Advert: We were loaned a copy from Ludus Vulpes for reviewing purposes. All thoughts are ours and our reviews are always honest.

Don’t let the art fool you, there’s a lot of potential to ruffle feathers in this game. Time to get all our Ducks in a Row!

Key stats

2 to 6 players
20 to 45 minutes
14+ years

Publisher: Ludus Vulpes
Designers: Kirsty Buley, Phil Fox
Art: Bryony Pimble

Theme/category: Card games, Animals, Nature
Key mechanics: Set collection, Simultaneous action selection, Ordering

Gameplay overview

In Ducks in a Row, players simultaneously select and reveal a duck from their hand, playing it to either:

• Your personal row of ducks in ascending numerical order, and you can also activate that duck special ability (yes ducks have powers!)

• The communal pond in suit columns, in descending numerical order. No duck powers are activated but at the end of a round each duck in your row is worth points based on how many of that duck suit is in the pond (each suit starts with 1 point, and each duck added is worth +1 point).

After revealing your ducks, they are resolved in ascending numerical order (any ties are decided by suit order in the pond). There are 6 duck suits in the box (how many you include depends on player count), and each has its own distinct ability, like drawing an extra card, swapping cards with another player, discarding ducks from the pond, or secretly adding/removing points from a suit.

If you can’t place your duck, it goes to your personal duck house and is worth -1 point at the end of the round. Don’t get in a flap though – one of the duck powers lets you take a duck from your duck house and slot it into the pond or your row. There’s also a suit that lets you snaffle a duck from another player’s house and add it to your hand!

The round ends whenever someone plays their last card. You add up what each duck in your personal row is worth based on how many of that suit is in the pond, then a new round begins. The game ends when someone’s total score surpasses 40.

Our thoughts

Ducks in a Row comes in a lovely little box with beautiful watercolour illustrations – I love games inspired by UK wildlife and the duckling is so stinking cute. I would have liked more info on the ducks in the rule book (I’m a bird nerd!) and for each duck suit to have a name, whether they be actual duck names (Mallard, Gadwall) or silly duck names (Jemima, Donald, etc!).

But don’t let these fair fowl lull you into thinking this is a nice happy game waddling around with your friends. There was more strategy – and player interaction – with this game than we expected. It isn’t Perch levels of bird violence, but feathers can fly when someone messes with the ducks you were banking on.

And timing your moves – literally getting your ducks in a row – can really pay off. I really enjoy the tense balance playing cards into the ascending or descending sequences. And then there’s the player order of resolving cards, which you can exploit by playing a low number to the pond first, in an opponent’s preferred suit to cut the (descending) sequence short. Extra bonus if you also blocked their higher card in the same suit, sending it to their duck house for negative points (*maniacal duck laugh*). Another quacking move is intentionally playing a card you know you can’t place, sending it to your own duck house. Then later playing the duck suit that lets you slot it into a sequence. Assuming another player doesn’t steal it first, that is!

So there’s lots of opportunity for planning and plotting here, although you do have the luck of the draw to contend with. Part of the strategy is making the most with what hand of 8 you get dealt (plus maybe a few extra if the draw-card suit is in play), and occasionally you can just be unlucky. In a 2-player game, the deck is 48 cards (4 suits); this means that the dealt cards can be skewed. But in our experience truly unlucky hands weren’t common, and as the game is played over a few rounds that unluckiness is likely to even out.

At lower player counts we found strategies can change slightly depending on which suits are in play, which adds some variability to the game. At higher player counts this variability is lost (as all the suits would be used every time), but instead there would be a lot more player action and flock fighting (unfortunately we didn’t have time to test the higher player counts). Something else I noticed while playing is that you often have a shared mutual interest with another player to build up certain suits in the pond (or take others down!). This led to some interesting player interactions (and maybe occasionally light bullying!).

What we like:

• Cute duck artwork based on UK wildlife. I would have liked to see specific breeds and specific suit names (if not the name of the breed, then cute ducky names!)

• More strategic than it looks! You have to balance playing cards into the right locations, activating powers at the right time and exploiting the order-of-play to your advantage.

• How many suits you include in a game is based on player count – at smaller numbers this adds variability to the game and can affect your strategy. 

• The cards feel very thick and of good quality, like they are made to last.

Considerations:

• It may have strategy, but it also has luck of the draw, and you have to work with what you get.

Verdict

With beautiful artwork and tranquil(ish!) gameplay, Ducks in a Row was a perfect fit for our slow Sunday coffee mornings with family, and I could see it fitting perfectly in a UK holiday collection (if only we still had the review copy for our caravan holiday last week!). But like a tranquil pond it has a lot more going on under the surface…these ducks are deceptively tricky and even a little bit mean!