Off With Their Heads Board Game Review

Steve Godfrey
21 hours ago
7 min read

Off With Their Heads

WBG Score: 8

Player Count: 2-4

You’ll like this if you like: Welcome To

This is a review copy. See our review policy here

Welcome to another edition of ‘a game title gets a song stuck in Steve's head.’ This time it’s Don’t Lose Your Head from the musical Six. Which I feel is a nice juxtaposition to the games title and is definitely something you don’t want to say to the Queen of Hearts.

How not to lose your head

Set up by giving each player a sheet and a pencil. Shuffle the deck of cards and give each player nine cards each. Then place the wonderland board on the table and put the Red Queen on the Hearts Space (she has a thing and she’s sticking to it)

The game plays over three rounds and each round consists of seven bouts. At the start of each bout every player chooses a card from their hand to place down on the table. Cards are then revealed and put in order from highest to lowest based on the number on the card and suit using the wonderland board. In the very first bout of the game it will go to hearts, clubs, diamonds and spades. The order will tell you which of the three areas of your sheet would be marking off. The highest card will mark in the top “Meadow” section the lowest in the bottom “Keep” section and the middle cards in the middle “Woods” section. You will play for three rounds each consisting of seven bouts. At the end of a round you will have two cards left in hand that will be kept to one side.

Each area has its own way of marking and scoring and you’ll be writing the number of the card you picked and using the colour of the suit or that card. Aces count as either 1 or 11 and the court cards count as 10 when marking.

The Meadow has five mushrooms each with a number of spaces on them and a points value. You mark your number in the left most space in one of those mushrooms of the same colour as the suit you played. Filling those up will score the indicated points at the end of the game. You must mark from left to right in a mushroom and you can’t use the same number twice in one.

The Woods has a number of different trees and these will circle points values. Filling in all the trees surrounding a value will score those points at the end of the game. If you manage to fill all the trees in this section then you'll score an additional 30 points at the end of the game. Also if you follow the Jabberwock rule and manage to not put two of the same numbers adjacent to each other then you can double your score!.

The Keep will have you filling numbers from either the red or black entrance. Any number can go in these spaces but the numbers you fill out in the spaces with the wreaths will score you that many points at the end. You also get a bonus for reaching the middle space.

To help you out you’ll also be able to gain teacups which you can use to either mark in a different zone or change the colour of your card. There are also eat me biscuits which, when you mark those spaces then let you immediately mark the same card in a different zone. There’s a wonderlandian bonus which is a set collection style bonus.

In each section you can mark off a wonderlandian for completing little mini objectives.

After three rounds the game will end and you score up your points from each section and your wonderlandian bonus. But it is not quite over yet. The six cards that you kept to the side after each round still have a job to do. You take these cards and from them you’ll need to make the best five card poker hand. The better the hand, the more points it’s worth. Then compare hands with the other player and the player with the best gets some additional points.

Don’t lose your head

Off with their heads is a mix of trick taking, poker and roll and write. Which, when you lay it all out like that sounds like a fever dream of board game mechanics, until you remember that it’s set in wonderland and then it all weirdly makes sense. What it actually is a fun and innovative use of what is essentially a standard deck of cards. What’s great about it is that despite the mish mash of mechanisms it all flows really nicely together and yeah, makes sense. You can tell that it’s not just the designers throwing these mechanisms together because they're trying to be edgy or do something wacky to get attention in a genre that's so flooded that you'll need to ride an upside down Toucan to get through it. It’s actually been thought through to make sure that everything works and nothing is wasted.

The perfect example of that is the cards. Rather than having 9 cards just to give you more decision space in what you play, those extra cards are actually put to use at the end of the game and are also a big part of why choosing which cards to use during the round isn't as easy as it seems. Setting those two cards aside for an endgame mini game is a lovely little touch and might even throw a few dilemmas into the mix. It’s all too easy to pick two really good cards at the start of each round and set them aside and stating to yourself that you're not even gonna look at them. That is until you might have to because one of the cards you set aside is gonna be the perfect one to use in that round. Do you risk using it now and getting it back later or keep hold of it and hope that later rounds benefit you more. I also love that it makes future rounds less predictable. Going into the last round of a four player game a total of 16 cards have already been set aside so you have no idea if it’s even possible to get the cards you need to complete your end game poker hand.

Wasteland? I think you mean Wonderland!

Each bout utilises that clever spin on trick taking where your main focus won’t necessarily be on winning the trick. In fact, losing the odd few may actually be exactly what you want. Again, the scope of the decisions this gives you can be pretty vast, well vast for a game like this anyway. You need to consider what area of the board you want to make your mark on (literally) and if you've got a card that can get you in that position. But you also need to factor in the number and the colour you want to write as well. Then there's the current suit order and consideration of what cards your opponents have already played that round. I find that last bit a bit too much for my brain to keep track of but if you can then you have yourself another layer of gameplay my friend. Now, to quote the Rolling Stones ‘you can't always get what you want’ and I suppose this plays into the nature of a lot of trick takers. Playing your highest or lowest card, even if it's the highest or lowest suit won't guarantee you the placement you want. Heck, I've even played hands where I’ve wanted to keep to the middle and ended up playing the highest card! What I’m trying to say is, don't hinge too many of your plans on playing every card exactly where you want and give yourself enough space to be flexible because I'm not gonna lie, it doesn't always feel great when you're constantly being outdone and have to play in the same area when you really want to diversify. That can sometimes make the game feel more reactionary rather than a result of your clever card play.

‘I’m sorry, not sorry ‘bout what I said’

Thankfully the game comes with what every good tea party should. Tea and biscuits of mitigation. As with most games of this genre the designers have seen the potential trap and made ways to get you out of such sticky and repetitive situations. Rather than bad luck keeping you stuck in middle town, there are a couple of tricks to let you upstairs to bask in the sun or downstairs to soak up the gloom, whatever floats your boat. They've even gone so far as to give you a teapot lifeline gratis at the start of the game. These little nuggets or rather, biscuits are just enough to get you out of any trouble you might find yourself stuck in, but make sure to use them wisely. Better still they give you the one thing that a lot of X and write games need, combos. The biscuits give you the ability to make the same mark again in a different area and that's key if you want to fill up more or your areas. Like most (good) biscuits they’ve made them tempting to go for. There’s a few that are easily gettable within your first bout, drawing you in like an unattended chocolate hob nob mmmmmmm…... I like the fact that some of these, like some teacups, are within easy reach. It just means that if you do feel like you're stuck in one section you have the opportunity to pivot away from that quickly. Much like a lot of the game, the decision of whether to go for these or not isn’t always easy. In some cases going for these may draw you away from other higher scoring opportunities….but they may just be worth it in the long run.

Let's talk about the last minigame, the wonderlandians. These are another scoring condition but could also go towards being a distraction, but not in a bad way. Some of them are things that you could easily stumble upon during the natural course of playing the game. Like filling a mushroom in the meadow where some you’ll need to make a conscious effort to try and get. The Keep for example needs you to divert from the main path to collect the rabbit and the humpthy dumpty. They all add to the cavalcade of choices you get to make.

‘I’m just tryna have some fun’

Just when you think the “verb & write” genre may have been running out of new ideas, Off With Their Heads comes along and throws in a new and unexpected twist. Now I didn’t really get caught up in the whirlwind of the ‘verb & write’ explosion of recent times but I certainly had a few favourites and I’m happy to say this one is up there with those.

Right now I'm off to play a nice relaxing game of crochet with a flamingo and a hedgehog. What? No I’m not using them as the club and the ball! That’d be ridiculous!…they’re my opponents!