Button Shy is proud to announce that the next game to hit Kickstarter in our Wallet Games series is Tussie Mussie, a 1-4 player game designed by Elizabeth Hargrave (designer of Wingspan). Tussie Mussie is an 18-card game where players will be collecting small bouquets of four flowers, known as Tussie-Mussies. During the Victorian era, where this fad originated, the flowers were assigned meaning and used to communicate with friends or lovers - in this game, the flowers are assigned methods of scoring and will be used to try and obtain the highest score.
I CUT, YOU CHOOSE
Whether playing with 2-players or 3-4 players, you’ll be following the same process until all players have four cards in front of them. During a round, each player will receive two cards to look at and will decide how to offer them to the person on their left - one card being face-up and the other face-down. That player will then decide which they would like to take but cannot look at the face-down card prior to choosing. So they have to decide if that face-down card is face-down because you know it is the better card for their collection, or if it is face-down so they don’t choose it because it is the card you really want. Or maybe they know you’ll think that face-down card is better for them and are counting on you to choose that because it is absolutely worthless to them and, if you saw it, you’d never choose it. The mind games that can take place here can make a person’s head spin - who knew picking flowers could be such a difficult decision?
SPEAKING THE LANGUAGE OF FLOWERS
Of course, since this is all about using the flowers to communicate with the person to your left, you can use that information to your advantage. For instance, the card for Marigold tells you that they mean “You have been cruel” and you can declare that to your opponent as you set it as the face-up option of the two cards - perhaps because they chose incorrectly on a previous round and stuck you with the card you didn’t want in your display. While this is completely optional and does not impact the gameplay of Tussie Mussie, it adds an extra layer of flavor to the game. For a bonus, use that knowledge of flower meanings to communicate something with real flowers at a later time.
BOUQUETS AND KEEPSAKES
As you collect the cards, they will retain both the order in which they were obtained and face-down cards will remain face-down.
At the end of the game the face-up cards, which form your bouquet, will remain where they were. The face-down cards, known as your keepsakes, will remain in the same order but will be slid down closer to you to form a 2nd row before being revealed.
All of these minor details matter in the game, however, because…
TAKING ACTION AND SCORING
The cards contain several pieces of information on them, apart from delightful images of flowers. Some of them have actions, such as flipping cards you have or drawing new cards to replace cards you have. Others have scoring bonuses, such as for having a specific number of cards in your bouquet or having specific qualities on adjacent cards. Cards will also score points for hearts printed on the card (and some may score bonus points for adjacent hearts). At the end of playing three rounds, the player with the highest score is the winner.
PREPARE YOUR BOUQUETS
Tussie Mussie is launching on Kickstarter on May 28, 2019 and will be priced as low as $10 plus shipping and will come packaged in our standard vinyl wallet for maximum portability. Prune your flower gardens and prepare those bouquets for the arrival of this delightful game of Victorian flower exchange.
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