Love Letter Review | A Tiny Game With Real Deduction
I'm a dad who fell back in love with board games so I could play them with my two kids, and now I share honest, parent-first reviews of what we love. I'm not on social media, I quit it a long time ago.
The Quick Answer
Love Letter is a 2 to 6 player card game for ages 10 and up that finishes in about 20 minutes. Our review covers setup, all 21 cards, guessing, and winning.
Buy Love Letter if you want a real game that fits in a jacket pocket. Skip it if you want a big decision space, because every choice here is one card out of two, and skip it for a child under 9 who will lose most rounds to luck rather than to bad decisions.
I am Spector, a dad to Alex, 7, and Emma, 10. Seiji Kanai designed Love Letter in Japan in 2012, Alderac Entertainment Group brought it to English shelves that year, and Z-Man Games, part of Asmodee, has published it since 2018. The 2019 second edition added five cards and quietly moved three card values up by one, which is why half the rules pages on the internet still have the numbers wrong. I have owned the current box for four years and it is the game that comes out when dinner needs twenty minutes and nobody wants to teach rules.
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Love Letter at a Glance
| Aspect | Details |
|---|---|
| Designer | Seiji Kanai, first published 2012 by Kanai Factory in Japan |
| English publishers | AEG from 2012, Z-Man Games (Asmodee) from 2018 |
| Players | 2 to 6 in the current box, 2 to 4 in the classic 16 card version |
| Playtime | 20 minutes per round, or 15 minutes or less as the Asmodee store lists it |
| Age | 10 and up |
| Deck | 21 character cards in the current box, 16 in the classic version, 32 in the Premium Edition |
| Tokens | 13 favor tokens |
| Setup | Remove 1 card face down, plus 3 more face up in a 2 player game, then deal 1 card each |
| Win a round | Highest card when the deck empties, or being the only player left in the round |
| Win the game | 6 tokens for 2 players, 5 for 3, 4 for 4, and 3 for 5 or 6 |
How Do You Play Love Letter?
Every round is one day at court, and the card in your hand is the person currently carrying your message to the princess. You want the highest number in your hand when the day ends.
The turn is two steps and it never changes.
- Draw one card from the deck. You now hold two cards.
- Play one of your two cards face up in front of you and resolve its effect. You keep the other card. You must resolve the effect even when it is bad for you.
Then the turn passes clockwise, and the whole thing repeats until the deck runs out or only one player is left in the round. There is no board, no building, and no way to improve your position other than what the card in your hand does.
The randomness is the shuffle and the draw. Everything else is people. When you are knocked out of the round you flip your hand face up, do not resolve its effect, and sit out until the next round. The rulebook even tells you to flip your reference card to the broken seal side so everyone remembers you are out.
One detail worth knowing before you teach it. The card you play stays in your play area face up for the whole round, and every card is a clue. If Emma plays a Baron on you in round one and you are still in the round in round four, that Baron is in nobody’s hand, which narrows what you can be holding.
How Do You Set Up Love Letter?
- Give every player a reference card and put any unused reference cards back in the box. It lists every value, effect, and copy count, so you can teach straight from it.
- Shuffle the 21 character cards into a face down deck within reach of everyone.
- Take the top card and set it aside face down without looking at it. In a 2 player game, take three more cards and set those aside face up. They are out of the round.
- Deal one card to each player as their starting hand, and keep it secret.
- Let the round winner lead the next round. For the first round, pick a starting player. The official rulebook jokes that whoever most recently hand wrote a letter goes first, which is a fun way to break a tie and a poor way to play by the book.
That is the whole setup, and it takes about fifteen seconds. Our restaurant and waiting games list has the other games we take out for a gap that size, and this is the one that teaches first try.
What Is in the 21 Card Deck?
This is the table I wish I had before we bought it, because most of the numbers on the internet are from the 2012 edition. Values and copy counts are from the current Z-Man rulebook.
