All I play anymore is trick-taking games.

At times, that feels like an invitation to make me regret what little time I have left on this Earth.

Shards of Creation is the latest unfortunate example. Designed by Hayden Dillard, it fails to utilize the past decade of sound tabletop design principles, let alone the trick-taking revolution that has produced so many wonderful trifles. It is the anti-trick-taker, the title I would place before someone I was hoping to dissuade from getting into the hobby.

Playing some cards. Grudgingly.

Before we discuss Shards of Creation, there’s something I need to get out of the way. This thing is nominally based on Brandon Sanderson’s fantasy novels. Now, I’ve read a few Sandersons in my time, and even enjoyed one or two, although I wouldn’t label myself a fan. When it comes to the Cosmere, the shared setting for most of his novels, I know very little. Perhaps the Shattering of the Adonalsium is meant to be represented as a capricious slog, a lanced blister in the form of a creation myth. If that’s the case, then Shards of Creation is an accurate and lore-appropriate depiction.

I have my doubts.

As a trick-taker, Shards of Creation is relatively boilerplate. Somebody plays a card. Everybody else follows that card’s suit. The high card wins.

Of course, there’s a trump suit. Depending on player count, each session uses either four or five suits from a selection of eight. Three of these, drawn at random, will function as trump suits over the game’s three rounds.

Except right away, there are some big problems. The first is the rulebook, which doesn’t bother to state who leads most tricks, at least not in the actual rules. Without diving into the examples of play, it’s impossible to discern the designer’s intentions without making some big assumptions that may or may not be true.

That’s a nitpick, albeit one that demonstrates a lack of care that extends to everything else in Shards of Creation. The bigger issue dwarfs the first: everything depends on the luck of the draw. And I mean everything.

Choosing which suits we’ll use this session.

The first time I tried a trick-taker, as an adult who’d been kept safely away from playing cards for all of my nineteen years, the pursuit struck me as pointless. Wouldn’t the contest naturally be won by whomever had drawn the most hearts? Modern trick-taking design goes to great lengths to ensure this isn’t the case. Heck, ancient trick-taking design did the same. It isn’t often that trick-takers, whether new or old, are won by sheer quantity of tricks won.

Shards of Creation goes the other direction. Winning tricks is everything. That’s because the winner of each trick gets to select a card to add to their scoring pile. This pile produces the points that will matter when the game concludes after three rounds. The more cards you’ve claimed, the more scoring opportunities you have, whether by collecting as many cards within a suit as possible or collecting sets.

Of course, this is already obnoxious. Drawing a bunch of trumps means you’ll take significantly more cards. And since there aren’t many opportunities to poison the well — only one suit subtracts points — this is almost always an unvarnished positive.

At the same time, a whole bunch of card effects ask players to draw new cards during the round. On the one hand, this churns the hand a little bit, perhaps dulling the sting of a bad draw. (Provided your bad draw included cards that would let you churn your hand, hardly a guarantee.) Except this also turns Shards of Creation into a slog, players regularly pausing mid-trick to draw and discard, steal and draw and discard, draw and sum ranks… basically, Shards of Creation pulls out every method for slowing itself to a crawl.

Put together, this makes Shards of Creation straightforwardly dull but chancy but slow. It’s a trifecta of bad trick-taking.

Accumulating a win pile.

Again, I know next to nothing about the Cosmere. I don’t know why Honor is so ineffectual. I don’t know who shaved the evil runic lettering into the evil Dominion guy’s haircut. I don’t know why Ruin is presided over by an angry Irishman.

But I do know that this is one of the worst trick-takers I’ve ever played. Take it from someone who only plays trick-takers anymore: there are countless better options out there.

A complimentary copy of Shards of Creation was provided by the publisher.

(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. Right now, supporters can read the next installment in my series Talking About Games, this time tackling the topic of what makes a good list! Naturally, the piece includes a list.)