As has been evident in more than a few posts over twelve years in this space, I am a fan of Reiner Knizia‘s games. The one I’ve played most recently is No Mercy, which Korean publisher Mandoo Games will have at SPIEL ’22 in October and which demonstrates all of Knizia’s strongest design qualities. (The design first appeared as HIT ! in 2021 from French publisher Pixie Games.)
No Mercy’s rules are straightforward: On a turn, flip a card from the deck. If you flip a number that’s in front of other people, you can steal cards of that number and place them in front of you. You can stop or flip another card. If you flip a number that’s already in front of you and you have at least three cards in front of you, then you bust for the round and remove all cards in front of you from the game. If you stop, pass the deck to the next player. If you have face-up cards in front of you at the start of your next turn, turn them face down and place them in your scoring pile.
When the deck runs out, everyone scores what’s in front of them, then you tally your score, with each card being worth as many points as the number on it. Whoever has the highest score wins.
Playing over dinner at Gen Con 2022
No Mercy can be seen as an iteration of Cheeky Monkey, a Knizia design from 2007 for which I was hired by Face2Face Games to edit the rules. In that earlier game, you bust when you draw something in front of you, and you can steal from opponents, but the pieces are numbered tokens, and when you keep tokens, you place them in a stack so that only the topmost token is vulnerable to theft. Additionally, when you bust, tokens are returned to the draw bag — and this is important because at game’s end, bonus points are awarded to whoever has the most animals of each type, whereas the tokens themselves are worth only 1 point.
No Mercy does away with bonus points, placing all points on the cards themselves, which creates different incentives for deciding whether to stop or draw once more, whether to steal or keep yourself under the three-card bust limit. The tension in the two games is similar, though. With only two players, you have a single turn to steal from your opponent before they pocket the points. You never want to bust, but if you steal high-value cards from them, then bust, well, at least they didn’t get those points either.
With more players, the cards travel around the table, with you often having multiple chances to steal a group of cards and with that group getting larger bit by bit as players add to it until someone finally locks in those points.
The rules take less than a minute to explain, but the feeling of the game differs based on the number of players and their personalities, how risky they are, how aggressive they are toward others. Knizia shines at creating games that let your personality come through in the gameplay, in addition to creating games that almost feel like different designs based on how many are playing. You can play more seriously by tracking how many cards of each number have been revealed and what everyone’s running score is, or you can wing it and play by your gut.
No Mercy probably isn’t a game that will fill your evening, but it’s a brilliantly simple design that will work with pretty much any player at any table, and that’s far more valuable in my eyes.