| Card | Value | Copies | What it does |
|---|---|---|---|
| Spy | 0 | 2 | Nothing when played. At the end of the round, if you are the only player still in who played or discarded a Spy, you take a favor token. Two Spies still only earn one token, and the round winner still takes theirs |
| Guard | 1 | 6 | Choose another player and name a character other than Guard. If they hold that card, they are out of the round |
| Priest | 2 | 2 | Look at another player’s hand, secretly, and tell nobody |
| Baron | 3 | 2 | Compare hands with another player. The lower card holder is out of the round and the higher card holder keeps both cards. A tie knocks nobody out |
| Handmaid | 4 | 2 | Other players cannot choose you until the start of your next turn |
| Prince | 5 | 2 | Choose any player, including yourself. They discard their hand without resolving it and draw a new one |
| Chancellor | 6 | 2 | Draw two cards, keep one of the three in your hand, and put the other two on the bottom of the deck in any order |
| King | 7 | 1 | Trade hands with another player |
| Countess | 8 | 1 | Nothing. You must play it this turn if the King or a Prince is your other card, and you do not reveal which it was |
| Princess | 9 | 1 | If you play or discard her for any reason, you are out of the round |
Two things jump out. There are six Guards and every one of them is worth 1, so the most common card in the deck is also the weakest. And there is exactly one King, one Countess, and one Princess, so a guess on any of those is a long shot while a guess on a 2 is twice as likely to land.
How Does Guessing Work in Love Letter?
The Guard is the whole deduction game. You name a card, not a number, in this edition, and you may not name a Guard. If the player you chose is holding that exact card they are out of the round, and if they are not, nothing happens at all. There is no penalty for a wrong guess, which is why the game rewards volume.
Early on, guess on what is common. At the start of a 2 player round you have 20 cards you cannot place: your opponent’s card, the cards in the deck, and the one card set aside face down. There are two Priests and two Chancellors in there, and one King, one Countess, and one Princess. So a Priest guess lands about one time in ten and a King guess about one time in twenty. Guessing a 2 is the best arithmetic on the table before anyone has played a card.
Later, guess on what has been played. Every card that reaches the table is a card nobody holds, and the denominator shrinks with it. If you have seen a Chancellor played, the Chancellor guess is dead, and if the deck is down to its last few cards a guess is close to reading a hand. This is the one game where counting the deck out loud is normal and nobody bats an eye.
The flip side of guessing is that your own plays are guesses too. Playing a Priest says you were willing to spend a turn looking rather than attacking. Blaming your King on a particular suitor is information whether you meant it or not.
How Do Shields Work in Love Letter?
The Handmaid is the only shield in the base game, and there are two of them. While it is active, no other player can choose you for any card effect, so a Handmaid sits you out of danger until the start of your next turn. It blocks a Guard, a Priest, a Baron, a King, and a Prince.
Two rules about it are almost never explained. First, the shield lasts until the start of your next turn, not until the end of it, so if you play a Handmaid and the very next player attempts to target you, nothing happens. Second, there is an official edge case for the moment when every other player still in the round is protected. A card that requires you to choose another player, which is the Guard, the Priest, the Baron, and the King, is played with no effect. A Prince, which can target yourself, has to be pointed at yourself.
There is no second shield in the base deck. Every other form of protection is positional, meaning a low card nobody wants to guess at, or simply being the last player standing.
What Do the King, Chancellor, Prince, Countess, and Princess Do?
These five cards decide most rounds, and they are the ones the 2012 rules pages get wrong.
The King (7)
The King swaps hands with a player you choose. It is the only card in the base game that can hand someone the Princess without their consent, which is why a King trade in the last two cards of a round is genuinely frightening. Trading into a Princess is a good outcome only if you can then discard it legally, and discarding it puts you out, so the King can be a trap as well as a gift.
The Chancellor (6)
The Chancellor draws two cards, so you look at three and keep one, and the other two go to the bottom of the deck in whatever order you like. It is the best card in the game for turning a weak hand into the exact card you need, and the bottom of the deck is the best place in the game to put a card you do not want, because nobody sees it until the very end.
Two official details. If only one card is left in the deck, you draw it and return one card. If no cards are left, the Chancellor is played with no effect. And the Countess rule does not apply to cards drawn for a Chancellor, so you are not forced into anything by what you pull.
The Prince (5)
The Prince makes any player, including yourself, throw away their hand without resolving it and draw a new one. Pointing it at yourself is the fastest way to swap a 1 for something better. Pointing it at someone holding the Princess forces them to discard her, and they are out of the round without getting a choice.
If the deck is already empty, the chosen player draws the card that was set aside face down at the start of the round. That set aside card matters exactly once, and it is on a Prince.
The Countess (8)
The Countess does nothing at all. It exists to control your own hand. If the King or a Prince is your other card, you must play the Countess this turn, and you do not have to show anyone what that other card was. The clever part is that a player who plays a Countess for no reason looks identical to a player who was forced to, so a bluff here costs you a whole 8 value card and buys a turn of not being attacked.
The Princess (9)
The Princess is the highest card in the deck, and she ends your round the moment you play or discard her for any reason. That includes being forced to discard her with a Prince, being handed her by a King trade, and playing her voluntarily, which is never a good idea. Holding her to the end of the deck wins the round outright, so the game is often a race between the Princess surviving the deck and the King finding her.
