Operation: Game Night
Travis Smith, Jared Erickson, and Clay Gable get together to discuss the latest and greatest in board games in this weekly podcast. What's hot, what's hitting the table, featured discussions about board games and the board gaming culture, and the primary mission objective- to play more board games!
Operation: Game Night
Debrief: Ace of Spades by Devir - Shuffling through Trouble
Operation Game Night discusses Devir Games' controversial release Ace of Spades, examining both its problematic representation issues and its innovative poker-based combat mechanics. Travis and Clayton analyze why the game's depictions of characters are unacceptable while acknowledging the potential of its core gameplay systems.
• Devir Games has halted sales of Ace of Spades due to offensive imagery, particularly cards depicting slavery and racist stereotypes
• The publisher issued an apology stating the art was meant as a reference to Western cinema but acknowledges this was inappropriate
• Despite the controversy, the game features innovative poker-based combat where players use poker hands to battle against enemies
• Players manage their hands, discards, and special abilities gained from defeated enemies in this challenging solo experience
• The hosts compare the mechanics favorably to games like Regicide and the video game Balatro
• Travis suggests those who own the game could remove the offensive cards but understands why many will avoid it entirely
• Both hosts express disappointment that poor representation overshadowed what could have been an exciting entry in the poker game genre
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Welcome to the Operation Game Night podcast. Back and better than ever. Joining me, as always, is my co-host, clayton Gable. How are you doing, clay?
Speaker 2:I'm doing great today, Travis. I'm glad we shed our dead weight and you and I can share a moment of intimacy today. That's right. Talk about the Ace of Spades.
Speaker 1:Yeah, today we're talking a very controversial new game, a game that is currently no longer for sale, had a very short sales window, but it is Ace of Spades by Devere Games, and I want to start this off by saying that this game is surrounded by controversy. Devere knows that it's surrounded by controversy, so much so that they put out a statement press release saying that they're going to stop the sale of the game immediately and retrieve all unsold copies from its sales partners and realty retailers. Um, I want to preface all of this conversation with we're not going to focus a lot on the art, because primarily it is the art that is controversial. Uh, for those that don't know, ace of spades is a solo, only poker trick taking game. Uh, that involves combat against enemies that are drawn kind of randomly out of a deck and each of those uh enemies that's drawn has, like, a health that you're trying to combat through poker hands, and a couple of the enemies, uh, were portrayals of different historical figures that you know have implications today. So, for those that don't know, there is, you know, a depiction of a black man in chains and the title of that card is the Fugitive right and he's like this enraged looking slave representation. Another is the slaver who is a you know rich looking white man in a white suit that is holding a whip. Okay, uh, another one that I didn't see get as much flack, but there's one that's called like the Savage and it's a native American person in headdress and, and you know, traditional garb, with like flaming red eyes. Okay, not cool.
Speaker 1:I want to put out that OGN does not stand for any of this stuff. We don't agree with any representation of these individuals in the game and, yeah, it's really a shame that somebody as revered as Devere can let something like this slip. They know that they did wrong. It just sucks that. This was like one of the most anticipated games from recent conferences and people finally got their hands on it and I think people were blindsided by it. So really shameful that this had to come about this way. You know, designer is Benjamin Amorin and artist is David Rubin.
Speaker 1:I don't know so much about the development of this game, but the fact that Devere publishes so many games and let this slip through is is really a shame. Um, you know I devere is was one of my favorite publishers and it's it sucks that they have such a you know mar on their reputation when they publish a game like this, a game that should be great. Like I was kind of thinking like what would I do if I, if they had caught this earlier? Like what would I do? One, I would never allow those cards to be printed. But two, they have like these promotional, these promotional enemies that are kind of included in the box, and one of them is like ace of base okay, like the band, and I'm like, if you're gonna be as silly as putting something like ace of base in the game, just swap them out for something else. These controversial cards are going to be removed in future publications of this game. I don't know if Devere will ever take a stab again at republishing this game.
Speaker 1:I think the mechanics are great, I think the game plays phenomenal, but the problematic representation in this game is really shameful. So I want to focus largely on the mechanics of the game and how it plays. You know when, when I first said, hey, I want to debrief this clay, you said, oh, it better come with some caveats. And I didn't even know what you were talking about because I had not seen. I had not seen the news.
