Too Many Notes

Vienna, 1790. You are a classical composer in the court of Emperor Joseph II. You wander the streets seeking inspiration, and spend sleepless nights writing brilliant works for the Emperor’s delicate ear. Your goal is to earn enough money to survive, while not perishing from madness.

And the Emperor isn’t helping.

Too Many Notes is a new Cheapass Game coming in the fall of 2026. It will be available as a 12 × 18 poster (game board) and you’ll need to provide all the other equipment, including a standard poker deck, a pawn and scoring markers for each player, an extra pawn for Emperor Joseph, and roughly 20 “grief” tokens.

• Players: 2 to 6

• Playing Time: 1 Hour

• Scheduled Release: Q3 2026.

The board is a map of Vienna (not really), with most squares on the grid containing a single playing card. You can play cards into your composition by visiting those spaces for inspiration. Number cards are notes, which are worth points at the end of the season. Face cards are patrons, who let you score your notes as soon as you play them.

Emperor Joseph walks along a track in the center of the board. When he lands on certain spaces, he eliminates cards from play for having “too many notes.” This can hurt your composition, and also gains you a measure of grief. And at the end of the game, the players with the most grief cannot win.

Too Many Notes is in “final playtest” now, and you can download the sneak preview files below. None of these are final, but they are getting close. When we decide it’s finished, Too Many Notes will be available as a poster from DriveThru Cards.

• Too Many Notes Rules, (Version 1.96, 7/3/26)

• Too Many Notes Board, (playtest art, JPG)

About This Format: Too Many Notes harkens back to the earliest principles of Cheapass Games: We sell you only the parts you need, and let you provide the rest. No pawns, cards, box, or tokens. Just a delightfully affordable game board, and a quirky set of rules.

If you like what we do here, consider all the ways to participate. Become a backer on Patreon, buy our PDFs and other goodies, or buy our print-on-demand games from DriveThruCards. Most important of all, please share our games with everyone you know!