Where Does the Bishop Come From?
The Bishop is not in the box you are about to buy. It is a Premium Edition card for 5 to 8 player games, valued 9, and it is the one card that makes the Premium Edition a different game rather than a prettier one.
You name a player and a number, and if they hold that number you take a favor token immediately, which can win the game on the spot. Then that player may discard their card and draw a new one, unless it is the Princess, in which case the Princess rule applies as normal. One oddity the rulebook makes explicit: the Bishop counts as a 9 for every other effect in the game, but the Princess still beats it when hands are compared at the end of a round.
How Does a Round End and How Do You Win the Game?
A round ends in one of two ways. The deck runs out after a turn, and everyone still in the round reveals. The highest card takes the round. Or everyone but one player has been knocked out, and that last player takes the round. If two players tie for the highest card when the deck runs out, both win the round and both take a token, and the next round is led by a random one of them.
The round winner takes a favor token and leads the next round. All the cards are collected and reshuffled, and you play again. The first player to the token target wins the game, and the rulebook is explicit that two players can win the game at the same time if they both reach the target on the same round.
| Players | Favor tokens to win the game |
|---|---|
| 2 | 6 |
| 3 | 5 |
| 4 | 4 |
| 5 | 3 |
| 6 | 3 |
The older AEG rules printed 7 tokens for a 2 player game and a tiebreak based on discarded card totals. Both are gone from the current box, and if somebody at your table is working from a 2012 printout, that is why your scores do not match.
One last rule that catches new players. The 2019 second edition can be played with the classic 16 cards. Before setup, return one Guard, two Chancellors, and two Spies to the bag and you have the original 2012 card pool for 2 to 4 players, with all other rules unchanged.
Our House Strategy, Not Official Rules
Everything in this section is what we do at the table. The rules above are the rules, these are my choices.
- Guess 2s early and high cards late. Two Priests and two Chancellors are the best odds available at the start. Once the deck is short and the high cards are unaccounted for, a King guess is worth the risk.
- Spend a Priest on information, then wait. Looking and then attacking in the same round tells everyone you are dangerous. Look, say nothing, and attack a turn later, when your own play has stopped advertising.
- Use the Prince on yourself early. A Prince pointed at the player on your right is a great attack, but pointed at yourself it swaps a 1 for a fresh card and costs nobody a life.
- Chancellor into the endgame. Putting your worst card on the bottom of the deck is close to a free discard, and drawing three to keep one is the strongest single play in the game when the deck is short.
- Hold the Handmaid for a turn that matters. A Handmaid played when nothing is aimed at you is a 4 value card spent for nothing. Play it when somebody is one Guard away from knocking you out.
- Do not attack the player who just protected you. In a 4 player game, the Handmaid player has just announced that they are the threat you will face next round, and now everybody else knows it too.
If you want the duel rather than the table, our Lost Cities review is the same weight class and a completely different game, since you are building expeditions there rather than reading one hidden card.
Alex, 7, can play it and loses about four rounds out of five, and I stopped trying to fix that. What changed things was letting him announce his guess out loud before he committed. He would pick a King he did not hold because it sounded clever, then look crushed when it missed. Now he picks a 2 because we worked out together that there are two of them, he lands about one in three, and he is proud of that number instead of sorry about the miss. The lesson is not deduction. It is playing the odds out loud with a grown up.
Which Version of Love Letter Should You Buy?
There is one current box, one upgrade box, and about thirty themed editions. Here is the honest decision.
| What you want | What to buy | Why |
|---|---|---|
| The game for 2 to 6 players, ages 10 and up | Love Letter | 21 character cards, 6 reference cards, 13 favor tokens, a rulebook, and a velvet bag, and the rules for the classic 16 card version are printed inside |
| A gift, or a table of 5 to 8 players | Love Letter Premium Edition | 2016 release with larger thicker cards, wooden heart tokens, a magnetic box, and 16 extra cards for 5 to 8 player games, including the Bishop, the Assassin, and the Jester |
| A party game that is louder than this one | Exploding Kittens | Same box size and same twenty minutes, but the tension comes from drawing rather than from reading a single card, so it is a better fit for a loud group and a worse fit for two |
| Players younger than about 9 | Guess Who | Love Letter is honestly a 10 and up game. A missed Guard guess in front of a small child feels like being told you are wrong in public, and Guess Who asks the same question without the sting |
The themed editions, Batman, Adventure Time, The Hobbit, Letters to Santa, and the rest, are the same 2012 sixteen card game with new art, and several of them change a rule or two. Buy the art your player likes. Do not buy a theme expecting different rules, because the only editions with genuinely different cards are the current second edition and the Premium Edition.
