Game Review Times Two: Mow / Escalation!

By W. Eric Martin
November 12, 2008

Publisher: Hurrican Games / Z-Man Games
Designer: Bruno Cathala / Reiner Knizia
Players: 2-5 / 2-6
Ages: 7+ / 10+
Playing Time: 15-30 minutes / 15 minutes
Rules Language: English, German and French / English
Price: €8 / $10
Links: Mow – / Escalation –
Times played: Mow – 7, with 2-4 players / Escalation! – 40+, with all numbers from 2 to 6

The more games you play, the more familiar new games will seem to you. You’ll hear the rules for the brand new, never-before-seen Game X and immediately parse the game as 60% Claim the King’s Throne, 30% Control the Galactic Empire and 10% new stuff. Whether this development is good or bad will depend on the tastes of your game group, your desire for newness, your outlook on life, whether you were breastfed as an infant, and various other factors.

I’ve already seen Mow, a new card game from Bruno Cathala that was released in limited numbers at Spiel 08 in October from Hurrican Games, being referred to by several people as similar to 6 Nimmt!, but Reiner Knizia’s Escalation! is much closer to being Mow‘s cardy cousin. Here’s an edited description of that earlier game from a first impression that I published in March 2007:

Escalation! includes 56 cards; most of the cards are numbered from 1-13, with a single 1 card, five 2s, a half-dozen 3s through 6s, then down to two 13s. The game also includes two neighborhood watch cards and three wild cards, numbered 1-7 because they can represent any number in that range.

The theme of the game is suburban warfare, and the cards represent this through the artwork, such as a child with a Super Soaker, an old man in a scooter with a gun rack, and grenade launcher-wielding grandma. In gameplay terms, you want to keep ahead of the Joneses by playing more valuable cards than they do.

Players start with a hand of six cards. On a turn, a player plays one or more cards to the center of the table; if you play multiple cards, they must all be the same value. You announce the total value of the cards you play – a single 7 is only “seven” while three 2s would be “six” – and the total that you play must be higher than the previously announced total. Alternatively, you can play a neighborhood watch card and announce the total played by the previous player. After playing, you refill your hand to six cards.

When a player can’t or chooses not to beat the previously announced value, he takes all of the cards from the center of the table, turns them face-down in front of him, and starts another round of play. Play continues until one player runs out of cards. The game ends immediately, and anyone with cards still in hand places them on his or her face-down stack. Players then count the number of cards in their stack (ignoring the values), and the player with the fewest cards wins. You can also play multiple rounds, one for each player, summing the totals as you go.

Surprisingly (or not), I did relate Escalation! to 6 Nimmt! in that write-up, but only because you lose control in both games as additional players join the table. Instead of playing certain cards during a turn with the idea of following with a particular card on the subsequent turn, you’re concerned more about simply skirting catastrophe and letting someone else eat the cards.

Mow plays like a two-dimensional Escalation! as instead of simply piling up numbers and trying to be king of the hill, players lay out numbered cards in a line and on each turn, you are trying to play a card that’s higher or lower than the cards already in play. If you can’t do so (or choose not to), you must take those cards, then start a new line. The cards in the deck range from 1 to 15 with a slight bell curve in terms of their distribution: a single 1, two 2s, three 3s, three 4s, and so on with a peak of four 7s, 8s and 9s. These cards have 0-3 flies on them, and your goal is to collect as few flies as possible. The game lasts multiple rounds, ending when one player collects 100 flies, and whoever has the fewest flies wins.

As with Escalation!, Mow is an exercise in card counting, hand management and probability: Have the highest and lowest cards been played? Am I stifling myself in future rounds by playing high/low cards now? Would it be better to eat a few flies now in order to start a new line and ditch a three-fly 9 that otherwise can’t be played? Whereas in Escalation! you weigh the merits of playing, say, a 10 versus two 5s – How many of each have been played, and what are the odds of drawing a match compared to opening two spots or one in my hand? – in Mow you’re deciding whether to ditch cards in the center of the number line before they become unplayable (despite giving opponents more playing potential) against playing a card near the end of the line to shut down their hand. Small decisions all, but the decisions are there.

The end of the round punishment in Mow matches that of Escalation! – add the cards in your hand to your pile of collected cards – but since those cards vary in point value, you have more to consider once the end of the round nears.

Just as Escalation! has its neighborhood watch and wild cards, Mow has a half-dozen special cards that break the basic number line of the rest of the deck. Those cards are:

• A 0 and 16, which serve as endcaps on the line.
• A 7 and 9, which can be played only on top of a 7 or 9 already in play.
• Two cards that can be played between two others in line, assuming there’s a gap.

Wags have summarized the strategy for both games in simple terms – “draw high cards” for Escalation!, for example – but after more than forty playings of Escalation! and 20-30 rounds of Mow I can say that there’s more to the game than good drawing. As mentioned earlier, memory, probability and hand management all come into play, making it impossible to fall into default strategies of always playing particular cards in particular situations. What’s been played previously, how much of the deck remains, who’s taken the most points in this round and over the entire game, how much do your opponents gamble – all of these factors come into play to determine what you should play when.

One drawback of Mow is that the cards lack a linen finish; after seven games, with 3-4 rounds in each game, my cards have developed a slightly gummy feel, despite the decent grooming habits of me and my opponents. (The cards in Escalation!, by comparison, have developed split corners and bends over 40+ games, which seems like a reasonable amount of wear.) Yves Menu at Swissgames says that the company plans to release Mow on a wider basis in the future; ideally the next version will include a two-part box with sturdy cards so that the game can become a rotating member in my line-up of “coat pocket” games, which includes titles like Zirkus Flohcati, No Thanks! and, yes, Escalation! that I can teach to newbies in a few minutes in random social situations.

Mow‘s other drawback is that the two-player rules graft a slot machine feel onto the game. Instead of a head-to-head duel, the two players add an imaginary third player to the game, flipping a card from the top of the deck to represent his plays – if the card fits into the line, you add it; otherwise, you pile it on the side. Whenever one player does take the line, she also takes this extra pile of cards.

While players can make unexpected plays in Mow – jumping far down the number line, or breaking out a special card in the early part of the round – the random card play by this stand-in derails your efforts to set up future turns. The game feels more arbitrary and less strategic because it is, unlike Escalation! which sticks to the duel format that you’d expect with two players, a format that lets you count cards more effectively and anticipate moves from the other side of the table with greater accuracy. I’ve played two-player Mow with the imaginary player and with a strict duel format, and the latter is much preferred for all the same reasons that make 2P Escalation! enjoyable. Yes, one player might score more special cards, but those don’t guarantee success, just as they don’t in Knizia’s game.

Both Escalation! and Mow are light and move quickly, and luck does play a factor as you’ll sometimes draw (or not draw) precisely the card that you need on the next turn. Accept that as a given, as is the case in many card games, and you’ll have a fun time fighting off the flies or loading up the weaponry to outshine your neighbors.

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