What better Thanksgiving topic is there than food? When it’s also Munchkin! Munchkin Crazy Cooks is a fun, food-themed take on a game you know I love — if you need a refresher on the basics, I posted about that here. Otherwise, let’s get cooking!
As always, each flavor of Munchkin brings you thematically appropriate cards, which is how you might wind up wearing literal Plate Armor and Meals on Heels, armed with a Turkey Baster and Gold-Plated Tongs. In fact, Gold-Plated is an example of a mechanic I haven’t mentioned before: Item Enhancers. These are played in conjunction with items you own to give them an additional combat bonus, and in the case of Gold-Plated, a higher value if sold. Other Item Enhancers include Brightly Colored Plastic and Celebrity Endorsed.
More unique to Crazy Cooks are food tokens. These are an extra reward, split into four types: Meat, Veggie, Drink, and Dessert. As soon as you have a set of all four, you must exchange them for a level, which can be the winning level. Tokens are obtained primarily in combat — each monster in Crazy Cooks is based on food, with a specified token. For instance the Level 4 Fritter Critters are a Dessert monster, so if you defeat them, you get a Dessert token. Some monsters have multiple tokens listed, like Steak Shake, which is both Meat and Drink, but you only get to choose one of them… unless your Class is Science Chef, in which case Recipes Are Only Suggestions, and you get both. Like treasure, tokens can be offered when asking for help in a fight. Also like treasure, some of the combat modifiers will alter the rewards. A few such cards are Liquefied (+3 to monster), which turns all tokens on the monster to Drink, and School Cafeteria, which is a -3 to monster, but also removes all of its Meat and Veggie tokens.
Because November’s the perfect time to talk about that, right? Well, maybe not for an actual summer camp, but this is Summer Camp, the board game! Good for any season, Summer Camp is a competitive deck-building game where you race to be the model camper.
The first step is to choose which three activities you’re playing — the choices are Adventure, Arts & Crafts, Friendship, Games, and, the three recommended for first time players, Cooking, Outdoors, and Water Sports. Each of these is a separate deck within the larger box, so all you have to do is remove the four “Move 1” cards in the deck, shuffle it, and place it next to one of the three paths on the board, then rinse and repeat with the other two. Meanwhile, each player will get one “Move 1” card from each of the decks in play, as well as 7 “Lights Out” cards from the basic deck, and shuffle these into their own personal draw pile.
On your turn, you can play as many cards as you want, either for their actions or to use them as 1 Energy. For instance, Lights Out cards have no action, so they’re most useful as discards. Energy is in turn used to buy cards from the display — the two face up cards next to each activity deck, plus three piles from the basic deck: Smores (Gain 2 Energy), Free Time (Move 1 space on any path) and Scavenger Hunt, which lets you discard 1-3 cards and draw that many from your deck. Each of these has a red circle in the lower left corner with how much energy it costs to purchase. Any cards you buy will go in your discard pile until you next reshuffle.
I’ve already mentioned movement cards. Some of these, like Free Time, let you choose which path to move on, while others, like Washing Dishes (move 1 space on the Cooking path) are predetermined. Each player has 1 piece on each of the three paths, which correspond to activity decks. When a piece moves, there are a few special effects that may occur, should it land on or pass through a marked space. The effect is indicated by the sign next to the space: the card with a plus sign simply means “draw another card from your deck,” the walking sign indicates you can move any of your pieces forward one space, and the snack bar… well, means you get a snack bar. An important currency, snack bars can be used as 1 energy in a purchase; the difference is that excess energy is lost at the end of a turn, whereas snack bars hold over, with a maximum of six at a time.
At the end of your turn, a few things happen. First, you discard all remaining cards in your hand. In practicality, this means you should aim to play all your cards every turn, if at all possible. Then, you draw five cards to form your new hand, reshuffling your discards if your draw pile runs out. Once you have your hand (or, honestly, I skip to this step first and reshuffle/redraw while the next person’s taking their turn) flip up new activity cards to fill any empty spots on the display, and check for merit badges.
There are 3 types of merit badges: Participation badges are awarded once all three of your pawns have made it past the first bridge, Camp All-Star badges are awarded once they’re all past the second bridge, and Activity merit badges are achieved once that piece reaches the third and final bridge, regardless of where the other two are. In each case, badges are first come, first serve, so the sooner you get there, the greater the reward!
