Panda Spin by Carl Chudyk
Panda Spin was introduced to me as a trick-taking game, but here’s where the nomenclature gets a little muddy. When I was a lad, trick-taking meant that game of Knockout Whist that my nan taught me, or the game of Hearts bundled with Windows that I nearly played as much as Minesweeper.
In my day, a “trick” was what happened when somebody with the lead played a card, everyone else played cards in turn (following suit if possible) and when everyone had played one card and exactly one card, you determine who won the trick, and they would lead the next.
This isn’t that - this is something else. Your aim, akin to games like Tichu or, more recently, Scout, is to get rid of your hand by playing a set of cards as if you’re throwing down a gauntlet. Here’s what I’ve got - can you beat it? If no-one can, you retain the lead to play again.
I might lead a single card, then all you have to do is play a higher card. But maybe it would be better for me to lead a pair, a three-of-a-kind, or a run. You could beat my humble 3 played alone, but could you beat a pair of them? And if you do, this isn’t one-and-done - I still have this pair of Kings to maybe beat your response and win the trick.
Or I could have another kind of out in my hand - a bomb or an element card. Bombs are a 4-of-a-kind (or more!) that beats any other type of hand and can only be beaten by bigger or better bombs making them super flexible. You get to be that kid in the playground who always, whilst playing rock-paper-scissors, chooses shotgun!
Element cards on the other hand are an optional inclusion that deserve their own section.
Unleash the elements
You might wish to teach the game at first without them, but elements carry their own mini-game into the mix, and are well worth it. They can only be played under certain conditions, and they instantly win the trick if so, but there’s a cost. In a game about shedding your hand having a weapon which instantly wins a trick, giving you the lead to do as you please, is certainly powerful - but the 2 cards you draw from the deck as a cost can be a heavy burden.
Take Wood for example. Playable only if someone has played an Ace or a 2 to the trick, Wood can win tricks that otherwise look unwinnable. Do you want to play your Wood early to give yourself time to plan around the impact of drawing 2 extra cards, or do you wait, holding on to that Wood to give anyone counting on winning a trick with a high card a reason to fear you?
Left: Metal 2 from Panda Spin
Right: Dragon from Tichu
An aside on that Two. Rendered in Chinese to clue you in to the fact that something is up, the 2 is re-ordered compared with the traditional card ranking in a lovely piece of design reminiscent of the special Dragon card in Tichu - as an individual card the 2 is the highest ranked card in the game beating even the Ace, but it’s not eligible for runs, making the best 3-card run you could play a Q-K-A.
But maybe… you were playing to lose?
Finally. The unique part of Panda Spin. The Spin! These cards have 2 sides. On their original white side, they’re just a regular set of cards, ranked 3 through Ace (with that disconnected 2 on top), in 5 different suits, and you use one suit (optionally with its corresponding element card) per player.
The Fire Suit - 3 through Ace with the 2 sitting special on the end, and that Panda peeking from the Jack.
But those suits really come into their own when we look at the other side of the card - the blue side that you can spin in to either as part of picking up your defeated white cards, or potentially as a special reward for playing a card with a Panda symbol on. Pandas hang out on the Jacks on the white side of every suit, another clever design choice, as the Jack is not so weak that you’ll rarely play a panda when you want to, neither is it too powerful that you’re getting the Panda for free on top of a very good card.
What the Ace of each suit flips into on the blue side. In a great touch of visual design, the white side already shows you a preview of what the blue side contains, no need to flip your hand just to check.
The 5 suits have a different personality on the blue side. Metal spins into cards that are built-in pairs or triples - yes, a single card can by itself be a 3-of-a-kind - which makes building bombs much easier! Water brings a wild ability, filling the gaps in your hand to make runs and formations easier, but cannot be used to make bombs. Fire can burn away other cards in your hand, giving you a way to remove weak cards without having to actually play them. Wood provides additional point-scoring opportunities, and finally Earth brings more pandas to bear, which, depending on your game mode, can spin more cards or provide point-stealing opportunities.
To access the powerful blue side of the card you need to lose a trick in which you only played cards white-side-up. And there, dear reader, is the crux of the matter. When you selected that 3-4-5 run of cards, you knew there’s a chance I would be able to beat it. Are you baiting me into breaking up an 7-8-9-10-J run to try to take the lead from you, only for you to overplay with a Q-K-A to retain the lead? Or did you play that 3-4-5 with no follow-up, because next round that 3 will have flipped into a triple-6 to go with the remaining 6 in your hand and create a 6-bomb? It’s this combination of strategy and mind game that really got its hooks into me.
My opponent has played 3-4-5. Do I play 9-10-J now or save 7-8-9-10-J for later?
Ideal player count?
Panda Spin is excellent at all player counts, but the game does bend a little to accommodate them. Bombs are more likely to be dealt naturally with 5 people compared to 4, but it’s impossible with 3. That’s just a fact of the numbers which slightly changes the character of the game, just not in a way that makes me prefer one or the other.
The game itself is more varied though with 3 players, as with 5 players you must play the entire deck, but with 3 players only 3 of the 5 suits are used. Every 5 player game is thus mechanically similar with the variation coming from the deal and how your opponents play, whilst the 3-player game effectively has 10 related variants to play. Your strategy may vary based on whether the bomb-building Metal suit is even in the game.
Finally on scoring - each hand you will score points equal to the highest number of cards left in hand amongst all your opponents, capped at 7. With 5 people in the mix there seemed to be a high chance that going out was worth the maximum 7 points, as some poor soul at the table would struggle to get in on a hand and begin shedding cards before someone would go out. With fewer people the hands were faster but reaching the 15 point threshold to win took more hands, making the whole experience take a roughly consistent amount of real time, making Panda Spin…
A great game for downtimes and lunchtimes
The main reason we came back to Panda Spin again and again over the year was just how neatly it fit my group for that lunchtime period. The amount of re-learning to remind yourself how to play the game is pretty minimal (no runny twos!), and the stories that come from that play is high value return on investment. I haven’t even mentioned how gorgeous yet functional the art is, and if you are lucky enough to find a deluxe edition with the shiny blue backs you’re in for a treat.
I fell pretty hard for the intricacies within Panda Spin, and sure, adding a new player to the group might have made them dizzy for a moment, but they soon got the hang of it. Or is that my secret… I’m always dizzy!
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Game details
Panda Spin on BGG
Designer - Carl Chudyk
Artist - CMYM, Wenjue Zhuang