Is Love Letter Good for Kids?
It is rated 10 and up, and that rating is right, mostly because of the elimination. Being knocked out means watching the rest of the round without a turn, and for a younger child that is a long time to sit out while somebody else guesses at you.
Emma, 10, plays it well because she understands that a Guard is a question and a Priest is an answer. Alex, 7, can run the whole game and mostly enjoys it, as long as we play two or three rounds rather than a full six token game, so a bad streak does not last. Our Guess Who guide is the gentler on ramp if your child is under 8 and wants the guessing feeling without the elimination.
There is also a genuinely good dinner table conversation in it. The whole game is a story about getting a message to somebody who will not see you, using other people, which is a decent thing to talk about with a ten year old who has just asked why nobody will say what they mean.
Love Letter FAQs
How many players can play Love Letter? The current box is 2 to 6 players. Playing the classic 16 card version inside that box limits you to 2 to 4, and the 2016 Premium Edition is the version that supports 5 to 8.
How many cards are in a Love Letter deck? 21 character cards in the current box, 16 in the classic version, and 32 in the Premium Edition, where 16 are only used for 5 to 8 player games.
What is the highest card in Love Letter? The Princess, valued 9 in the current edition. If you play or discard her for any reason, including being forced to by a Prince, you are out of the round.
What does the Guard card do in Love Letter? You choose another player and name a character other than Guard, and if they are holding that exact card they are knocked out of the round. A wrong guess costs you nothing, and there is no way to name a Guard.
How long does a game of Love Letter take? About 20 minutes per round, and a game runs until somebody reaches 6 tokens for 2 players, 5 for 3, 4 for 4, or 3 for 5 or 6. That is several rounds, so budget about half an hour to an hour.
Is Love Letter luck or skill? Both, and honestly so. The shuffle and the draw are random, so a strong player still loses rounds. The skill is in counting what is left, guessing on the odds, and choosing when to spend a Priest or a Handmaid.
What does the Handmaid protect you from? Every other player’s card effects, until the start of your next turn. It blocks a Guard, Priest, Baron, King, and Prince aimed at you, and it is the only shield in the base deck.
What does the Chancellor card do in Love Letter? You draw two cards, keep one of the three cards in your hand, and place the other two face down on the bottom of the deck in any order. It is the best card in the deck for choosing the exact card you want to hold.
Can you play Love Letter with kids? It is rated 10 and up, and it works well with a confident 10 year old. Under about 9 the elimination tends to sting, so a gentler guessing game is a better first step.
Are the rules different in the second edition? Only the card pool. The 2019 second edition added two Spies, two Chancellors, and one extra Guard, moved the King to 7, the Countess to 8, and the Princess to 9, and prints the rules for the classic 16 card version inside the same box.
The Verdict on Love Letter
Love Letter is sixteen or twenty one cards and about fifteen seconds of setup, and it still produces the same argument five years later, which is whether you should have guessed a King when two Priests were left. That argument is the game. Everything else is a twenty minute container for it.
Buy the current box, learn the six Guards and the two Handmaids, and count the deck out loud while you play. The rest takes care of itself.
How Does Love Letter Compare With Other Small Box Games?
Love Letter sits between a filler and a duel, and the three games it gets confused with most are worth separating honestly.
| Game | Players | The real skill | Playtime | Ages |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Love Letter | 2 to 6 | Counting the deck and bluffing on the odds | About 20 minutes | 10 and up |
| The Mind | 2 to 5 | Memory and restraint, with no talking allowed | About 20 minutes | 10 and up |
| Lost Cities | 2 | Arithmetic, patience, and taking risks with points | 20 to 30 minutes | 10 and up |
| Bandido | 1 to 4 | Cooperating in silence, with no bluffing at all | 10 to 15 minutes | 6 and up |
- Similarities: Hidden information, bluffing, and a footprint small enough for a bag.
- Differences: Love Letter is a duel between a handful of guesses, while The Mind is a cooperative game where nobody speaks and you win or lose as a group.
- Why this game fans will enjoy it: Fans who love the reading of a single hidden card usually want either less noise, which is The Mind, or a real scoreboard, which is Lost Cities.
If your group wants more deduction and more talking than this, our games like Secret Hitler list is the next step up, and if you want the quiet cooperative version instead, our The Mind review is the better twenty minute game for a family that is done shouting.
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