21X is like playing Dr Kawashima’s Brain Training, only you can’t play it on the toilet.

21X comes to us from designer Leo Samson and published by Naylor Games, who gave us Sub Terra and Snowdonia: Grand Tour. Now comes their newest project to grant new life to the classic game of blackjack. 

Like blackjack, the goal of the game    is to get a card total of 21, or as close as you can without going over. This new take is that each card, instead of just being a number, contains an algebraic expression. For those of you still here after reading “algebraic expression” this could be the game for you. You get dealt two cards and all players flip their cards at the same time. Your card may just be a number, but most cards contain an algebraic expression such as NX, 2-2X or 2X-10. Just to check again, still here? As that is literally how I, and several of my group felt at this point, but we soldiered on FOR SCIENCE! 

In the game, N is the number of cards that you have in front of you, and X is always whatever number you want. But, the value of X must be the same on all cards. So if I receive 1-X and 2-2X, if I say that X is worth 3 or 4 or 10000, etc. it will simply not get me close enough to 21. But you can say that X is worth -6 so you get (1 – -6)+(2-2x-6)=21. 

If you cannot get close to 21 (or close enough) with the cards that you have, you can draw additional cards up to a limit of five. However, once you draw a card, there is no way to discard it. Once a player states that they have 21, all players must stop, the result is checked and if they have, the game is over. If a player states “stand”, players start a one minute timer, you state your final total and what your X value is. The other players have that one minute to try and get closer to 21. After one minute, if they cannot, then the game is over, and closest to 21 wins.

The gorgeous game box states that gameplay is between two to fifteen minutes, and I would say that is accurate. Within the box, there are enough cards for three decks, and they are split into three levels of complexity. Level one contains integers with simple expressions. Negative numbers. Addition, subtraction and multiplication. Level 2 brings in division by 2, brackets, indices/powers. Finally Level 3 cards bring more complex divisions. 

There are also ‘celebrity’ cards which have famous number sequences, irrational numbers, factors, primes, from such household names as James Grime PhD, Kalie Steckles PhD and Matt Parker no PhD. The celebrity cards are beautiful cards with gold text, but unless you yourself are studying maths or physics at an advanced level, i think they will be as fun to play as when someone adds picture cards to Cards Against Humanity.

I have very strange feelings about this game. If someone asked me, or at least asked me to write about whether I enjoyed this game, would I say that I had? In all honesty, no. I was lucky enough to play with some very intelligent scientists, but all of us were quickly intimidated by the difficulty of the equations, and all of us haven’t had to do that level of maths for over a decade. We did enjoy the first hand, but after that, it just felt like we were doing homework.

All games have a place, all games are a labour of love for someone and so they want others to get enjoyment from as well (except Catan, that wants to make you hate your friends). I do not feel that 21X is best played as a game. 

If I have to race against another player to get to a total first, I just won’t enjoy that. If I approach this game as a puzzle, where I pull the cards and I can take my time to find the best answer, that suddenly appeals to me a whole lot more. If you have someone in your life who is studying more complicated mathematics than basic arithmetic, then this would be a perfect game to sit down with them, and use it as a learning tool. Work through the problems together (or competitively) and a few hands a night might do wonders for their next exam or test.

21X is available now from Zatu Games.