Disclosure: Meeple Mountain received a free copy of this product in exchange for an honest, unbiased review. This review is not intended to be an endorsement.
Everyone in my Chicago gaming groups knows how much I love the game Hearts, so that means they also know how much I love the Hearts-adjacent card game Rebel Princess Deluxe Edition, initially published by Zombi Paella, before additional development and distribution in the US market by Bezier Games. In a year rich with great card games, Rebel Princess stood out thanks to its outstanding production and simple, often hilarious twists on traditional games of Hearts. (It was one of my top ten games of 2024.)
A few months ago, Bezier released a very small expansion to the base game, titled Rebel Princess: Happily Never After. I found that the only consistent complaint players had about the base game was the price—$30 for a card game is, admittedly, hefty, and even though I received my copy as a review sample, even I had to admit that the price was startling.
So, it’s no surprise that the only main issue I have with the expansion is also the price—$12-$15, depending on where you choose to buy your tabletop items. Initially, I thought that price was fair for an expansion to a very solid base game. But then I learned that the expansion has just six cards and two additional Princess tiles.
Friends, look…I get it. One person in my network called the expansion’s price “nasty.” More than one friend passed up the chance to get the expansion at Gen Con 2025 solely due to the price. I know that the tabletop industry’s pricing model has changed a bit since tariff hijinks changed everything earlier this year, but I am in the business of calling a spade a spade and $15 for six tarot-sized cards is indefensible. (I’m personally a fan of $5 expansions when it’s simply a promo card or three, so when asked what I would have priced this expansion at, $10 is the number I’m comfortable with.)
And, again…I get it. Publishers have to make money. Rebel Princess is an exceptional game, and completionists will want to have access to the additional cards. In particular, three of the new Round cards and both new Princess tiles do make the game quite interesting, if they are shuffled into a player’s current play. So, the new goodies have value, but that price is staggering.
Less is More?
The six new Round cards all shake up the base game in nice ways—this, for a game that already shakes up such a standard formula in fun ways regardless. The fun starts with the Bequeathed card, a card so chaotic that one player said that there should be additional rules to call out the rules of that card at the start, mid-point, and prior-to-last-trick turns of the current round.
Bequeathed is wild: the player who takes the last trick of the round gives all their tricks to the player to their left. (Yes, every trick that they have won for the entire game!) Each time this was used, it swung the game to a different winner than a person who would have been crowned with almost any other final-round card in the base game. I saw it used to hand a sure winner the last position in scoring, and I’ve seen it bail out a player who was about to lose as the winner.
Usually, the last trick of a round is just math. By that point, most of the point cards have been played, and someone is just getting rid of cards they were oversuited on during the round. But Bequeathed suddenly makes the final trick exceptionally important. It may now be my favorite end-round card in the box.
It’s 2 Drafty in Here turns the card-passing element of play into a full-blown card draft. In one of my plays, a guy used this to draft the highest cards from each set he was handed, and he “shot the moon” (in Rebel Princess parlance, that is known as “Rebel of the Ball”) to score negative 10 points, which allowed him to win that play in a landslide. Surprise Wedding forces the person leading the trick to announce a suit but play the first card face-down. The Same Old Story changes the scoring for Princes, making each Prince negative points instead of positive.
The new Princess tiles are a mixed bag. Across three plays, no one really figured out how to best use Red Riding Hood’s “Unmask” power: that player can ask for a specific card, suit and number, and if another player has that card, they have to swap it with Red Riding Hood for a card from Red Riding Hood’s hand in the same suit. I can see the value of it, and I can also see the “ball fake” that could come from Red Riding Hood asking for a card they actually have in their hand. But in a couple of cases, players didn’t use the power during the round or asked for a card that had already been played earlier.
Swan Maiden is more straightforward—the “Temporarily Hidden” power lets the player play last on a trick. Got it, easy to understand, and situationally huge. Still, it’s not a tile I would drop $15 for, because the tiles in the base game are already great.
A Tough Call, Unless You Are a Superfan
There’s no getting around it. Rebel Princess: Happily Never After is a nice addition to an already great game, but for the price, it has already created a LOT of questions in my circles.
Here’s the biggest issue I have: the base game is fantastic and robust with so many great options already, so I’m not sure the game even needs a single expansion. If I had never played Happily Never After, I would still think the base game is such a keeper that is never leaving my collection. Further, Happily Never After doesn’t change the solid mechanics of the base game, so you are playing everything the same way, save for the potential new rules for each round. (This is a good thing.)
I highly recommend this addition to the superfans of the base game, though. If price is not an object, the new Round cards are worth adding, especially if you have Rebel Princess near your table as an “always on” filler that starts or ends your normal game nights. If Bequeathed was available as a standalone promo card, I would recommend dropping a couple bucks to add that into your box of goodies. The new Princesses are nice as additional options, but the Round cards are the main reason to buy the new content.
The expansion does come in a very handsome package that opens up like a storybook to show off the new goodies. Of course, I’m tight on space at home, so after admiring the expansion’s packaging, I threw all six of the cards and the two Princess tiles into the main box, because they fit perfectly there. Speaking of superfans, the thing that might have made me smile most is the addition of a score pad that is maybe half the size of the one from the base game. That way, those of us who play it a lot now have more paper ready to track scores.
Rebel Princess: Happily Never After is worth a look if you are a “one percenter” who plays Rebel Princess all the time. Otherwise, start with the base game and enjoy the magic of that box.
Rebel Princess: Deluxe Edition – Happily Never After details
- Designer: N/A
- Artists: Alfredo Cáceres
- Publishers: Bezier Games
- Release Date: 2025
- Player count : 3 - 6
- Age range : 15+
- Time range : 45 minutes
- Mechanism(s): Events, Trick-taking, Variable Player Powers
- BGG Geek Rating: 8.5 - converted to Meeple Mountain scale: 4.5.
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