As someone whose least favorite part about playing a new game is, by far, the necessity of learning a new set of rules, simple games with simple parts always tend to draw me in. One of these games, renowned amongst my friends but unbeknownst to me until recently, is called BS (or b***sh**, as the cruder-than-I say).
The game is typically played with a standard deck of cards; however, one thing I loved about it right off the bat was that the actual effectiveness of the mechanics of the game were mostly unaffected by my in-house deck of 49 cards. It only made counting cards slightly more mentally straining, but that tended to work in my favor. The game begins by the dealing of the entire deck amongst the players in the game. We discarded any cards that could not be evenly distributed to the bottom of the discard pile (although I am not 100% sure this is what the official rules say). The person who holds the Ace of Spades begins the game by placing the card down in the center of the discard pile. The game then proceeds in a clockwise turn order, the next player putting down all of the two’s they have in their hand face down in the center, and the next putting down three’s, and so on. The catch is that you are allowed to bluff about how many of each face value you have in your hand; for instance, if I only have 1 two, I can put down three cards and claim that I had 3. If other players think that you’re fibbing, they are allowed to call “BS” on you– if you were lying, you have to take all of the cards currently in the center discard pile. If you weren’t, then the player who accused you must take them. The goal is to be the first to get rid of all of your cards.
Because the aim is to get rid of all of your cards, one thing that I found slow towards the beginning of the game was the lack of incentive to utilize the “BS” mechanic, especially early in the game, unless you know for sure based on your own hand that someone is lying. I tend to be a more defensive player in general, so I found myself reluctant to call “BS” unless I quite literally had 3 two’s in my hand and someone was claiming to have 2 (it would have been impossible to have any in this round, as one of the missing cards in my beloved deck is the Two of Hearts. Meaning I currently had had all of the 2’s in the deck). If I had happened to have been playing with players equally as non-aggressive as I, the game would have gotten pretty monotonous pretty quickly. However, the mechanic does become easier to use for non-offensive players as the game nears the end, and you’re trying to prevent other players from winning; for instance, if someone has three cards and puts one down, the likelihood of them having the card they say is pretty low; in addition, the incentive to call “BS” is increases, especially if there is a high quantity of cards sitting in the center pile.
Overall, I really really loved this game. I will definitely be playing again; my primary critique is the lack of mechanics that support more timid players such as myself, but that could also just be restricted due to the nature of the game itself. I would highly recommend giving BS a try!