Speaker 1:And what you do when you set the game up is they're like the enemies have these different levels right and you increase in difficulty before you get to the big bad boss at the end, which is basically like a representation of the devil or something, and you're supposed to draw enemies from each of these different levels of cards, like one through ten, and so I kind of wanted to surprise myself a little bit.
Speaker 1:So I just flipped through the cards face down and I had drawn out a card from each level and I didn't even pull any of the controversial ones. So it didn't even occur to me that there were controversial cards in there. I kind of wanted to avoid some spoilers, so I just kind of pulled them out at random. And yeah, as I started flipping through, I'm like, oh, that's not good, oh, that's worse, oh, and it's really too bad that this is such a moron de vere. And I think as a board game community we have come so much further than this. That representation is such at the forefront of everyone's minds that they would publish something like this. But I do. You have any questions about this, like what are your takes on this?
Speaker 2:No, no, I, I mean I was just, you know, I you read the thing, you know I thought it was a joke. Like I saw a picture of the card, somebody on like a TikTok about it and I was like, is this a joke? Like, is this like an AI generated card? Because I couldn't.
Speaker 2:It confounded me that in 2025, that slipped through the quality controls and got out to people I mean, so many people had to have looked through the files for art, played the game, play, tested the game. The fact that that went unnoticed I would hope I would notice it unprompted, but like when they put it in your face and are like, oh hell, no, they had like the slaver next to the fugitive and it was just ugly and yeah, I, I didn't think it was real. And then I looked more into it and, sure enough, it happened and I'm glad you gave a good overview of kind of how it's been handled and you know all the good caveats I told you to make sure you had before you got on our platformchained as a inspiration for the game, which is fine.
Speaker 1:Like it's a Django. Unchained is like a certain take on this type of controversy, right, like slavery is bad and Django, as a former slave, goes and gets revenge on his slave masters. You are not playing as jango in this game. In fact jango is a name of one of the characters in the game, like one of the. I think it's one of the enemies that you fight, but jango is like just the name. I think it's like some wild west looking cowboy evil type character. But he's not black and he's not a slave. And to name the slave, the fugitive, and make him like an enemy in the game is not great representation. And it's one thing to pull from a certain media and say that it inspired you. It's another to like twist that narrative and make it where you are fighting slaves, like not not a good representation. So I kind of looked into devere and I know that they have like a couple different publishing arms that are located in different parts of the country not parts of the country, but like domestic to the us and abroad. They actually have like a european publishing arm and I thought like maybe it came from the european one. But then you flip the box over and it says like devere of america. So I you know that's. It's really too bad that it had to come to this, but hopefully in future iterations, if they do republish this game, it will be cleaned up and and they can get rid of a lot of the controversial stuff in it. That being said, I do want to talk about the mechanics, because I do think the mechanics of the game are good.
Speaker 1:It is a solo only battling game. I guess it is cooperative up to two players, but primarily it's a solo game where you are playing poker hands to do combat against these different level of enemies. So you draw a bunch of cards with your hand up to seven and you are playing five cards per hand that will do different damage to the enemy, that have, you know, increasing levels of health and as you do that, you are managing this kind of like wheel right. So you have a certain number of hands that you're able to play against each enemy. You have a certain number of like discards that are allotted per enemy card and then you have these cards that will do additional damage or play off one another and as you defeat enemies, some of them have like immediate effects that will go into play. Some of them will have kind of like specials that you can add into your hands later on, allowing cards to play off one another. Some of them have buffs or nerfs to your hand, right. So some of them will say none of the heart cards that you play against the enemy will count, and what happens is, as you play face cards, face cards will do 10 damage, uh aces will do 11 damage, plus you know certain uh additives.
Speaker 1:And I remember, like, as I was playing this game, I was thinking back to our conversation that we had with paul solomon when he when he was on, and we were talking about bellatro, and bellatro is a video game, that is, game that is like a run-based game where you're trying to build the best poker hand and you get these crazy cards that do like multipliers and all these crazy things to your hand and I'm like man, somebody needs to put this into a board game. This is probably as close as we're ever going to get to that, and it's a real shame that something as successful as Bellatro cannot be translated directly, because it's kind of the same mechanic, right, like I'm trying to hit a certain amount of damage to move past this level. Right. Move on to the next boss. Um, but it's not quite as crazy as Bellatro where you're getting like 10,000 points or whatever. Like I think the, the main boss, like the highest level boss, you have different levels that you can choose to to fight, like easy, medium, hard, extreme or whatever and I played it on medium first and the, the big boss, has like 40 health or something and I came nowhere close to that. Like it's quite difficult to do.