Once someone has reached the end of all three paths, play continues until everyone has had an equal amount of turns (there’s a Starting Camper token for exactly this reason), and the game ends. A player’s score is calculated by three factors: merit badges, points on cards you’ve purchased (in an orange star on the lower right corner) and, if any of your pieces were between the second and third bridges, the value assigned to their current space — the closer to the end, the higher the consolation points. Whoever has the highest sum wins!
A couple of notes: 1) the game starts off a little repetitive, and with a lot of reshuffling, because you start with a ten-card deck. As you buy cards, turns will get a lot more action-packed, but this progression can help ease new players into learning the mechanics. Aside from that… I think the theme’s a lot of fun, each deck has a clear emphasis on a particular function (ex: Water Sports is all about movement), and you can mix ‘n match your activities for something new and fresh every time!
Tenzi is a fun dice game, with flexible rules to be as simple or complicated as you’d like! In the base version, each player gets a set of 10 dice (hence the name). For the first roll, someone will count it down and everyone will roll at once; looking at their roll, they’ll pick a number to target, usually the one they rolled the most of, and set aside all the dice with that number rolled. Afterwards, they pick up all the remaining dice and roll again! This is a speed game, so you don’t have to wait for the other players. The first person to roll their chosen number on all of their dice shouts (or exclaims at a reasonable volume) “Tenzi!” and wins.
As I mentioned before, there are several variations on this. There’s Target Tenzi, where instead of picking your number after you roll, you declare it ahead of time (either individually, or you can have everyone go for the same number), Splitzi, where you instead of ten the same, you roll for five and five of two numbers, Mega Tenzi, where you each have twenty dice instead… though that only works for two-player or solo play. “Solo play?” you ask, “But it’s a competition! How do you do that with one player?” Well, the rules also have Timed Tenzi, with a guideline for your rank depending on how long it takes you to win!
I’ve never played these variants, but the rules also outline Team Tenzi – your team can all go for the same number, or different ones, your choice-, Tenzi Tower, where instead of just setting aside your successful rolls, you have to stack them, and the one I’m most intrigued by, Stealthzi. By Stealthzi rules, if you see another player roll the number you’re going for, you can steal those dice, giving them an equal number of yours in return. The only constraints on this are that you can’t steal on the first roll of the game, nor can you steal from someone going for the same number as you.
Of course, you can also come up with your own versions. We play one that the creators would probably have named Sumzi, where we choose a number, and only set aside dice that add up to it. So we might say 7, and then set aside a five and a two, or a six and a one, or a three and a four. I imagine you could also take out the speed factor, if you wanted to, having it so everyone always rolls together, and whoever hits the goal in the least amount of rolls wins.
Whatever you choose, there are plenty of options to keep gameplay fun and fresh. And if you really want to get crazy, there’s also Twisted Tenzi, aka ‘mix ‘n match your favorites for even more dice-borne chaos!’
In this game, each player is responsible for a set of children. If at the beginning of your turn, none of your kids are outside, you place one in the school, from where they will be trying to reach some safe spot. The board has several of these, like homes and pools, though some have more available space than others. To reach these locations, players will play one movement card per turn (ex: Run, which lets you move two spaces). Some of these make use of either city buses or school buses, with stops indicated on the board.
After you’ve moved, you’ll draw a card; if it’s a Stranger Sighting, it gets played immediately, and you choose a Stranger Space on the board to place an alien. Any child on that space when the stranger is placed is automatically abducted (removed from the game), and unless a card says otherwise (i.e. Heroic Dog) kids cannot move through that space. If you drawn an abduction card, choose a kid on the board (doesn’t have to be yours) and flip the flying saucer token like a coin. If it lands saucer side up, the kid gets abducted. This includes kids in “safe” spots. So, you know, it’s not so much that they’re safe as that they’re scoring points while they hide for their lives.
What do I mean? Well, each safe space has a point value associated with it, so the actual goal is to get your kids into high value spots — but if you get too greedy, you risk an abduction toppling your lead, which is your incentive to save many and save often! Some safe spaces also have additional effects, such as the library, which lets you have +1 cards in hand (base is 3), or the parks, which let you have an additional kid in play at a given time — effectively, this means you don’t have to wait for your current one to be safe before placing the next.
The game ends when all the Strangers are placed, and whoever has the most points wins; that said, I’ve never actually done that part, because there’s also a card that has the potential to end the game.
