Fairy Tale is a clumsy little card drafting game which predates 7 Wonders by 6 years and it shows. Aside from being first, Fairy Tale offers nothing of interest that newer, better drafting games haven’t improved upon several times over. I know many board game critics put a lot of stake in which-game-featured-what-mechanic-first chronologies, but I’m not one of them. Of course I enjoy tracing the origins and influences of game systems and ideas across the years — a process I derive extreme personal edification from — but these reviews are about whether or not a game is good. There are plenty of bad games with good ideas in them (in fact, I’d say most of them have at least one), but distinguishing the good idea from the good game is no simple task. Be that as it may, let’s aim to do just that. I respect Fairy Tale and the creativity of its design — especially for its time — but it is a dated, unpolished game that there’s just not much of a reason to return to 15 years after its initial publication.
Playing Fairy Tale will feel very familiar to anyone who’s played more recent drafting games like 7 Wonders or Sushi Go!. The game takes place over a series of rounds, players are dealt hands of cards, they select a card to keep then pass the rest to another player, and this goes on until everyone’s selected a full set of cards. However, unlike those other games, Fairy Tale follows this drafting phase with an additional card-playing phase. Players simultaneously select cards from their hands and reveal them, triggering their effects. These come in two flavors: flipping/unflipping cards (sometimes yours, sometimes your opponents’) and drawing new cards. In addition, cards are worth points for end-game scoring. Some score a flat number, others have values that are conditional upon the player fulfilling a specific objective (have the most of a certain card type, for instance). There are also cards with values based on the other cards you’ve played, so there is a definite set collection element going on here as well. After three rounds of card selection players discard the rest of their hands, and new hands of five are dealt to begin drafting anew. The game lasts for four full cycles of this drafting/playing, and the player with the highest score at the end wins.
The most immediately apparent way Fairy Tale feels dated is in the separation of the drafting and playing phases. 7 Wonders combined these into a single system for a reason. The drafting in Fairy Tale is basically just a hand management mechanism that very cleverly gives everyone information about what’s in other players’ hands. Unfortunately the core of the game is just rudimentary set collection with a pinch of take that, so the brilliance of this idea is completely wasted on an undeserving system. There’s simply nothing else of interest here. The card effects could’ve been developed into something, but as is they’re a total bore unless you get a real kick out of flipping cards face down so they don’t score or back face up so they do. Yet despite this basic nature they somehow still manage to be unintuitive and clunky, requiring you to remember the exact order certain effects trigger based on their type. 7 Wonders is both easier to play and a deeper game than Fairy Tale, which is a surefire indicator that a design has been outclassed entirely.
Another gripe I have with Fairy Tale is its graphic design. It is atrocious. The fonts, colors, iconography, and arrangements of the card faces are an amateurish headache. I’m talking specifically about the 2014 Z-Man edition, but some light googling has informed me that the original cards were hideous as well. After 10 years and a complete visual overhaul you’d think they’d come out with something a little more professional. The game’s theming is also very thin and seems more like an excuse to feed you ornate fantasy anime art than anything else. The illustrations themselves are decent enough Yoshitaka Amano knock-offs, but their busyness coupled with the poor graphic design makes the mere act of looking at these cards a chore. It doesn’t help that the game is a repetitive, narratively-inert slog, either. There’s no engine-building, resource management, or persistent powers of any kind to make it feel like you’re doing anything but matching up ugly cards based on their color or names. What a waste.
I know I’m ripping into Fairy Tale pretty hard, but I do think its approach to card drafting was an exciting development in modern game mechanics. It’s just a shame that such a great idea is nested so deeply inside several layers of missed opportunities. Antoine Bauza much better understood the mechanism’s potential and placed it front and center in his 7 Wonders, creating a modern classic in the process. So while Fairy Tale deserves to be known and appreciated for its contribution to the form, it really isn’t a very good game. Even amongst its contemporaries its design is not particularly solid, and the passage of time has only made its weaknesses that much harder to tolerate. Play it for a lesson in how a great mechanism does not guarantee a great game, otherwise don’t bother.
Fairy Tale gets a rating of TWO out of FIVE, indicating it is NOT RECOMMENDED.