Crits & Tricks: A Dice-Powered Trick-Taking Game With D&D Classes

A trick-taking game where your card is the suit but your die is the number sounds like a gimmick until you feel the decisions stack up fast. We’re talking Crits And Tricks from Inside Up Games, a tabletop game that pulls Dungeons & Dragons class flavor into every hand: rogues, barbarians, wizards, paladins, druids, and bards that stay trump no matter what. I’m joined by Clayton Gable, who admits he jumped into a Board Game Arena match before fully knowing what he was doing, and that becomes the perfect doorway into explaining why this design clicks.

We break down the core system in plain language: you play a class card, you choose a die from your d4 to d20 set, and that die becomes the value for the trick. The twist is that each class has its own win condition, so you’re not just chasing the biggest number. On top of that, you get “crits” as special powers that can bend a single trick with effects like swapping dice, forcing rerolls, or tweaking values. It’s interactive, tactical, and full of those table moments where one choice changes everything.

Then we zoom out to the quest structure that drives scoring: personal quests, shared barkeeper challenges, loot, and gold across three rounds. We also talk production, including the premium book-style Kickstarter presentation, as well as a few real-world quirks like shipping mix-ups and a surprisingly strong box smell. If you love trick-taking games, dice decisions, Board Game Arena play, or D&D-inspired board games, this one deserves a spot on your radar.

Subscribe for more deep dives, share this with your favorite trick-taker group, and leave a review so more players can find us. What’s the best trick-taking player count for you: two, three, or four?

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:15

Welcome to the Operation Game Night Podcast. And welcome to Master Sunday. Today we're talking crits and tricks, a new trick taker from Inside Up Games. But first, let me introduce my caddy on this Master Sunday, the man that I choose to help me choose my clubs, Clayton Gable. How you doing, Clay?

SPEAKER_01 0:36

I'm doing good, Travis. I didn't know you were a golf fan until today.

SPEAKER_00 0:42

I mean, yeah, who's not a golf fan on Masters Sunday?

SPEAKER_01 0:45

Me. I am not a golf fan. As your caddy, I can assure you I'm not a golf fan.

SPEAKER_00 0:50

You couldn't help me choose the right club from like 186 yards out.

SPEAKER_01 0:54

No, it's always a pitch and wedge for me. That's the only that's the only club I can hit. I like that. I don't I don't know why. That's versatile though. Yeah, it's good for driving. I'll tell you that. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:06

Nice. Well, Master Sunday just wrapped, and Rory McElroy brought home the green jacket. And uh he is only the fourth player to do so back to back. So he won last year, won this year. Congratulations to Rory. I know he listens to the podcast. So, Rory, thank you for listening to the podcast. Thank you for supporting. But I do have a quick order of merit before we get into order of merit. A quick update. Point of order. Point of order of merit.

SPEAKER_01 1:36

Yes. Tell me.

New Supporter And Community Thanks

First Play On Board Game Arena

SPEAKER_00 1:37

This point of order warrants some merit. We put out a call last week for supporters for the show. And we said, hey, if you're interested in supporting, you can go onto Buzz Sprout and click the little money symbol up in the corner and pitch us some money. We have a new supporter, and it is Miss Amanda Lee of Emptiness Board Mama Fame. So Amanda, thank you for supporting the show. You are the best. You are the real one. Our very first fan, and we really appreciate you. Hit me up on Instagram and I will send you a t-shirt. Very exclusive. Operation Game Night t-shirt. It is well overdue. I owe you one, plus some OG and stickers. So hit me up on Instagram and we will work that out. But let's get into crits and tricks. Clay, what do you know about this game?

SPEAKER_01 2:26

I know I just got done playing it on board game arena with our boy Mike.

SPEAKER_00 2:31

What really?

SPEAKER_01 2:32

Yeah, yeah. I did not know it was on there. Yeah, he put it out in our Discord. Shout out to our Discord asking if anybody wanted to play crits and tricks, and I was the only one that said yes. Oh so him and I fired off a little two-player game of it. Honestly, didn't know what I was doing. I sometimes I just hate myself because I just think, hey, I'm just gonna click let's play and I'll just figure it out as I go. But then slowly but surely, I just keep clicking through. I'm like, one of these times I'm gonna hit that how-to-play button and actually understand why I'm doing what I'm doing. I got the general gist of it. It seemed as if there was a set of dice that associated the cards I had. So it was like the cards were kind of the suits, and then the dice were I could take a die and make that the value of the card, which I liked that concept a lot. And I was like, this is really cool. I think I'm doing it. But then there was like other things going on with objectives that you were trying to complete. Why don't you just tell us exactly what's going on with this game instead of somebody that didn't actually know how to play?

