Dixit - Tips & Strategies

The rules state that the game ends when the last card is drawn. In my experience, especially with more casual players, no one wants the game to end while they still have cards in their hands.

In our games, we continue playing until a player has no cards left in their hand. Initially there was a fear that as you get fewer cards, the storyteller’s card would become more obvious, but this doesn’t seem to be the case. If anything, people become more creative with their last card. (We’ve yet to have everyone guess correctly or incorrectly on the final card, even though you generally have no choice what to throw in).

We continue keeping score until the end (but in our games, people stop caring about score and are just enjoying the game by the halfway point).

Your turn as the storyteller?

Take your number counters, which aren’t being used, and lay them out facing the other players. Then when you lay out the cards, put one under each number. That way there is no confusion about which number goes with which card.

Pro tip: If you take forever as the storyteller, have the 8 year old lay out your numbers for you. Keep the little ones engaged!

In playing with my family, sometimes it is difficult for younger players to look at the image and not “see” the card literally. The rules state:

…he makes up a sentence and says it out loud (without showing the card to the
other players). The sentence can take different forms: it can be made of one word or more, it can even be a sound. The sentence can be either invented or be inspired from an existing work of art (poetry or song sample, movie title, proverb, etc).Each player draws cards into his hand until he has 6. The storyteller for the new turn
is the player to the left of the current one (and we keep going clockwise for the fol-
lowing turns).

In other words, it is inferred by the rules that a player must make a leap (large or small) in creativity, saying a sentence or phrase they are inspired to say by looking at the image. (And therefore not saying what is on the card literally). This can be difficult for some children – and perhaps some adults as well. 😉

To help, I have told my children to look at the card and not say what they see, but to describe (with a noise, word or sentence) how it makes them feel. In this way they can translate the image they see into another part of their brain that handles creativity, emotion etc.

As a result, when the cards are turned over it may not be as obvious as it was whose cards was whose. Those younger players can have a sense of confidence and feel on par with adults and other players that have more innate creative abilities.

In most of my games, the phrases that separate the most notable rounds from the ones we forget are the phrases that tend to be longer. You may be tempted to use a phrase like “Darkness”, or “Happy thoughts” for whatever reason, but try to flush out those one- or two-word phrases into something more robust and interpretable. These phrases will often be loaded, and you’ll end up with a much more diverse group of cards to pick from.

We bought this game to play with my little guy. He is almost 5. We had to play a few rounds firs to get him to really understand how to describe the cards. He was very literal at first but started to get the hang of it after 3 or 4 practice rounds. I think it will be helpful to do this a few times as we learn the game, at least until he is fully comfortable with it.

Making up clues with just one or two people in mind usually means that it will be incredibly obvious to them, but really obscure to everyone else. Of course there’s always the off chance that it goes straight over their head too, so choose wisely 😉

In order to use this rule you need Dixit 2 for extra cards, and you need to make your own tokens (number of players plus one token). We add one additional card for each player (15 cards per person total). If you play with more than 6… no problem (just get a meeple for the scoring track). Now, we have an additional card each player gets that will allow them to place down two cards during one turn (and one turn only). The first person to do this in clockwise order from the storyteller effectively ends anyone else from doing this in the turn. If you want to have more opportunities… add more cards per person. This has added a little twist to our games, as sometimes you start figuring out what people are doing, and it’s nice to throw in a curve ball. Also, it allows you to get rid of that card that just doesn’t seem to fit anything at all… and sometimes it gets you points! Proof that one person’s junk is another person’s perfect visual clue.

People can get stuck trying to figure out a clue when it’s their turn during a round. The rulebook suggests to let anyone who’s ready take the next turn — whoever calls it first. This really speeds things up. Figure out some kind of marker to show who’s taken a turn each round so everyone gets a turn before the next round starts.

Do a round or all sounds to describe your card! It’s hard to guess but hilarious to behold!

In many party games you can play a random card from the stack as a play from mystery player “Rando”. Dixit is NOT one of these games.

While in some games the results can be humours, very rarely does Rando play a compatible random card. And making matters worse, it often takes an interesting card out of the hands of the actual players.

Based on experience, don’t let anybody increase the # of players with a Rando. He’s just not good at Dixit.