A while ago I backed Botany: Floral Dragons (2026) from Dux Somnium on Kickstarter (which I’ll cover some time soon), and as part of that project I also chose to get Victorian Greeting Card Showdown (2026) as an add-on, mainly because I had already fallen in love with the idea and the theme (Christmas being just around the corner an’ all that), but I was also intrigued to see what Dux Somnium would do with all the stunning olde worlde artwork, and I’m very pleased to say they certainly didn’t disappoint on that front…

Designed by the Amy & Dusty Droz team, it’s very much a take on the original Apples to Apples (1999) party game, although instead of trying to play off descriptions using object / thing cards, you’re given a design brief from the… erm… “Editor-in-Chief at Sowersby Greeting Card Company”, and then asked to select one of the 5 greetings cards in your hand that might best represent the task at hand, but we’ll get to all of that shortly…

What’s in the box?

The Victorian Greeting Card Showdown box (Victorian Showdown hereafter) is pretty small, but quite heavy and deep too —18cm x 13.5cm x 8cm (approx)— but then it does need to hold 288 x large-format Victorian Greeting Cards (or at least the images thereof), 108 x standard-sized cards (72 x Assignment cards, 20 x Yea or Nay cards, and 16 x Polite Intervention cards), and a relatively compact 12-page rulebook. All told, there’s a lot of cards in here, but of course the highlight are those magnificent Victorian-style cards images which really do take your breath away: they celebrate various events throughout the year including Christmas, Valentine’s, Thanksgiving, Easter, Halloween and Independence Day — and yes it is primarily a US-based product, the greeting cards do all look stupendously lush and colourful, but many of the images will also instill you with a disturbing sense of “What the £#*@& were they thinking with this card!?”

Some early first game gripes?

I’m not really here to gripe about the artwork, however (it is stunningly creative!), because unlike many of the unboxings I usually get to do here, I’ve actually had a chance to get this game to the table already —and with the maximum 10-player count to boot!— although I have got a few things to say about that first experience, and should probably add that choosing to play this with 10 players on a first go was probably not the brightest of ideas, but it did bring to light a few flaws that I’d probably fix with some house rules next time we get it to the table…

I sold this to the rest of the group as “Apples to Apples with nobs on” and I’d stand by that description, although I do think this design adds a couple of extra layers of complication that seem largely unnecessary.

In Apples, the joy of the game is in players trying to come up with an appropriate item that best represents the description they’re given by the lead player for that round, so if the description was ‘Creepy’ for example, players might submit cards representing Father Christmas, A Dark Forest, An Old House, and Russell Brand (sorry!) perhaps — the core idea of the game is to ‘play the player’, so what follows is generally the lead player agonising over which one of those answers best represent the concept of Creepy to that particular lead player… There’s also usually an extra card thrown in at random from the deck so there’s a small chance none of the players will have their card selected by the lead player.

The core idea behind Victorian Showdown is very similar, although instead of matching a description or concept with a person or object, you’re matching an assignment with an appropriate greeting card, so for example, the brief might be “Creepy but cute”, and then players might throw in a selection of cards not dissimilar to those in the photo below (mixed in with a random one from the deck), at which point the lead player will get to choose which of the cards best represent that idea to them, and probably agonise over their decision until finally plumping for ‘Father Christmas sharing a room with a young girl in a nightgown’, for example… 🤷

Did someone say “Creepy but cute?”

Alas, the designers have added a couple of extra layers to this design, and unfortunately they do not necessarily improve upon that core game idea. In Victorian Showdown, once all the submitted cards are revealed —including a random one from the greeting card deck— players will also get the chance to play a Yea card and a Nay card (face down initially) to say whether they support or do not support a particular card as representing that assignment / design brief. This is fine in principle, of course, and those Yea and Nay cards can influence the lead player’s decision (they cannot pick the one(s) with the most Nay cards against them), but trying to organise this properly with 10 players around the table is a big ask, and largely unnecessary — it takes away the inherent joy of hearing the lead player talk everyone else through their personal decision-making process, and extends the playing time significantly.

Victorian Showdown does add a few additional rules on top of that which allow players to collect a ‘Polite Intervention’ card which can be played to influence the decision-making process on a later turn (when a player’s submitted card with the most Yays isn’t chosen is one way of obtaining intervention cards, for example), and those interventions include cards which can add or remove the Yeas or Nays on a particular submission, cards that let you submit two cards for consideration instead of just one, and cards that generally just mess things around a bit. Again, this feels like an unnecessary complication that delivers very little in return…

House rule suggestions?

Like I say, these additional rules are largely superfluous and do not necessarily enhance the core idea behind the game (and even detract from the fun / tension in my opinion) and my own take on this is to completely disregard the Yea and Nay step, and the Polite Intervention cards as well. By sticking to the lead player just choosing which card best represents the selected assignment card, the core idea of the game is maintained and you’re not sticking additional barriers of complexity in the way of everyone else’s entertainment. And if you must add something extra into the mix, why not just deal a random Polite Intervention card out to each player and treat it as a one-use only card that players can maybe take advantage of just once during the game?

For sure, I am very keen to get this to the table again —preferably several times over the festive season— but I think I’ll be utilising my own house rules instead of the ones as written next time. Regardless, I’d like to thank Dux Somnium for introducing this joyous and very beautiful little addition into the party game market, and sincerely hope it does as well as it deserves.

— Alex Bardy, 07Nov26