Review: Molly House - Party Hard or Hardly Party

I recently had the opportunity to play Molly House by Jo Kelly, Cole Wehrle, and Ricky Royal and had a thoroughly brilliant time.

"It's 1723. You walk through the streets of London, hiding your inner-most desires from the Society of the Reformation of Manners as you head to Mother Clap's. This may look like a coffee shoppe but inside are back rooms where loud festivities, intimate gatherings, and a thriving queer community is growing."

Over the course of 5 weeks, which act as rounds, players take the roles of gender-defying mollies and work together to grow the joy of the community, whilst also competing to be the most joyous individual. There is a risk-reward aspect to this, however, as while throwing excellent parties helps move counters along the joy track, they also have the potential to increase the gossip spreading about each of the four Molly Houses on the game board. Too much gossip will bring evidence against the Houses which can result in them being closed down. Even worse, players with too much reputation at these Houses risk getting indictments, the punishments for which can either be a reduction in joy or death by hanging. In classic Wehrle style, more mechanics is better, and there is also a system by which you can choose to betray your own community for your own selfish gains.

A key part of the game is the throwing of parties, which involve players taking it in turns to play cards in an attempt to create a poker-like communal hand that dictates how successful the party is. These range from dances, to christenings (in the historical Molly House sense), and if the communal hand played is a complete dud, a "quiet gathering". These quiet gatherings are likely to lose you reputation but can also be handy ways of throwing the Society of the Reformation of Manners off the scent.

I am fairly new to Cole Wehrle games, having only played Root once before and relatively recently, but the game definitely had his signature mark of very in-depth rules and numerous different play styles available. However, I have been informed that the real brains behind the game was Jo Kelly, an LGBTQ+ board game designer from Bristol. 

The art style is very satisfying and each of the cards that players use to build hands, which can be played at parties or to increase their reputation at the different Molly Houses, contain lovely imagery and quotes from actual historical indictments of the individuals mentioned in the game. Everything about the experience shows that the core theme was a true passion project and it has been handled with great care. It was a great experience to play a historical-political game that doesn't revolve around global conflict and instead provided an insight into a key moment in LGBTQ+ history.

While I am a fan of a good crunchy experience, I did find that the multitude of different mechanics in Molly House was slightly overwhelming at the beginning of the game, and by the time the game ended (which admittedly was early because we accidentally got one of the Molly Houses raided twice - a game ending condition) I still only had the barest of grasps on how the game worked, let alone be able to properly strategise. In comparison with Root, which also has a steep learning curve, I would say it comes off slightly more complex and probably requires a couple of games before you can understand it well enough to truly play the game as intended.

Overall, it was a very fun experience and there was a lot of laughter and joy around the table as we played in the most chaotic way possible. I would love the opportunity to play this game again with a better understanding of how it all works.