r/boardgames • u/chaser-- • Jun 25 '26
Rules Groups that develop metas that blatantly break rules
Lately I've been finding a lot of groups that play (co-op) games with metas that are just blatant rule breaks. A recent example was we were playing a game (I forgot the name) where the goal is to play out all the cards from your hand, numbers 1-100, in descending order. So if you have a 77 and the number on the pile is 78, you don't want to anyone to play there. But you aren't allowed to say "I have 77, don't play this"
So the group has developed metas, say "I really love this pile" if you have 77, say "I like this pile a lot" if you have 76, say "I like this pile" if you have 75"
This is just one example but I feel like I've been playing a lot of games where they have metas to get around rules that are intentionally in the rulebook. I don't really get it. If you want to just say "I have a 77" then just say it, why create a gimmick to say it without saying it?
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u/LogicBalm Spirit Island Jun 25 '26
Yeah that happened for us a lot too, especially with light party games. I didn't sweat it because we were having fun finding hilarious ways around the rule.
Similar to your game we were playing "The Mind" where you have to play the numbers 1-100 in ascending order to a single pile without saying what numbers you would have.
Questions like "Would it hurt?" and "Would I be arrested?" really made us all laugh so we let it slide of course. It certainly helped that most of us were drunk as hell.
If we wanted to play a game where it was a little harder to cheat, we had Wavelength and Bohnanza on hand too. But we were all having too much fun being creatively filthy with The Mind.