The current locus for per-ounce innovation in tabletop is trick-taking, and I’m not sure there’s a finer example of how far the genre punches above its weight than Power Vacuum. Designed by Kaleb Wentzel-Fisher and published and illustrated by Malachi Ray Rempen — who gave us the imperfect but charming Roll Camera! — this one provides suited cards by way of The Death of Stalin. It’s viciously good.

Taking tricks in Soviet, um, Best Buy.

The Supreme Appliance has finally kicked the bucket. Now the entire cabinet of lesser devices is jockeying to succeed the old bastard. Yeah, yeah, so Power Vacuum is really leaning into that pun. Here’s the good news: this marriage of Wentzel-Fisher’s sinister gameplay and Rempen’s dainty illustrative style is far more natural than any socialist fraternal kiss.

As a trick-taking game, Power Vacuum sticks to the basics. There are four main suits, each corresponding to a mode of influence that dominates Soviet Russia the appliance cabinet, ranging from simple, honest cash to media and bureaucracy. Unlike most trick-takers, the reverse side of each card also shows its suit. At a glance, it’s apparent that your rival cabinet members are in control of the news or the trains. It’s never been easier to plot a hand that will prevent your rivals from taking advantage of your cards.

Except, of course, that isn’t true. Before the rules explanation wraps up, things get sticky — and the first tidbits of commentary begin to leak in. The fourth suit represents violence. This is also the game’s trump suit, and it tends to barge into the room with loaded Kalashnikovs. So much for getting the trains running. Like the other suits, you can see when your rivals are holding onto those red violence cards. The problem is figuring out how to play your cards in such a way that they won’t simply march in and put a Makarov to your head.

Except, again, that isn’t the end of it. Rather than pretending a cannon is truly the final argument of kings, Wentzel-Fisher sneaks a fifth suit into the mix. There are only four of the things, sneaky buggers with false backs for giving your fellow players the impression that you aren’t actually holding one of them. These are spies, and they’re something of a provisional trump suit. As in, they won’t beat anything other than violence. But when it comes to violence, they’re trump-trumpers. When a rival appliance swaggers into the room with blood on their thoughts, there’s nothing quite like the turnabout of watching their henchmen turn heel. Oh yes. Sweet betrayal.

Purely as a trick-taking game, then, Power Vacuum presents its political machinations as a vicious circle. It provides an uncommon amount of information via its visible card backs, only to upend the process entirely with interlocking trumps.

And that’s before we consider the real thrust of the game.

The control board is approximately as reliable as a Soviet power grid.

At the start of each round, everybody draws a secret agenda. These show two of the game’s five appliances. When the round concludes, your objective is to ensure that one of them has the most power and the other has the least — although you’re free to choose which is which. The facilitator of these exchanges is the control board, a wheel showing the relative wattage of each appliance, metered via little lightning bolts.

Such transferences of power are dead simple. After each and every trick, whomever played the low card gets to make an exchange. The big limitation is that they can only move a single volt between whichever two outlets are currently plugged in. Afterward, they get to swap one of the plugs. Each movement is therefore both payoff and setup, alternating the standing between appliances and preparing the two that will be connected on the next trick.

For such a straightforward system, there are nuances aplenty. It’s possible to reveal your agenda, publicly declaring which appliance you support — and by extension, which one you’re hoping to zero out — but this comes with risks of its own. Revealing early may net more points, but also opens you up to rival tinkering, especially since revealing your agenda also requires that you declare which appliances you’re helping or hindering. Similarly, it’s crucial to note that the appliances on the control board don’t exist within their own power vacuum — they’re you, the players, and everybody claims the power piled on top of them when the round ends. So while you’re free to redirect voltage as you see fit, there’s an element of self-interest to consider. It might be easier to ensure you have the lowest power at the end of the round, but why not go the other way? Doing so will be riskier, but the payoff could catapult you into the lead. Similarly, it’s important to keep track of which appliances are already sitting pretty. If you absolutely must prop up a rival player, it’s worthwhile to make them the round’s winner by as little as possible. That, of course, makes it easier for a meddling opponent to screw up your intended power standings.

Even the game’s scoring system is subtly clever. Rather than having to tally up thirty-eight lightning bolts versus thirty-six every time you want to check who’s in the lead, everyone’s goal is to assemble a self-aggrandizing statue in their honor. This is done by exchanging power ten pips at a time for statue pieces. Like everything else in Power Vacuum, these are tooth-achingly sweet, goofball images that lean into the game’s cartoony nature. But they’re also a suitable jab at every other pathetic narcissist who’s erected their own statue or autographed a Bible. If only we were better at recognizing cartoonish narcissism in the real world. Cough cough.

Please don’t say I’m Beria…

Put this all together and you get one heck of a trick-taker. Power Vacuum hits the sweet spot between low complexity and high intrigue, calling to mind some of the best examples of the genre, exemplars such as Ghosts of Christmas, Shamans, and Bug Council of Backyardia. In the process, it demonstrates why trick-taking is having a bit of a renaissance at the moment. The Supreme Appliance is dead. Long live… no, never mind. May we always mock whatever supreme appliances force their way into our lives.

Power Vacuum is on Kickstarter for the next two days. Yes, I’m running behind. LINK.

(If what I’m doing at Space-Biff! is valuable to you in some way, please consider dropping by my Patreon campaign or Ko-fi.)

A prototype copy was temporarily provided.