Matthew BaileyMad Tea Party is a bit of a weird one, based around the concept of the Mad Hatter’s tea party from Alice in Wonderland. You set up the game by putting the tea party on the base, which basically gives you a wobbly platform. You place the 12 teacups nearby — they’re all different colours and sizes — shuffle the cards, and give six to each player as a starting hand. You place the remaining deck face down as a draw pile and you’re good to go.
To win the game, you either need to be the first to place all of your cards, or stack the final teacup of the party on the table — which, as we found out very quickly, doesn’t usually happen.
On your turn, you play a card and place it on the discard pile, then follow the instructions on it. This usually means you have to stack a teacup on an existing stack on the table, or create a new stack, depending on the card you played. The teacups themselves do not have flat bases and are often slightly sloped, meaning sometimes you have to wiggle and wobble things around to get them to balance. When you finish stacking, you count to three — and if your stack is still standing, it’s the next player’s turn. If any of the teacups fall during your turn, you must immediately draw three new cards and place any fallen teacups nearby. You then have another go, playing cards as usual.
This continues until someone either gets rid of their entire hand or stacks all the teacups.
There are a number of special cards, such as: reverse the direction of play, draw a card, stack any teacup, don’t stack a teacup, start a new stack, or remove a teacup from a stack.
The game works a bit like a deck-shedding game, with some genuinely difficult dexterity elements thrown in — and that’s actually one of my least favourite parts of Mad Tea Party. Even as an adult, I found the stacking and dexterity elements incredibly difficult. Now obviously some dexterity games are going to be easier than others, but it got to the point where the kids found this very, very frustrating to play, as actually stacking the cups on top of each other is really hard. And the ability to start a new stack isn’t as readily available as you’d probably like it to be.
Component quality is good. It’s all a bit plasticky, but it works well in this scenario, and I really like the insert — everything fits back in the box really nicely. The artwork on the box is lovely and very striking.
I really wanted to like Mad Tea Party. I love Alice in Wonderland as a property, especially the animated Disney version, and the whole concept here I found really cool. But unfortunately, it’s just a bit too difficult in my opinion — especially for its obvious target age group — and the interest of the dexterity element isn’t strong enough to pull it through. There might be something here, but ultimately, this is not a recommendation from me.
