This game functions on the principal that while all pandas are cute, only some are Adorable — sacrilege, I know, but for the purpose of gameplay it makes perfect sense! Scoring is governed by the ever-shifting Panda Laws (aka Laws of Adorableness) that dictate which cards are adorable at a given time. There’s ten panda types, numbered, and four laws/categories to divide them into: odd pandas, even pandas, high pandas, and low pandas. The challenge? Having plenty of whichever is currently in style… or changing the Law to fit your hand!
Each player has four cards in hand. On your turn, if scoring conditions haven’t been reached, you’ll play one Panda from your hand face down, ignoring its effect, one face up, which you do resolve, and then you’ll draw back up to four. Panda powers are designated by type, some examples being #8 Cat Panda’s “Change the current Panda Law” and the #10 Party Panda who demands all hidden (face down) pandas be immediately revealed.
To understand the impact of the Party Panda, we need to revisit the beginning of the turn, specifically “if scoring conditions haven’t been reached.” See, the very first thing you do each turn is check the Red Panda in the middle of the table. If its quota of Adorable Pandas has been fulfilled – a number which varies on amount of players – a scoring round takes place. The quota only accounts for pandas that are face up, though, hence the Party Panda’s power!
To be clear, scoring isn’t the end of the game. It’s more of a… resetting intermission. All hidden pandas are revealed (if there are still hidden pandas to reveal), anyone with two or more Adorable Pandas gets one bamboo, and whoever has the most gets a second. The back of a 1-value bamboo is a 2-value bamboo, so just flip it! If there are at least three Banana Pandas in play, those each score a bamboo as well, and then all Adorable Pandas (plus successfully activated Banana Pandas) are reshuffled into the deck. All other pandas remain in play, and the active player chooses a different Panda Law to reign… which they’ll surely use to their advantage, since this all happens before they officially take their turn. Convenient, that!
As for victory, the first player to five bamboo wins the game! This is an pretty quick play, I’d say no more than 15 minutes once you’re familiar with the rules, so it’s great for when you’re short on time.
Catch The Monkeys is one of those games like Tic Tac Toe or Hangman where you can get a printed board, or you can just draw one yourself. You could probably adjust the size as you like for longer or shorter gameplay, but the version I found is an 11×6 array of dots with ten monkeys in between them.
On your turn, you draw a line between two adjacent dots. That’s it! Then the next player draws a line. Simple, right? But also not – whoever completes a box (draws the fourth line to make a one-unit square) puts their initial inside it. Regardless of who drew the other three lines, the player who finished it gets the point! While normal boxes are worth one point, boxes with monkeys in them are worth five, and when all squares are drawn whoever has the most points wins.
Catch The Monkeys definitely isn’t hard to learn, but the strategy that goes into it will get you thinking. If deceptively strategic games are your cup of tea, you might want to give this a try! All you need is paper, a writing utensil and someone to play with.
In other words, they made a Scooby-Doo edition of Clue! This is a child-friendly production, so there is no murder – instead there are abductions, and it’s up to Scooby and friends to determine who was abducted, where, with which object. Each player gets a character, who are the show’s five regulars each cosplaying one of the more traditional Clue characters. Well, except for Mrs. White, starring as herself and owner of the haunted house where the abductions have taken place. Each character comes with a special ability that can be activated once per game, indicated by flipping over the character card. For instance, Fred/Mr. Green’s ability is to start two rumors in one turn.
To start, one Location, Item, and Character are hidden in an envelope and the remaining cards are shuffled together before being dealt out evenly between players. Any leftovers? Set them face-up beside the board – those are free clues, so make sure to cross them off! This game is all about process of elimination, and it’s easy to make mistakes if you don’t mark your deduction sheet.
On your turn, you’ll start by rolling the dice – you may move up to as many spaces as the dice indicate, excluding diagonals and keeping in mind the secret passages between opposite corners of the board; they’re extremely useful. If you’ve ended your movement in a room (including choosing not to move at all!) you can start a rumor – a term they use on Fred’s character card, but not in the actual rules, which presumes that you’re familiar enough with regular Clue to know it… but I digress. Your rumor is a speculation on what may have gone down, using the room you’re now in as the where and selecting both a character and an item to be moved into the room with you. (“Who got abducted? Did you get abducted?” they ask, pointing at someone who is standing right there.) If the player to your left has evidence the claim is inaccurate (the card for that person/place/thing) in their hand, they will privately show you so; if not, the responsibility falls to the player on their left, and so on and so forth until you’ve either been shown an evidence card or made it through a whole table of nobody having evidence to share. Which probably means you’re right! Or you intentionally suggested something you have evidence against, to throw them off the trail. Depends on how competitively you’re playing.