Speaker 1:The game is challenging. It makes you make some tough decisions because you only have so many discards per enemy, you only have so many hands you can play per enemy and the bosses have tons of health as you move up, and it's a cool mechanic. It's a cool game. Um, I really enjoy the actual like poker hand management type stuff because you can, you know, discard certain amounts of cards from your hand. When do I, when do I like discard? When do I draw? When do I uh, manage, do a little hand management versus taking the, the attack damage and and moving on to the next round.
Speaker 1:Next round, the tough part is the big boss at the end, the devil I I don't know what the actual name is, I can't remember, but you have to play the ace of spades against that enemy and it's, and like you have like a regular deck of cards so that you have one in 52 chances of drawing that card, and so like using your discards to draw that ace of spades is really difficult against that final enemy.
Speaker 1:That's actually why I lost when I played a couple times, was I just couldn't get to the ace of spades, so like when you draw him later on the game, you want to hold on to that card before you get to the big boss at the end.
Speaker 1:So it's it's quite challenging. Uh, it's difficult to decide when you want to manage your hand versus attack, and some of the buffs are so cool, like all your I don't know all your spade cards are worth double points, or all your hearts are worth double points, or every diamond that you play counts as a heart, or something like that. You know, like it has these different modifiers per hand that allow you to move up quickly, and using those buffs at the right time is a fun decision that you can make. I really enjoy the mechanics of the game. It's just really a shame that something like the art and game design is something that is going to put a huge stain mark on this game going forward, and I don't know if we'll ever see this game again. I don't know if Devere would be willing to touch this game after the controversy that has come out around it, so it's really too bad.
Speaker 2:I mean this, what? Yeah, this was exciting to me when I heard about it because, you know, I feel like you know, classic card games, specifically trick-taking games and even like shedding games, all have their moment in the sun in the hobby gaming space. You know, like all the iterations on trick-taking and I thought, you know, here comes the poker era, like we're going to get a bunch of interesting takes on poker games. The gang came out and that was awesome, and then this was coming out and it sounded pretty cool, but maybe, maybe this will halt the progress a little bit now that people aren't going to get to play it. But I couldn't help when you were describing but think of two other games that aren't necessarily pokery but use a standard deck of cards for two similar extent. And one is one of your absolute favorite solo games. What is it called? It's Regicide.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yes, regicide, it sounds like it's got Regicide vibes. Regicide, yeah, yes, regicide, it sounds like it's got regicide vibes. And it also made me think of 52 realms, the print play that won best print and play last year. So this sounds, I mean, maybe tell me if I'm off on this based on your description, but it's, they sound like they have a similar feel to them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think it's probably closer to I. I don't even want to say it's regicide, because regicide, you play one card at a time. Yeah, this is like entire poker hands and to do a minimum amount of damage, you need at least a pair, and it's got like a cheat sheet on the bottom of your like player board that you manage with wheels. Um, that tell you how much damage each of the different hands do. So if you can put together a royal flush at the end, you're going to do a massive amount of damage. A pair is only worth, I don't think I think, one damage or something crazy like that. So you really got to be smart about how you manage that hand and I think it's a really smart mechanic, um, but yeah, like regicide and regicide legacy actually just launched. I just got it in. I'm excited to get that played. Uh, I'm curious to see how they changed in legacy if it does do more than one card at a time. But yeah, like poker style combat is such a cool way to adapt that mechanic of yeah and management and it's just too bad that they had to put such a stain on something like this. I do want to read their official apology. Um, just for like conservation sake, so that it's out there. I I know eventually that will probably get pulled from their, from their site, as it as they get this game back and as they try and absorb copies of it.
