Auf Teufel komm raus (By Hook or by Crook) First Impressions
Auf Teufel komm raus has you pulling coals from a fire…
Try not to get burned…
Bet how far the most successful player will go. You can win even if that’s not you
Auf Teufel komm raus Game Play
This is a betting and push-your-luck game so to get things started each player is given 200… money?
There is a board with a fireplace filled with 48 facedown coals pieces. Most of these pieces are numbered from (I think) 5 to 100. There are only 3 100’s and a few 75’s and 50’s but loads of the other lower values. 9 of the tokens are the Devil… you don’t want them.
A round is played over 4 phases:
1 – The Devil’s Bet: Players bet on how much coal any one player can draw from the fire. All players reveal chips from their hands at the same time. Remember you’re betting on the highest total from ANY player, not just you.
2 – Pulling Coals from the Fire… the fun bit! The start player will turn over coals one at a time until they choose to stop. Of course, if they draw a devil they stop immediately and all coals they took this turn are discarded.
The goal here is to draw a value of Coals equal to or higher than the money you bet… then stop… maybe. You’ll see it during scoring.
Once all players have done this, this phase ends
Scoring
3 – Determine Winnings. The first step is to see who turned over the most value of coal. Anyone who made a bid that exceeded this figure loses it.
All players who made a bid lower than the largest value of coal regains their stake and earn that much money from the supply. If your bid happens to be the highest AND you’re a winner, you take double from the supply.
The player that pulled the largest value of coal gains a 50 bonus AND the player that pulled the most coal pieces gains 50.
4 – Move your score marker. Not usually an exciting action but here the board is broken up into areas of scoring rather than exact scoring. In the image below, you can see that 4 players have between 300 and 500 worth of money.
There is a tidy-up phase where the tokens that have been removed from the game are only returned if the remaining tokens fit within the circle of the coal fire on the board which is nice.
Once a round ends and a player has over 1600, they win.
Auf Teufel komm raus Theme
Could be anything really so they might as well pick this silly one. I guess Auf Teufel komm raus translating to “by Hook or by Crook” or “come hell or high water” reflects the feeling of pushing your luck and the determination to get above the total… Who knows.
The Mother and Daughter designers have the surname Engel which is German for Angel which is funny 🙂
Setup
Simple, hardest part is turning all the tokens face down. Everyone needs to help out.
Components & Artwork
The wooden coal tokens are nice and the poker chip money is very nice.
The artwork is weird and OK. It’s not my favourite style, I’d rather see something cuter.
Ease of Teaching & Accessibility
Obviously, it’s very straightforward. There is no hidden information and the choices are very simple.
Auf Teufel komm raus Summary
This is a fun game with a lot of competition in the ‘push your luck” games area with Port Royal springing to mind. But I don’t think I’ve played a game where you sometimes need your opponents to push their luck too!
If you don’t push over your bet you’re in trouble, you have to hope someone else does it for you. But then, if they bet lower than you they’ll probably stop when they have enough… No need to help you out.
In one example, I bid the most with 250 and another player bid 240… I bust out on drawing coals and my opponent drew 245… He wins, I did not.
I was in the lead for a while then started playing like an addict, betting larger to try and recover my previous losses… I finished last 😀
It’s frustrating, and you can play the odds when picking coals so it’s not totally random but it is very very fun.
Jesta ThaRogue
