REVIEW – My wife and I often have an hour together in the evenings to hang out, and at the end of the day we are often a bit tired. These are the times when we enjoy playing lighter games that allow us to have fun and yet still talk. District Noir is a perfect game for times like this.
What is it?
District Noir is a set collection card game for two players. It takes about 15 minutes to play, its publisher, Pandasaurus Games, says it’s good for ages 10 and up.
What’s in the box?
The game comes with 47 playing cards, two scoring cards (cheat sheets), one token–you flip the token to see who goes first–and a rulebook.
Theme
The players are leaders of two powerful criminal organizations in Hoboken NJ circa 1954. They are each trying to gain influence in order to control the center of Hoboken, District Noir. The theme is very light and easy to forget.
There are three different types of playing cards that the two players are trying to collect:
- Those that numbered 8, 7, 6, and 5 represent various groups within the district whose support the players are trying to gain. Whoever has the most cards for each group will gain that support.
- The green and red cards represent alliances that help you and harm you respectively.
- The cards on the bottom left represent the main parts of town.
Setup
First, discard three cards without revealing them; these are not used during the game. Second, shuffle five cards to each player. Third, place two cards in a line extending from draw pile; the front of the line is the #7 in the picture above, and the #6 is the end. Place the remaining cards into the draw pile.
This starts the first of four rounds, where a round is defined as every time five cards are dealt to each player.
Game play
In most set collection games, players take turns drawing the from the draw pile and discarding into a discard pile. District Noir is different, which is what makes it both fun and challenging. During a round, they do not draw more cards; instead, they take turns playing cards down and extending the end of the line. In the picture above, the first player added the -2 red card, the second added the 6 pink card, and the first added the +2 green card.
The line keeps extending until one player decides to collect five cards from the end of the line and play them down on the table in front of him. These cards will remain face up on the table until they are scored at the end of the game. Each player must collect five cards once (and only once) during each round.
Right about now, you can see the tension in this game: Each player must simultaneously lay down cards that will help himself and cards that will harm their opponent. This is a fun and challenging game mechanic, one that my wife and liked a lot. It is somewhat reminiscent of Guillotine, except that we are creating the line of cards.
When each player has played all five cards into the line and collected cards once, that ends the round. Five more cards are then shuffled to each player.
End game
The game has two end game conditions. The first condition is if one player collects all three of the parts of town cards. If that happens, the game ends immediately and that player wins. The other condition is that all four rounds have been played completely, at which point the draw pile will be empty.
Scoring is simple. Whichever player has the most of each type of the support cards will gain 5, 6, 7 or 8 points respectively. Having one of each type of support cards gives 5 points. The alliance and betrayal cards are scored at face value. The most points win.
Game quality
The artwork on the cards is nice, and somewhat gritty without devolving into anything too seedy. The cards are of made of excellent stock, though they are an odd size, longer than normal playing cards. It’s a pain to shuffle them. The box is extra big and padded with extra cardboard, both of which are unnecessarily wasteful.
What I like
- Simple yet challenging game mechanics
- Enjoyable tension of drawing from the same line
- Clear instructions
- A fun time for two people trying to control the district
What I’d change
- Make the cards a normal size.
- Shrink the box to fit the cards.
Final thoughts
My wife and I like this game. It’s exactly what we want for those times when we are looking to hang out together without thinking too hard. Everything from the art to the materials to the tension in the game mechanics just works. I recommend that you pick up this game.
Price: $15
Where to buy: Amazon or Pandasaurus’ online store
Source: The sample for this review was purchased by James.
