RETRO: ‘Happy New Year’ Gets Too Real Even In 2019

3 Minute Read

Jan 1 2019

Board game themes come in all flavors: Piracy on the sea, space adventurers, the crushing reality of struggling paycheck to paycheck while just trying to make it through the year, and super heroes.

Somewhere along the line, someone forgot to tell Chad Valley Games that board games are supposed to be an escape from our dreary reality, not a reminder of it.

Happy New Year is a play-to-move game with money management mechanics released in 1960 by the English company Chad Valley. The goal of each player is to save up 100 Eurobucks, declare “Happy new year”, skip a turn, then land on December 31. It’s a weird sequence of events, but that’s how you win.

Each player starts the game with 13 normal playing cards. These cards allow the player to move a number of spaces of the value of the card. However, the card played must also be of the correct suit. Each quarter of the board shows a different suit which must be played. If the player doesn’t have the correct suit of card, well, then maybe you can help me understand what happens.

“He must play a card of the correct suit, if he has one. (Penalty : £25). If he has no card of the correct suit, he can either demand a card of the correct suit from any other player. (Penalty for failing to supply a card when able to do so : £25), or pick up his own cards without payment.”

So, I demand a card from another player and they have to give it to me. Then if they don’t, THEY lose 25 Englandollars? That’s how I’m reading it, but that seems faulty at best. Either way, players somehow move around the board and land on different spaces which do different things.

Throughout the board are blue Luck spaces. The rules don’t explicitly say so, but I figure that means to flip over the next Luck card, which were set up earlier.

As per usual for these games, the Luck cards affect the game in a variety of ways, but usually bad for the players. The first player to save up 100 UKoins, declare “Happy New Year” and skip their turn, then move onto December 31 wins the game.

Happy New Year is a weird one for sure. Doesn’t really do anything new or different in terms of gameplay from 1960. But the theme is a bizarre one. What’s strange is that Game of Life (as we know it) was released the same year. I guess it was a big year for life simulation board games.

Thanks for reading!

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Author: Matt Sall

Matt has loved games of all kinds his whole life: board, video, war, roleplaying. He's worked as a writer for BoLS since 2017. He's worked as freelance editor for board game rulebooks and has designed many of his own games as well.

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