Matthew BaileyTacta was the absolute darling of the UK Games Expo and pretty much came out as one of the games that was most recommended, really drawing everyone’s attention at the show, probably helped by the excellent stand they’d given it. As we said in our Tacta preview for the UKGE, we really enjoyed it and it’s a really cool game. But having spent a few weeks with the full version, while I do still really like Tacta, it’s not quite the definite “yes” I initially thought I was going to give it based on my time at the Expo. Let me explain.
So, Tacta is a really simple game to understand. Essentially, you pick a colour, shuffle your deck, and then play your cards by overlapping segments on other cards. The number of dots showing at the end of the game is how many points you end up with. If you can’t lay a card on the table without overlapping something, you should not, then you can’t lay it.
One of the things I said in my UKGE preview was that this is a great game you can throw in a bag and play anywhere, and while I sort of thought that at the time, it has exactly the same issue that Flip 7 has, which is super interesting considering they come from the same publisher, and that is the box is far too big. Really, Tacta is just a deck of cards, and it doesn’t need to be in a box much bigger than a standard deck. I think, especially as they’ve re-released Flip 7, hopefully Osprey Games are starting to realise that releasing games like this in oversized boxes isn’t necessarily a good marketing strategy. It also just takes up a lot of space unnecessarily.
Another thing is that the version we played at the UK Games Expo, which I don’t think I realised at the time, was actually a cut-down version with fewer cards than you get in the retail version. So even if you’re only playing with two players, it takes up a massive chunk of the table. And if you’re going to play this properly with 6 players, you really do need a ridiculously large table. Honestly, I would say playing it on the floor might actually work better. So yeah, this definitely isn’t the sort of game you could pop out in a restaurant or anything like that. I’m not going to hold that against it, but it’s worth mentioning.
I think my other big criticism, which I didn’t quite realise after only playing it a couple of times at the Expo, is that there’s not really much strategy as such. Because you’re so limited by what you can cover, there’s pretty much always going to be an optimum move, and as long as you’re looking carefully at what’s available, that’s what you’ll go for. You’re very reliant on what cards you draw, what you have in your hand, and what other players are likely to play next. Yes, you can lay cards in a way that blocks others, but it doesn’t feel like a big strategic choice you can rely on. Quite often in our games, it felt like we were each playing our own hand with very little real interaction. Maybe I’m wrong and there’s some deeper strategy here, but I just can’t quite see it based on how the game flows.
You also really need the right surface. Overlapping all these cards on a smooth surface, like a wooden table, which is actually what we used for the photos in this review, is tricky, as everything slides about. Positioning the cards precisely is important, and if things shift, it’s hard to tell whether something can be placed legally. When we played at the UKGE, we were on a proper demo table, and I’ve played a few games at home on a neoprene mat. The problem is, my regular playmat, the one I use for most of my review games, is 90cm by 90cm, and even that wasn’t big enough. A four-player game of Tacta at home takes up a monstrous amount of space. We don’t have much carpet in our house, but honestly I’d be quite curious to try this one on a carpet to see how that affects things.
This review has actually come across way more negative than I intended it to be. In reality, Tacta is a fun little card game that’s quite unusual. You lay your cards, add up your dots, and that’s it. You could play this with really, really young kids and use it as a fun way to help them with counting afterwards. There’s not a lot of strategy, granted, but it’s still fun and engaging. And while I am still going to give it a light recommendation, now that I’ve had a bit more time with it, it’s not quite the must-buy I thought it was when I first played it.|
