How quickly time goes by, the 10th Jolly Club game is already on the members’ mat. Every other month Jolly Club members receive a brand new game, each time it is a surprise what it is.
This time it was Odd Shop, a magical auction card game by our own Adrie Drent.
In this game, players are welcomed to Odd Shop: the auction house for all your curiosities.
Collect the best objects at your own discretion or hire an expert to get more certainty.
For be warned: not everything is what it seems!
Bid, bluff and trade, collecting the objects that best fit your collection in 5 to 10 rounds.
Do you have the most valuable collection at the end of the game?
Then you are the winner of Odd Shop!
Before the game starts, decide how many rounds you want to play and put the auction hammer card on the corresponding spot in the object pile.
A short game of 5 rounds takes about half an hour.
If you use all the cards and play 10 rounds you will have over an hour of fun.
The number of rounds affects how many bonus points a set of objects earns at the end of the game. 
Each round begins by placing down 5 closed authenticity cards with 5 open object cards on top.
These are the strange objects you will bid on this round with your credit cards.
From a distance, however, it is difficult to tell whether an object is authentic or a replica.
To find out, players can consult an Expert; however, this will cost them credit, giving them less to bid with this round.
They can, of course, use this knowledge to manipulate their fellow players.
The objects are auctioned off one by one with players bidding with their credit cards.
If you bid the most for an object, then it, including the closed authenticity card is yours.
All the credit you bid for, you put aside and cannot use again this turn.
Everyone else takes back their credit. 
After all 5 object cards of the round have been auctioned, players may check their acquisitions or start trading.
Each player may decide whether they want to trade first or turn over their authenticity card(s) first.
You are free in how you want to trade.
Thus, you may trade objects, give them away or (dis)buy them for credit.
Be careful though!
If you buy another player’s card with credit, the credit cards you used for that purpose go permanently to the other player and you continue the game with less credit. 
This continues until the card with the auction hammer is drawn.
Now it is time to see who has accumulated the most valuable collection!
First, all objects whose value is still unknown are checked to see if they are authentic or a replica.
Then you add up the values of your objects and any bonus points.
You score bonus points if you have a certain number of cards of the same category, identified by their color and symbol.
You also score bonus points for each complete set in the equipment category.
The one with the most points, has the most valuable collection and thus wins Odd Shop!
After Hot Potato, If It Fits and Télos, Odd Shop is Adrie Drent’s 4th card game released by Jolly Dutch.
The beautiful and detailed artwork is by Nicholas Westgård.
Nicholas interned with us for six months and during that time designed all the artwork for Odd Shop.
This makes this the first published game with his artwork on it.
We hope to see many more games with his artwork in the future.
THE STORY BEHIND OPERATION CUCKOO
At Spiel 2022, we launched Operation Cuckoo, a delightful two-player game that we saw a lot of potential in.Yet it has taken until today that we can actually start offering the retail version, with lots of bumps and considerations.
We would like to take you through our process. After a long wait, the second edition of Operation Cuckoo has finally arrived at our office.
Everyone is relieved, no unpleasant surprises this time.
Almost a year ago, the first edition of Operation Cuckoo was developed.
Where normally we always have our games produced at the ecological Fabryka Kart factory, this time we decided to have the wooden pieces produced at an FSC factory in China, and offset the extra emissions.
This was because we wanted the artwork of the cuckoo and lesser warblers printed on the pieces and this was not possible at Fabryka Kart without increasing the retail cost by almost 10 euros.
It seemed simple, the pieces would be sent from China to Fabryka Kart, where the game board, rules and box were produced.
Here they would be assembled and then sent to our office.
Everything seemed to be going well until we received the first pieces at the office.
It was a similar morning to today.
Everyone was working nicely when the package with the test pieces arrived.
Of course that work was all shut down, everyone was curious to see the printed pieces.
The print looked beautiful.
However, to our great surprise, the pieces were a lot smaller than we had imagined.
We had previously received a video with the test pieces in it, and here they really seemed a lot larger.
After measuring and asking a lot of questions, it turned out to be the size we had requested.
No problem you might think.
Then you just ask to have the pieces made a little bigger, right?
But that is easier thought than done.
Because the test pieces had been in transit for some time, production had already started in the meantime and the size could no longer be adjusted.
We now had two options:
1) Have all the pieces discarded and have new larger pieces printed or
2) Sell the game with the smaller pieces.
The first option was not a real option for us.
One of our basic values is that every game we publish should be fun for you as well as for the environment.
Having the pieces just thrown away was really impossible for us.
However, for the fun of play, we still wanted larger pieces.
And this was how a third option came to light.
What if we did have larger pieces printed, but also used the smaller pieces for another version?
One where it is actually an advantage that the pieces are smaller.
And so the idea of the Operation Cuckoo travel edition was born.
So while it was not our first intention to develop a travel edition of Operation Cuckoo, it felt logical.
Operation Cuckoo is a two-player game that plays nice and fast, making it ideal for couples to take on vacation.
To make it travel-friendly, the game board and box had to be made smaller, of course.
So we asked Fabryka Kart to fill a limited number of Operation Cuckoo’s with the smaller pieces and use the rest for the travel edition.
That way people at trade shows could try out and buy Operation Cuckoo with the smaller pieces anyway, while we waited for the larger pieces.
The board and box were modified for the travel edition and the Operation Cuckoo travel edition is now available in a nice compact box the size of our card games.
Making the travel edition was actually so easy.
However, the larger pieces proved a bit more challenging.
The production of the pieces was much delayed by a new outbreak of Covid-19 in China at the end of 2022 and by the Chinese New Year.
Meanwhile, we had also changed the color “red” to a brighter red, but this turned out to be almost fluorescent pink in production.
Fortunately, this time the test pieces were received by us on time and we were able to make several adjustments before production began this time.
And after a long wait, today was finally the day; the second edition of Operation Cuckoo is now in our office.
And how happy we are with the end result!
Sometimes it takes a while, but then you have something!
The second edition and travel edition of Operation Cuckoo are available for purchase in our webshop and for pre-order at your local game store from today!