“Money is only useful when you get rid of it. It is like the odd card in ‘Old Maid’; the player who is finally left with it has lost.”

~Evelyn Waugh

Old Maid is a traditional children’s game.

This is a simple one…

Hold out your hand, a player takes a card from it. If they form a pair in their hand, that pair is discarded.

Play continues picking cards from each other’s hands until one person is left with the Old Maid, they lose. (I won by seeing the reflection of the cards in a window :D)

Positives

Quite tense really, hard to keep a straight face when they draw the Old Maid. You don’t want to give any clues to the other players who has it!

A mechanism I would like to see brought up to date 🙂

Negatives

Old fashioned.

Pretty dull, at least people can say it has player interaction, that’ll keep them happy 🙂

Old Maid Summary

Fun, but dated.

I played this again after this first play with my family. Drunk, cheating family 🙂 It’s obviously better with more players, especially if the whereabouts of the Old Maid is kept well hidden.

I would like to see this mechanism in a modern game. Maybe something with hidden roles like One Night Ultimate… Or maybe something like Good Cop, Bad Cop?

Any theme where the target card is something players don’t want and remains hidden in the game would be good. Who knows, maybe one day. Find the Pickle does it quite well.

It’s not like a reskin of it will do it any good. It needs additional rules and mechanisms, something. Maybe I’m overthinking it. But I love that feeling when someone grabs the Old Maid and you see it slip out of your hand.

I also enjoyed gaining it, and keeping a poker face 🙂

Jesta ThaRogue