LOVE LETTER
Alderac Entertainment Group - 2012
picture from BoardGameGeek.com
It’s easy to think that the best board games come in the biggest boxes. The more components and the bigger the rule book then the more complex the game must be, which would require greater strategy and skill to play. That is not necessarily true, however. As the saying goes - big things come in little packages. Love Letter is about as small a package you can get when it comes to board games, the entire game fits in a small red velvet bag that comes with it. Its size is one of the major reasons I always include Love Letter on lists of my favorite games.
The goal of Love Letter is to deliver your expression of love to the Princess. You can’t always personally deliver it to her, so you must use people within her castle to deliver it for you. There are guards you can send, a baron, priest, prince, even the king. This is played out in the game using a set of fairly simple rules First, everyone starts with 1 card in their hand. On your turn, you draw 1 card. You then choose one of the 2 cards to play in front of you. The round ends when there are no cards left to draw or if all but 1 player have been eliminated from the round. All cards have a number and text on them that describes an action to take when the card is played, many of which result in eliminating a player from the round. For instance, the Guard card says that when played you may choose a player and name a card, if that player has said card then they are eliminated from the round. There’s also The Baron, when played, you and another player compare hands and the player with the lowest number is eliminated. There are cards that force players to trade hands, discard their hand and draw a new card, and a few other interesting actions.
I’m not a huge fan of social deduction games like The Resistance or Werewolf, but I do like the idea of having to use deduction as a game mechanic. Love Letter does this really well because it doesn’t rely on a player’s ability to act or lie, it relies on a player’s attentiveness to the game and knowledge of the cards. Any game that keeps players engaged on other player’s turns gets a lot of praise from me. Many games suffer from being basically a solitaire game with many people playing. Other games may suffer from runaway winner syndrome, where someone is clearly in line for victory. Love Letter is just the right mix of skill and luck that one person winning a few rounds in a row doesn’t necessarily give them an in-game advantage. In Monopoly the person with a lot of property early in the game is primed for victory. In Risk, the person with border and choke point control in certain areas has a leg up over everyone else. There have been many times in Love Letter where I’ve been had 3 out of the 4 round victories I needed to win but still ended up losing.
Love Letter is an excellent travel game as well. As I stated before, the game comes with a small velvet pouch in which all the game’s components fit. You could easily just throw it in your pocket and take it everywhere with you if you wanted. I’ve played with friends at bars, cafes, waiting for public transportation, the park, in the car, there are few places I can think of where you couldn’t play.
It’s a small, simple, and exciting little game. There are a lot of great games that come in massive boxes. Twilight Imperium is the biggest box I own and it’s a fantastic game, but it rarely hits the table because it takes literally 8 hours to finish. The box for Gloomhaven is absolutely massive, and it’s a great game, but it’s also often over $100. It’s true what I said before, the bigger the box the more components you get, the more rules to remember, but also, the deeper your pockets need to be. Love Letter fits in your pocket, doesn’t have many rules or components, but has plenty of strategy and is only about $10. It’s arguably the biggest bang for your buck because there’s almost no restrictions for when, where, and who can play. There’s no reason to not have it as part of your collection.