Wheedle is a game of wheeling and dealing where everyone plays at once. Hands generally go rather quickly with sometimes less than 5 minutes to play a hand. The finish the game you play three rounds and then add the total points from all three hands to determine a winner. So, now you know the goal is the get the most points, but you may be asking “how do we play the game and earn the points?”, well here is how.
The game is based on a deck of 61 cards. They are dealt evenly to everyone playing with one card left over. There are 9 suits in the game. Two of the suits have 9 cards available, four suits have 7 cards available and three suits have 5 cards available. For you to earn points in a suit you need to have more than half the available cards in the suit when the hand ends. If you have all the cards of any suit you get two points for each card, and if you just have more than half you get one point per card. There is one little trick, the last face up card when the round ends is the “bankrupt company” and you lose 1 point for every card of that company you have in your hand.
To start the play of the hand the extra card is flipped face up. Anyone can claim that card and replace it with one of their own. Any player also can offer to trade any number of their cards for any number of another player’s cards. They don’t have to be equal. You might hear “I have 3 Texas oil avalable for 1 (insert suit name here)”. As long as two players agree to the trade they make the swap. Any player can end the game at any point where their hand has cards that would all score points (in other words they don’t have any cards of suits which they hold less than half the suit). That person will yell “stop” and show their hand. If they are correct they get a 5 point bonus and the hand ends, if they are incorrect there is a 10 point penalty (at least how we play) and the hand continues. When the hand ends everyone scores their hand for the positive points and the negative ones.
In general in this game there will be a quick frenzy to grab the face up card and replace it with one of yours at first, and then the trading offers will start flying back and forth. There will still be some claiming and placing of the face up card but it hits a lull for awhile. When trade offers slow down it seems that face card switching becomes more useful again. Then there will be another wave of trading. As the end gets close people will not only be trying to complete their hand but note what their opponents are collecting and try to end the game with a face up that will hurt their opponents as much as possible.
This is a very addictive game. There is strategy in the game, but a lot of it depends on the type of starting distribution you have. So your strategy may not be similar from hand to hand , which means you have to be prepared to change your strategy at any time. This is one of the games that my group has found to be the most addictive of games under $10. Definitely a keeper for your collection and travels well.
