Seers Catalog

If you’ve ever played Ultimate Werewolf or any of the games in that series, you may be familiar with the Seer character. While the rest of the villagers sleep, the seer gets to look for werewolves every night.

And business is booming. So much so, there’s a mail-order catalog for Seers to stock up on the best equipment. But you can only hold so much, so you have to continually whittle down until you can safely carry these items against the werewolves.

Seers Catalog is a card-shedding game for 2-5 players ages 15+ and it takes 45 minutes to play. It’s designed by Taylor Reiner and published by Bézier Games.

Setup

Create the starting deck with the proper number of suits and cards from those suits based on player count. Shuffle the cards well and deal them evenly to each player so everyone has 12 numbered cards. Give each player two random Artifact cards (the Go First Artifact must be part of the group of Artifacts every round) and one Wild card, along with one Bonus token, 6+ side facing up.

Gameplay

Seers Catalog plays over four rounds. Each round, the player who has the Go First Artifact starts. That player plays one or more cards in a valid “meld” and the rest of the players follow suit.

A “meld” can be a single card, a matching set of cards, or a suited run of cards. Whatever the lead player plays, the following player must play a higher version. If the lead player plays a single 2, the next player must play a 3 or higher, and so on.

If a player has six or more cards in his or her hand, he or she can pass at anytime. Once a player is down to five or fewer cards, the player flips their Bonus token to the Bonus side and cannot pass if they can play a legal move.

The round continues until one player runs out of cards. Then players calculate their scores, reset the game to the original Setup state, and play the next round. At the end of four rounds, players total their entire scores. The player with the most points wins.

Scoring

If you are the player who goes out, you get zero points. If you don’t go out but have five or fewer cards, you get bonus points equal to the lowest card value in your hand. Artifacts and Wild cards have a value of zero. Then all players, regardless of whether they were able to earn the bonus, lose points equal to the number of cards they have.

The goal in Seers Catalog is to have the most points. But gaining points can be difficult, and It’s quite common to lose points in a round. Many times we found players had negative points at the end of a round, or even the entire game.

Ideally, you want to end the round with a small hand of cards that are all high value, but it’s hard to do. Once you get your hand under six cards, you can no longer pass. The tension of figuring out when to get down to five cards is the driving force of this game. You want to get there so you can score, but if you get there too early then you may be even more at the whims of the other players. Without the ability to choose to pass you could be forced to go out and score zero points. Or you could be unable to play for many turns in a row and lose more points than you gain with low value cards you were unable to shed.

Impressions

My board game group is known for playing fairly large games of Ultimate Werewolf (also by Bézier Games). The kids especially love every time they get to play. The name of this game – Seers Catalog – references the Seer role from Ultimate Werewolf with a nod to the old Sears catalog (RIP). And that drew me in immediately.

I love all the items on the cards. It references the Werewolf games from Bézier, other pop-culture staples of the werewolf genre, and iconic silvered weapons used to fight off werewolves. The art is fun and unique on every card, while looking like pages taken directly from an old catalog.

And I really wish that the theme carried through to the gameplay. Everyone I’ve played with agrees that there is so much focus on trying to play the best cards to try to maximize scoring that it’s easy to miss the fun references on the cards themselves.

Set Apart

Seers Catalog is a card-shedding game, sort of like UNO or President/Derriere. It’s also like a trick-taking game, in that you have to follow what the lead person plays.

But what sets Seers Catalog apart are the Artifact cards. These single-use powers can turn a trick on its head. If you’re struggling to lead a trick, you may just want to drop the Lead Next Trick card when it’s your turn to play.

Then there’s the scoring. which takes some getting used to. It’s very unique and it honestly might be the hardest part of the game to get behind. It takes a while to understand it, and it’s more common to lose points than gain them, which can be really frustrating.

I also found the game better with more people. Two-player games can be really tough with crazy swings. Three to five players was a more enjoyable experience.

Final Thoughts

Overall, if you love trick-taking games, Seers Catalog is a unique take on the genre as a card-shedding game. But it’s not really a family game. The scoring is quite punishing and younger kids are not going to enjoy losing points all the time. If your kids are younger, or interested only because of the Werewolf connection, your family may want to pass.

If your slightly older family already loves card-shedding games such as Rook or Uno and wants to try something similar, this may be a howling good time. Get it directly from Bezier or find it on Amazon.

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Bézier Games provided The Family Gamers with a promotional copy of Seers Catalog for this review.

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