You Raise? I Fold.

At the kernel of the game Raise Your Goblets is a really fun idea: let's play out the old "poisoned drinks" game with friends.

Each player has a "drinking goblet" in front of them, and a screen behind which a fixed number of glass beads begins, marking "poison," "antidote," or "wine." On each player's turn, they have an array of actions available. They can add a bead to any goblet without anyone seeing it. They can rotate all the goblets in play clockwise or counter-clockwise one position. They can swap the goblet in front of them for one in front of any other player. Or they can look inside their own goblet to learn its contents.

Once a player has played all the "wine" tokens from behind their screen, they gain another option for their turn: they may propose a toast. Every player gets one final action (including them), and then everyone "drinks" from the goblet before them. If they end up with at least an equal amount of antidote and poison, they're fine. More poison, however, and well... you know. Each round, you get a point for surviving, a point for assassinating the player you're "targeting" (as selected by a random card draw at the beginning of the round), and a bonus point if you achieve both goals.

It's a great idea for a game. In practice, though, it simply isn't very fun to play. The problem is that chaos reigns supreme -- or, at least, it does when you play with as many players as the game claims to accommodate. The game takes up to 6 (and up to 12, if you play with supplemental "wine taster" rules we did not have to use). We played with the full 6, and it stripped all sense of control from the proceedings. With just two actions on your turn, and a whopping 10 opposing actions in between, it was simply impossible to know what was going on in any goblet. You'd peek when you could, but then too many beads would drop in too many places between, and uncertainty would encroach.

In the end, the person who actually called the toast each round had the supreme advantage. You'd get the final action. And if you could track just one goblet and be reasonably certain of its contents, you'd just swap that one to be in front of you at the end of the round. Everybody else, leave to random chance. Even then, there was really no telling who would be safe -- often yourself included. The game felt like an elaborate random number generator.

I'd consider trying the game once more with a more manageable number -- three or perhaps four. But it seems like there's a razor thin edge here, between it being too easy to have information and too impossible. And that advantage of taking the last action is always going to be there, in any case. I don't have high hopes that a different player count would yield more satisfying results.

It's a great concept, but in a way that perhaps makes the game deserving of even lower marks, for bungling the potential so thoroughly. I'd give Raise Your Goblets a D. Even under the umbrella of "chaotic group games," there are far better choices.