Speaker 1:There's a principle we hold on to in moments like this Never attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity. It does not excuse the error, but it reminds us the harm that can be done and was done without ill intent. That harm still matters and it is our responsibility to face it fully. At Tavir we've made serious mistakes that we apologize and reconcile for and have deep regret over. In our recent game, ace of Spades, we included two inappropriate illustrations I would say three One depicting a Black person in a state of enslavement and another portraying an enslaver. Both were originally intended as visual references to scenes from the film jango unchained as part of the game's homage to western cinema. However, we now fully understand that this approach was misguided. Depicting imagery tied to violence and trauma of slavery, even as cultural reference, is not appropriate in board game context.
Speaker 1:These illustrations trivialize a painful and deeply rooted historical reality. They should never have been included. We take full responsibility for the harm caused and we offer our sincere apology to everyone without conditions of excuses. We recognize that an apology is not enough on its own, which is why we're taking the following immediate steps. You know they're going to collect all the games that have not been sold. Uh, in future, uh, iterations are not going to include it. Yeah, they're gonna try and take some steps to right this wrong. But you know copies of this game are out there. They sold copies of this game at gen con.
Speaker 2:They probably sold a ton of copies of this game at, uh, yeah, gen con, right yeah, it was gen con, and I know people that weren't even there where you could pre-order it and get it.
Speaker 1:I mean, you got it like yep it's, it's out there for sure yeah, we shouted this out as like one of our yeah, like most anticipated games from Gen Con. It was getting a lot of hype. People love this mechanic. It's just really too bad that it had to go down like this. I don't know how much else to say. I think the mechanics are cool, but it's really a shame that it had to go down like this.
Speaker 1:There is a way to play this game without those cards. You can take those cards out of the game and throw them away and never play with them and still get some enjoyment out of this game. If you have a copy, I would recommend doing that. Just get rid of the cards, don't play with them and and maybe you might get some enjoyment out of this game. But people vote with their money and if you don't want to support Devere because of this, then that is your choice as a consumer and hopefully they can make things right and and put systems in place to avoid an embarrassment like this in the future, cause Devere is highly revered in the board game community, like they put out some amazing games. It's just Too bad that they don't have the systems in place to check things like this and, like you said, it should have been caught long before publication.
Speaker 2:So well, it sounds like it it was an intentional move, which is, I don't know. I mean there, you don't need to always run away from historical references and like, but there's a way to do it. A 20 minute card game or whatever isn't going to give you the space to explore that, like something like Molly House or one of the Amabel Holland games, that like really dive into something of historical significance and not run from it Like it did, trivialize it in this game. Whether their intentions were to to, you know, pay homage to some historical moment, um, I just don't think it was the right venue yeah, you look at.
Speaker 1:You look at games like molly house and votes for women and, yeah, these different games that take something that is controversial, historically important, right at the very least, and they make it so that you can play the game in a way that like feels good and feels like you are fighting the system that had injustice or you know. But then you have instances like this where they take an enslaved man, call him the fugitive, which is like completely wrong, and then make him an enemy in the game, like western cinema. You could have taken, I don't know something like uh oh, what is the? What is the game? Or the, the movie where, like the oh man, that's, it's gonna fall, fall on my head.
Speaker 2:I'm not a big Western guy, but Tombstone yeah, that's the only Western movie I know.
Speaker 1:There's like black representation in Western cinema that is phenomenal Django Unchained is one of them. Right, and to make the black person the fugitive and put them in chains is really too bad. The fugitive and put them in changes is really too bad. They could, they could have spun this so many different ways to still pay homage to that, that Western cinema. That felt good and they really missed the boat on that one. So I don't really know how much else there is to say about it. It's a, it's cool mechanics. I really liked the, the poker combat, but the representation and the art and the, the design, is really a shame. So yeah, ace of Spades, there it is. Devere, vote with your money.
Speaker 2:More poker games, please. I want, I want more like this.
Speaker 1:Don't shy away from poker games. I think they're great. I think poker combat is fun. I think hand management is fun. The way that they do it here is is awesome. If you do find a copy of that game, just throw those cards away and never look at them again. I think the Ace of Base card is one that can actually swap out with, maybe the Slaver or something. So yeah, I don't know how much else to say. Ace of Spades is one that I enjoy, but I don't know how much love I'm going to give it because it does have such a mar on it. So there you go, ace of Spades, published by Devere Games. Yeah, thanks, travis. Yeah, all right, I've been Travis, he's been Clay. This has been a disappointment and we're out.
