by W. Eric Martin

In my 2024 preview of The Yellow House from designer Geonil and publisher Mandoo Games, I wrote, "I find the design fascinating, while also being baffled as to how to play well".

The same is true of the 2025 release from this designer/publisher pair: Faust vs Mephisto, which like the previous design is a two-player-only trick-taking game. Let's examine three elements of the design that build upon one another in fascinating ways:

▪️ The victory condition: One player represents Faust, the other Mephistopheles, and for Mephistopheles to win, one player must win all the cards in at least two suits over the two rounds of play.

As in The Yellow House, the suits represent aspects of life — love, knowledge, power, and youth — and if one player takes all of these cards, this can be viewed as either Mephistopheles granting complete control of that aspect to Faust (if Faust takes all of these cards) or Faust having ceded this aspect of his life in order to gain something else (if Mephistopheles takes all of these cards). In either case, this is good news for Mephistopheles. Faust is making deals! To record this deal, you flip the suit token matching the suit claimed by one player; Mephistopheles must flip two suit tokens to win.

Faust wants to ensure that both players take cards in a suit because then that aspect of life is still being contested. He has not ceded that part of his humanity!

Pips = number of cards in that suit▪️ The ranking of the suits: As in The Yellow House, the suits start unranked and become ranked during gameplay...but not permanently.

In the image at left, you're looking at my hand in the role of Mephistopheles. I led the first trick in the first round, playing a green 7. As the first suit played, green was placed on the lowest rank of the suit chart. Faust played a green 5, so I won the trick, then I led a blue 1, which added blue to the suit chart above green...and at that point, I realized that I had messed up.

I had all but one green card in my hand, so I knew my opponent had the green 5 or it was out of play (since two cards remain undealt), but by playing green first, I had set it at the weakest rank, which meant that any green I played in the future would be beat by cards from other suits, so I was guaranteeing that Faust would also win green cards, which meant that I couldn't flip the green suit that round.

What a bonehead move! I should have led green 1-4 because whether my opponent had the green 5 or not, he would have won the trick and green would be the lowest rank, giving me the opportunity to push green on him for the rest of the round.

Although even that might not have worked for two reasons. First, the yellow suit has a special power so that when it's ranked, it skips the first open space. If a yellow card were played next in the game above, it would jump to the top of the suit chart, leaving red to eventually be third — but if red were played first, being ranked above blue, then yellow would skip the highest spot and circle around to be ranked below green. If this happened, then Faust could throw off a yellow card to lose to a green, and I would have again lost the green suit.

Now this might have been tricky to do since red's special power is that as in Hearts, the red suit cannot be led until the suit is broken, so if Faust led yellow in the third trick, yellow would have been ranked highest.

Second, at the end of the trick after all four suits have been ranked, all suit tokens other than blue are removed from the suit chart! (Blue's special power is that once that token is placed, it's locked for the round.) Thus, green wasn't locked at the bottom rank no matter what happened next. Three of the ranks would be untethered and open to a re-ranking based on how they were next played.

One more chance to get it all wrong
▪️ The coins: You might have noticed two coins on the table in front of each player. In the spirit of the Faust legend, you can spend a coin to force your opponent into a deal, specifically to play a card from their own hand that will count as your card for the trick.

In more detail, when you play a coin, you specify the suit the opponent must play as well as whether they're playing the highest or lowest card of that suit, then they must carry out this deal as best as they can. If I lead a trick, then I can use a coin to force my opponent to play their highest blue card, then they have to follow, ideally playing another blue so that I can win the trick. (If they don't have blue, then they play off suit, winning or losing the trick depending on the suit ranks.)

Love is on my side?If my opponent leads a high blue, I can use a coin to say "Play your highest green on my behalf". If they have blue cards, they must play their highest blue in order to follow the suit led, but if not, then they'll play their highest green...unless they have no green, in which case they'll play their highest yellow or red. In short, "highest" or "lowest" is locked in, with the suit dependent on what's in the players hand.

Figuring out how to use coins well has the been toughest aspect of this game. After all, if you use a coin to make your opponent lead for you in a trick, they can use a coin to make you follow in that trick for them! Trying to determine what's best to do in a situation, whether to resolve the immediate trick or to set up future tricks, has been pleasantly maddening, with both my opponents and I realizing a few tricks down the line that we goofed in our request. I've played four times on a review copy from Mandoo Games, and I'll need many more games before I stop making boneheaded plays like the one I described above.

Should you have the chance to play, one suggestion: Don't switch roles in the middle of a game session. I played Mephistopheles in one game, then Faust in the following game, and both my opponent and I found it difficult to switch gears. I kept having to remind myself "split the suits, split the suits" because as Faust I needed both players to win cards of a color, so I had to think about how to play my hand in a radically different way than I would have as Mephistopheles. That's a brilliant aspect of this design, but I wouldn't force it in a single game session.

For more examples of gameplay, watch this video:

Youtube Video