SPEAKER_00 3:42

That's okay. First off, Clay, you should never hate yourself and never hate yourself for trying new things. Second off, if you are listening to this podcast and you want to get it on the Discord, there's links in the show notes. And come join and chat more games with us. Uh, we have BJA battles that are constantly constantly being set up. You can pitch us ideas for the podcast. Just come and engage. We have the best fans in the world. They're on the Discord. Thank you to all who are members. Second off, we heard about crits and tricks from none other than Paul Solomon back in the day. He showed up maybe a year ago plus on the podcast and talked to us about a bunch of new upcoming games. And crits and tricks was one of them. This is a new game from Inside Up Games. Designer is Pete Wissinger, who has credits on Origin Story. Yeah. And he is also known for No Loose Ends, another one of our favorite trick takers.

SPEAKER_01 4:38

Whoa, he helped design that? I thought that was like Tiki Chinzawa, one of those.

SPEAKER_00 4:44

He's got he's got development credit through Game Head Games. Okay, nice. So that one and Trick to the Future, the one that I'm very much looking forward to. But he has this he designed Origin Story and Crits and Tricks.

Cards As Classes And Dice Values

SPEAKER_01 4:56

Yeah, he also is a host on the what's that decision space. Decision space, one of our favorites. Yes, for sure.

SPEAKER_00 5:06

So this game up front, I was I had a hard time separating my my new appreciation for Dungeons and Dragons from the mechanics of this game. This game is a trick taker where the suit of your cards are different classes that you would play in a Dungeons and Dragons. There's rogues, barbarians, wizards, paladins, druids, and the trump suit, which will always be in your deck, which is bards. I don't know why bards are the trick suit, but they are the not the trick suit, the trump suit, but they are the trumpsuit every time. So bards are always shuffled in, and then you pick three other classes to shuffle into the main deck that gets distributed amongst the players. Each player has a little screen that sits in front of them behind which you roll all of your DD dice, basically. You have a D4 all the way up through a D20. And when you start to play tricks, you are playing the card, which is the suit, and then you play any of your dice that you have behind your screen as a value to that card. And that is kind of how you assign the values to these different suits. You have the opportunity, what I would equate to like a saving throw in Dungeons and Dragons, where if I put a trick out, or let's say I really need to win this trick, or and I put the suit out that matches, I can re-roll the dice, the die behind my screen, my player screen. I can re-roll it out in front of everyone as kind of a saving throw to try and get a higher number to win or a lower number. Because each of the classes that you are playing as suits have different requirements to win that trick. That's kind of where the complication gets in. I was constantly referring back to my like screen because all of the win conditions are being are like printed on the back side of your screen. Super convenient. So for the row, a value equal to or closest to five that wins the trick because they're all about balance. The paladin has the highest value and matches the lead die size. So, like if the lead person puts out a d6 with a two value, I have to have a d6 with a higher value than that to win. The druid wants the second highest value out of all of the dice that are put out. And then the bard is the trump suit, and the win condition matches that of the suit declared by the lead player. So the bard is kind of a wild, it can always be thrown down. The lead person throws down the bard and says, We're going for wizards now, and you have to match the wizard's win condition. All makes sense so far, Clay.

SPEAKER_01 7:50

It all makes sense. I definitely was not tracking the different suit requirements. I but I was there with you to the point where I had a suit and then could play a die to be the value. So this is good. This is good. I'm learning.

