UK designers Brett J. Gilbert and Trevor Benjamin work together regularly, with at least five games being released under their names in 2026: Seagrass, Azure, For the Gods! (co-designed with David Thompson), In voller Blüte, and Fantastique.
This last title is a 2-5 player card game that AMIGO will debut in June 2026 through its network of "AMIGO Freunden" retail outlets, that is, long-time toy and game retailers in Germany that feature AMIGO products, with a general retail release for Fantastique later in 2026.
I've previewed the two most recent "AMIGO Freunden" titles — 3 Chapters in 2024, and Meister Makatsu in 2025 — and greatly enjoyed them, and I also consider Gilbert and Benjamin's 2019 game Mandala a masterwork of design, so I was eager to preview Fantastique as well...but thanks to aggressive persecution tactics by ICE in various U.S. cities throughout late 2025 and early 2026, AMIGO representatives decided not to travel to GAMA Expo with game samples as they normally do, which means I can give you only an overview of the rules.
Fantastique lasts seven rounds, and each player starts with a hand of ten cards from a deck that contains cards valued 1-8.
At the start of each round, reveal cards from the deck face up, placing matching numbers in the same pile (with up to three cards per pile) until you create a fifth pile.
Then, each player in turn lays down one or more cards of the same value from their hand, with the only restriction being that you can't lay down the same set as another player. For example, if one player lays down a pair of 8s and another lays down three 6s, you can play any single card, any pair other than 8s, any three-of-a-kind other than 6s, any four-of-a-kind, etc.
Whoever plays the set with the most cards — with a higher value being the tiebreaker — claims the gold medal available that round. The second largest set claims that round's silver medal, and in a game with 4-5 players, the third largest set claims that round's bronze medal.
To end the round, players choose one of the available piles and add it to their hand, with whoever has played the largest value — with more cards being the tiebreaker — choosing first. (Played cards and unchosen piles go into a discard pile that will be shuffled into a new deck as needed.)
As you might expect, the point values of the medals escalate over the course of play, with the initial gold medal being worth 6 points and the seventh round gold being worth 18.
After the seventh round, players reveal their hands and see who will claim the "grand finale" gold and silver medals worth, respectively, 20 and 10 points. The game includes six grand finale scoring conditions, with the one suggested for your first game being whoever holds the most 1s, 2s, and 3s. Other scoring conditions include the number of cards in your longest straight (with duplicates being counted), the number of cards in your lowest and highest value in hand, and the number of cards left in hand when you remove the values of which you have the most.
The rulebook contains brief descriptions by artist Miriam Rowe of the inspiration for each card image, usually based on her experiences of traveling the world, as well as the materials used for the frame and interior.
