Sloppy Seconds Backdoor Errata

As the unambiguous blog title suggests, today I will be talking about Least I Could Do: The Card Game.

In 2012, game designer Jeff Phillips designed a card game about picking up chicks in bars. It’s a quick and easy game for up to 6 players, making it an ideal party game. It was a light game that didn’t shy away from a little offensive humour.

A few years later, we release Ladies Night. It had a similar sense of humour, only turning the tables on our male cast. We consulted Blind Ferret’s female staff to make sure the references were authentic, and the game improved overall by broadening the sense of humour.

The game continued to sell well, so another expansion was in order. By now I was on staff, and being our resident game guy, I was given the reigns. I started work on Sloppy Seconds with one goal: Balancing the game.

I know, it’s a light game, why should balance be a concern? Were people really buying the expansion with the playable Llama and masturbating T-Rex hoping for the best game experience? Well, I wasn’t looking for laser precision, but in analyzing the math, I came across a huge discrepancy.

Between the base game and the expansion, there was a total of 69 (nice) bonuses to Charm. Compare that to only 53 bonuses to Looks, and 28 bonus to Money. If you were playing a character with a high Charm score, you were more than twice as likely to get a bonus to your main score as you were if you had high Money score.

I made a chart to track my balance goals. If I added only 1 Charm bonus, 17 Looks bonuses, and 42 (nice) Money bonuses, then playing the base game plus the two expansions means there are 70 bonuses for each stat. Playing just the base set and Sloppy Seconds, the difference was now 54 to 66. Not perfect, but perfect enough!

All that to say, if you’re looking at Least I Could Do: The Card Game going for an unbelievable $5 and aren’t sure about getting the expansions, I assure you: The addition of Ladies Night and Sloppy Seconds not only adds more jokes and more variety to the game, it improves the gameplay as well.

Check out our games and many more great LICD items during our Blind Ferret Shop blowout.