Crit Cards That Break The Rules

Quests Challenges Loot And Gold

SPEAKER_00 8:05

Okay. So now at the start of each round, you're dealt eight of these cards that have varying classes, your suits, and there's only six tricks per round. So what do you do with those other two? You can use those as your crits in these combat, not combat, but these tricks that you're playing. And each class has a different crit that it can do. Basically, a special thing that will like change the value of your die, or you know, do different things to the condition that of the trick that you're playing. You can play those at any time in any trick. You can play both of your two crits in the same trick if you want. So it gets kind of crazy when people start throwing crits all over the place. But it's kind of a way to like switch up individual tricks in each round to play these crits, crits and tricks, and the crit will change the condition of that of that trick. So kind of cool. I would have to flip through. So the crit for the wizard is to transmute. You can swap your current die with one of the previous played dice. Your bard is improvise. You may re-roll your current die up to two times, but you must keep the result of your final roll. Paladin is defend if your die's value is tied for the winning trick. You win and do not move on to tiebreakers. The rogue can sneak, skip your turn to become last in the turn order. The play resumes with the player on your left if you've already. Anyways, and then barbarian is rage. Physically increase or decrease your current die's value by one, two, or three. And the druid does entangle and force an opponent who has already resolved their turn this trick to re-roll their die once. They must keep the new result. So things get a little crazy when you start throwing crits down. All of this is in service of winning challenges and quests. So each player is dealt three quests at the beginning. I know that you're playing two-player, it might have been different. When you play a two-player game, a bunch of quests are kind of like located centrally, and you're playing for those quests that are shared amongst the players. Uh, when you're playing three or four players, each player is dealt three quests that they are trying to achieve on their own. And then there's a barkeepers challenge, which there's like a select number of them out there. They're central. They like everyone's trying to win that that barkeeper's challenge per round. There's three rounds total, six tricks per round. And then you kind of resolve all of your loot, which is like these cool little doublooms and fun-shaped like loot pieces, like swords and helmets and goblets and all sorts of stuff that are kind of in the middle of the table. And then the person with the most gold at the end wins. You with me so far?

SPEAKER_01 10:56

What can you circle back to the loot situation again? Where what is this?

SPEAKER_00 11:01

So you win the loot by completing quests and challenges. Challenges resolve at the end of every round. Your quests can resolve at any time during the rounds. So as soon as you meet the conditions for one of your quests, you complete it, you claim the loot from the center of the table, and then you can discard that that quest or like put it aside. And then between rounds, you're dealt three new quests to complete.

SPEAKER_01 11:27

Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha. This is cool.

Premium Production And Odd Box Smell

SPEAKER_00 11:31

It's pretty cool. It's pretty cool. And it really subverts expectations for trick taking. I want to talk about the production value here on this game for a second, because this thing is beautiful. It has this nice, like inlaid board, it's nice and shiny on the outside. It looks like a book on the bookshelf, and it's got volume one, volume one of three. This is the nice, this is the fancy Kickstarter edition. Okay. Inside up did a great job on this. It's got a little magnet that closes it. It looks like a big old dusty tome that sits on your shelf. Each of the other games in this inside up run, the Kickstarter editions all look like this: volumes one, two, and three. They're different colors. The other ones are green and blue. It's really nicely done. The production's super nice. I will say though, whatever glue they use on this run of games, it is the smelliest glue I have ever seen used on a board game production. It is like you open this box and it is potent. Like this box kind of stinks, honestly. Oh man. Yeah, it's very strong, smells like super glue, but like I don't know. Or like uh PVC glue almost. It smells like PVC glue. So like the stuff you use on PVC pipes, the blue stuff that you use to glue.

SPEAKER_01 12:50

I don't, yeah, I'm not an engineer like you don't care. I don't I don't glue PVC pipes.

SPEAKER_00 12:55

So the blue, the blue goo that you put on the outside of PVC pipes to stick them together permanently, like melts it melts the PVC so that they stick together permanently. Anyways, it smells like that. It's very strong. Opening the box, you get a whiff of it immediately. It's very strong. And also, their shipping company that they used to fulfill this Kickstarter kind of messed up a little bit. They sent out an email to all the backers that said, Hey, you might have gotten version of one of the games that was not the Kickstarter edition. I was in that case. I they are going to send me a return slip so I can turn the old version in or the you know the retail version back to them. I'll get the Kickstarter version back. So yeah, they had some production issues, but the the production, the final production looks really nice. I love this book. I will put them on a bookshelf. They look super nice with the spines all lined up and different colors and all shiny and everything. This game is cool. I I really I really like this game. It's kind of hard for me to separate my appreciation for this game from my newfound appreciation for Dungeons and Dragons. They're obviously going for that connection. Like, even the font that they used on the cover of the game is kind of that Dungeons and Dragons type font. They did everything short of like making the and symbol a dragon, the amper's hand. But man, I I really I really like this game. This is cool. I will continue to play this. I like rolling the die. I think they the coolest thing that they one of the coolest things that they did was on the first round, how do you choose who leads the first suit? Any guesses? You roll for initiative.

SPEAKER_01 14:32

No, of course you roll for initiative.

