Card Blasting Facial Hair: Fun with Beards and Mustaches with Optional Bluffing

Play a card equal to or higher than the one on top of the discard pile. Can’t play a card? Add the discards to your hand. But there's a twist…the last two cards you have are mystery cards.

Published by Draggis Studios, Card Blasting Facial Hair is a 15-minute card game designed for 2-8 players.

Gameplay

The deck is shuffled and dealt out evenly to all players to form their personal draw piles. Without looking at them, each player draws the top two cards from their draw piles and places them in front of themselves, keeping them face-down. Everyone then draws seven cards and chooses two to place face-up on top of their two face-down cards.

Players take turns playing cards. Cards come in a value of 1-10. On his turn, a player may play one card or multiple cards of the same value, which are equal to or higher than the card previously played on top of the discard pile. After he finishes playing, he draws back up to five cards and ends his turn. However, if the active player does not have a valid card to play on his turn, then he must add the discard pile to his hand and end his turn.

If there are four cards in a row of the same value in the discard pile after the active player has placed his cards, or if he plays a blast it card, then all the cards in the discard pile are moved to the clear pile, and the active player draws back up to five and plays again.

Once a player has played all the cards in his personal draw pile, he must play with his two face-up cards from the start of the game. Again, if he ever cannot play a card he must take the discard pile into his hand. After both face-up cards have been played, the player uses his face-down cards. He does not look at the card as he is playing it. If he reveals one of them and it is not a legal play, he must again add the discard pile into his hand and play through those.

Play continues until only one player has cards left. That player is the loser.

There are a couple of special cards: the wild card and the restart card. The restart card resets the discard pile, acting essentially as a zero. Additionally, there are other special cards (unibrow and trim) that players can choose to add to the deck before the start of the game if they choose.

Finally, there is the optional disguise rule. If players choose to use this, a player can, on his turn, play one or more cards from his hand face-down and announce what the value is. Another player can accuse him of lying or choose to believe him. If a player is accused, the cards are revealed and whoever was wrong must take the discard pile into his hand.

Review

Card Blasting Facial Hair is a nice, casual little card game with some fun ideas mixed in. The uncertainty of what the face-down cards are is a nice twist that keeps the game uncertain and leads to some fun reveal moments.

The different cards you can add in, as well as the disguise variant, add an extra layer to the game. The bluffing rule won’t be for every group, but we enjoyed it and what it introduced to the game. It made it feel a little weightier, which is a nice fit for different game groups.

There does feel like a little bit of a mismatch between the theme and the gameplay. The gameplay is very family-friendly, and it does feel like this is a game you could play with your kids. Obviously, there’s nothing inappropriate about the theme, it just feels like kids are not likely to enjoy it as much as an older group. In fact, it didn’t particularly click with us either, although we did quite enjoy the jokes and puns around the theme that were in the rulebook.

The components are excellent. The card quality is excellent and they’re a nice material to handle and play with and we liked the artwork and design of the cards.

Card Blasting Facial Hair is a well-designed card game that is easy to learn, teach, and play. It is a little clunky that you play until there is a single loser, rather than a winner, but this is an easy house rule if you don’t like it. Additionally, one of the optional cards you can add to the deck does potentially allow you to bring a player back into the game.

Overall, it’s a very simple game that won’t appeal to everyone, but if you like light card games, this one is put together well, with variants that let you tweak it for your game group.

Pros: Component quality, the bluffing variant adds a nice twist to the gameplay, the unpredictability of those face-down cards leads to some fun moments

Cons: Theme feels a little niche, playing to a loser rather than a winner

Disclosure: we received a complimentary review copy of this game.