Our Bookstore publishing house celebrates its 100th birthday this year and on this occasion has decided to publish the jubilee edition of the game, which has gained a lot of fans with its simplicity and accessibility. I belong to them, so I couldn’t miss the new box, especially the graphics of the incredibly talented Marcin Minor.
New clothes
The box, previously light, now has a dark blue color, while the fish from the previous part has brightened. The cover shimmers beautifully, and I am closer to dark colors, so the packaging looks much better than the previous one.
In the middle we find a deck of cards with numbers from 0 to 9. The value means the number of ravens in our dream, and we want as few as possible. The preparation consists of shuffling the cards, dealing four to the players, and then placing the rest of the cards face down in the center of the table. We reveal the top card and put it next to the deck, starting the discard pile.
Each of his four cards is placed face down in front of him. At the beginning of the game, you can view two of them and you have to remember them. The players will then move sequentially. On your turn, take the top card from the face-down or face-up deck. The first option allows one of two actions. If we do not like the value we have chosen, we put it on the faceup pile, and if we want to keep it, we replace it with one of our four cards. Then we put the replaced one on the uncovered pile. However, by choosing the second option, we can only replace the selected card with one of ours.
The round ends when any player at the start of their turn says “wake up” instead of making a move. Everyone reveals their cards, counts the ravens and writes down the results in the attached notebook. However, the end of the game requires at least one person to exceed one hundred points. Then the one with the lowest score wins.
It may seem that the dream is monotonous and we have no influence on what happens, but there are also special cards in the deck:
– “Choose 1” – a player from the open pile chooses any card and swaps it with one of his own;
– “Take 2” – the player takes two cards from the closed pile, chooses one of them and performs a standard move – swap or put away;
– “Preview 1” – the player may look at one card of any person, facedown;
– “Swap 2” – the player may swap any two cards.
Additional actions can only be taken when one of the listed cards is taken from the pile and placed face up. Otherwise, they are treated as normal cards of the indicated value.
Two types of the highest scoring cards are new. If we have an even number of hourglasses in our dream, their sum is 0, and if they are odd, they are counted normally.
Already seen?
In the new edition, two things have changed in the rules – the aforementioned hourglasses and the “Select 1” cards, which were not present in the previous version. So the change is small in the rules, but the graphics have been redrawn. The illustrations in the jubilee edition are fuller and more interesting. And although the first edition was praised for its graphics, I like the second one more – both the cover and the cards. You can only stick to the embossed numbers and ravens in the corners. Unfortunately, some dents are too strong and they pierce to the other side, which means that with the right light and angle of view you can see the value of the covered card.
The additional rules make little difference. It’s still a fun, good card game that you can play multiple times in a row. And this is written by a person who does not like memory games to which Sen belongs.
Choose your dream
In both versions, there are variants of the game, thanks to which you can diversify subsequent games. In the “Not so scary ravens” option, the player with the most ravens gets no points for them. “Go all out” is a risky game – if someone manages to collect only cards with a value of 9, his result is 0. In the “I know what I have” option, you can get rid of your own cards if you choose two of the same value, but if you we confuse, we choose the additional one from the closed pile. Then we have to remember not four, but five numbers. Moreover, the additional one is a mystery to us, because we choose it blindly.
For owners of both editions of the game, the “Long Sleep” variant has also been prepared. Combine decks from both versions, and instead of four cards at the beginning of the game, everyone gets six and looks at three of them. The rules of “Go big” and “I know what I have” apply, so the situation during such a game changes very quickly.
Double dream?
Is it worth investing in a second box with the first version of the game? It depends. If you like the gameplay and want nothing more from this card game, there is no need to buy a new edition. But if you want to lengthen your dreams and combine your decks, then a second copy will be required. However, if you do not have any version yet, I recommend the latest one. It is prettier, it looks elegant and has a few extra rules.