Best Player Counts And Solo Mode

SPEAKER_00 14:34

So everybody rolls for initiative. Whoever rolls the highest gets to play the first hand, the first card in the first rounds trick. After what after that, in the in the future rounds, it's based on gold value or like the amount of loot that you have accrued. How many people did you play this with? So I did not play it probably the preferred way, which would be like three or four. So it's best at three on board game geek. I played it at two, and then they have a solo mode. Solo mode just feels like you're assigning dice and you're trying to like get the highest amount of loot possible, complete as many quests as you can through randomized dice rolls. Probably not the preferred way to weigh preferred way to play. Two felt okay because you have the common quests that you're all kind of competing for, and it feels like a race to like, oh, I I really want that one because it's worth the most amount of gold. So you're kind of prioritizing what card you play based on the quests that are available. Solo mode, you have quests that you're burning through, feels okay, but it's it's just so random to like roll dice against yourself, and then they have like a score, like you know, compare your score to this table and see where you land. But the preferred way to play would be three or four rules change slightly between three and four and two, and then slightly again for a solo experience.

SPEAKER_01 15:51

Okay, yeah, I it's hard for me with a two-player. Like, I mean, I feel like trick taking is so unique that the player count really does matter a lot, and I find that games that the two games that are specifically designed to be two-player trick taker games are great, but ones that just have like ways to kind of work around it and play a game at two players, uh those are usually a miss for me because you know, just like some of those interactions that you described, I just don't see how they could be that dynamic in a two-player game, you know. But I would be willing to give it a try at two players, but I definitely think you're right.

Setting Up Games With The Discord

SPEAKER_00 16:41

I I would I would get it to play at three or four for sure. Well, now that you know how to play, we should get this going on BGA with some of the people on the Discord because yeah, I missed the I think I saw the initial invite and I wanted to hold off until I got to play like my hard copy version that was coming in the mail. Now I know how to play, I'm in. Let's do it, let's run it. If you're into two-player trick takers, they do have tug of roar in this kind of Kickstarter run. I will brief that at a later date once I've played it a couple more times. It's like a lane card battler, tug of war type situation where you're like competing for initiative and you can like scare your opponent enough to like earn favor in these different lanes. Pretty cool. I'll talk about that later though. Okay, after I've played it a couple more times. But yeah, trick crits and tricks. Paul Solomon hyped it up when he came on the podcast a year plus ago, yeah, and it did not disappoint. I was so looking forward to this one. You you know we love trick takers here at OGN, and this is another hit. This one's gonna stick around for a while, mainly because it it looks nice, but also like the mechanics are cool. I have a newfound appreciation for Dungeons and Dragons classes and what they can do, and they they tried to pack as much of that flavor into this game as they could without probably like stepping on proprietary information. But yeah, crits and tricks by inside up games has been a hit for me. I like it.

SPEAKER_01 18:10

I'm glad you like it. That's good to hear because it doesn't take a lot to get me to press the buy now button on a trick-taking game. And I too have that newfound love for the Dungeons and Dragons world. So yeah, this'll this will be coming my way soon, I'm sure. And that is a novel thing. I think maybe Nikosu Dice does something similar, okay, where you have that combination of playing a card for its suit and then a die for its value. But I've never played that, I've I've just heard people talk about it, and I always thought that sounded so cool. And the fact that this game you have like the D D set of die that you know, you have the it goes, you get like a D4 through D20, right? Yeah, yeah. No, that's that's super cool. Thanks for sharing, Travis. Yeah, I'm into it.

SPEAKER_00 18:57

Another cool thing, like one of the decisions that you make is what die, what die to use for each trick. Like you can use any die, any player can use any die that they want, but the tiebreaker, like let's say you both roll fours or whatever, the larger of the die will win the trick. So it's like really you gotta think about how you're gonna use your uh use your die appropriately and how you're going to allocate them to give you the best chance to win those quests. So it's not just like how do I win this trick right now? It's like, do I need this larger die later on to complete that quest or this quest or the challenge in the center? I I dig it. It's got some cool other decisions that you're making that are not like what card do I have available to me right now to to win. So yeah, I dig it. I'm gonna play it a lot. I I think we should get a game going with our DD party. Yes, Amanda and Meg will be in. Let's fire it up. Heck yeah. Did we do it? We did it. All right. This has been crits and tricks from Inside Up Games. Thank you, Pete Wissinger. I really appreciate your design. It's great. Good work. All right. I have been Travis, he has been my party mate slash caddy, Clayton Gable. This has been Operation Game Night, and we are out.