour card face down at the beginning of the game, and each card raises the limit of its colour by one. So a player might see his opponent break the limit and challenge him on it, only to find that the other player’s secret card is the same colour, resulting in an incorrect challenge and a nasty -2 point card.
Equally, a player might break the limit and find his opponent reluctant to challenge him, believing that his secret card has raised the limit for that colour. I like the bluffing (even though I’m terrible at it) and the growing deck of colour cards certainly gives the memory a workout. And it has revealed to me that I’m not a terribly good card counter, if the number of points cards my girlfriend amassed during our play tests is anything to go by.
Despite finding myself utterly destroyed by a superior intellect in three consecutive games, I like Limits. It’s easy to teach, the rules are presented very straightforwardly (and in three languages), and although the instructions don’t mention it, the length of the game can easily be adjusted by adding or removing Limit cards. In all, Limits is a fun mixture of memory, bluff and smugness.
Distributed by David Westnedge Ltd., London.