The other factor of gameplay is the question mark deck. These are cards that you draw when you roll a question mark on the die, land on a question mark at the end of your movement, or are called into another room thanks to someone’s rumor. Most of these cards are munchies like donuts, complete with helpful abilities to aid in your deductive process! They may, for instance, let you trade the snack for getting to sit in on someone else’s investigation, so you get to see the evidence too. However, there are also eight monsters in the deck; while first seven are harmless and just get set face-up alongside the board, the eighth startles whoever drew it so badly that they’re out of the game – they can no longer take their turn or draw question mark cards when called, but their hand is still theirs and they still get to show evidence cards as they pertain to other players’ rumors. Furthermore, monster eight gets shuffled back into the deck, so it may well be drawn again!
Winning is pretty straightforward: when you think you know which cards are in the envelope, make your way to the middle of the board and guess. But be careful; you only get one try! Your deduction is announced publicly, but only you look inside the envelope. If you’re right, congratulations! You’ve won! If not, put them back without saying what they are. Like the poor soul who drew the eighth monster, you’re now out of the game in every capacity save evidence rotation. Better luck next time!
For our game, I believe we determined that Velma (as Ms. Peacock) was abducted in the Graveyard using the Funland Robot’s Ray Gun. Fun times! Well, except for Velma.
Affliction: Salem 1692 is based on an abhorrent event in American history – the Salem Witch Trials. I was worried when we bought this game that it might make light of those events, or perhaps unduly mystify them, but I found that it does neither. Instead, it addresses the true nature of the Trials: various factions exploiting mass hysteria to accuse whoever dared oppose them.
To that end, each player starts the game with both a Faction and a Grievance card. Each Faction has a prominent family that they’re trying to influence into their Circle, and a family they’re trying to arrest, as well as why. Which factions are used in which game depends on the number of players. (Ex: the two-player minimum Salem Village was extremely fundamental in their Puritan beliefs, backed the Putnam family, and targeted the Proctors for their liberal views and financial success. There’s another Salem Village faction for when there’s more players, also backing the Putnams, but targeting the Porters for refusing to pay damages after flooding Village lands.) Unlike your Faction, your Grievance card is hidden, with three Colonists worth extra points if you arrest them, and one Colonist you’ll lose points for if they’re arrested at all.
Everyone also gets a Starting Colonist, but we didn’t realize those were separately marked until halfway through our first game, so the starting colonists in our pictures aren’t actually Starting Colonists. Whoops. Anyhow, the rest of the Starting Colonists are then shuffled back into the Colonist deck (not to be confused with the Prominent Colonist deck), six cards are removed and mixed with Mary Spencer Hill and Increase Mather, and those eight are placed at the very bottom. From the top of both Colonist decks, four cards are flipped face-up; you can tell which row are the Prominent Colonists, not only because the cards’ backs are different, but because their names are color-coded by family. Convenient, right?
Gameplay is a lot like Quetzal (which I’ve posted about here) in that players claim actions with Messenger meeples, one at a time, and then those actions are resolved by their order on the board. So what are the actions? Let’s go in order: first is Meet in Secret, which gains you one Influence Token and lets you place one Accusation Token on any Colonist; we’ll get to these later, but basically Influence is currency, and Accusations make arresting people cheaper. Second (well, third – there are two Meet In Secret spaces) is Exonerate, which lets you remove two Accusation Tokens from any one Colonist… or more tokens, if you’re willing to pay Influence for it. Also serving to protect your interest is – aptly named – the Protection Token, which you can place on any Colonist to protect them from arrest. This action also comes with the First Player Token, meaning next round, you’ll place the first Messenger! Both of these stay put until another action is used to move them.
Next up is Colonist Abilities & Generate Influence! This was definitely my most-claimed space throughout the game, not because it directly achieves victory points, but because it sets so much framework for them. Most straightforwardly, it gains you Influence tokens equal to the amount of Influence Icons on Colonists in your Circle, plus your Faction card for a minimum of 1. Colonist Abilities are a bit more complicated. Every Colonist has some special ability detailed under their illustration, but only some of them activate on this action, those being any with a hammer icon. Don’t worry, though! The reason the others don’t specifically activate now is because they have standing effects! For example, if Thomas Putnam is in your Circle he lets you place an additional Accusation Token whenever you’re accusing. Given that my not-so-Starting Colonist’s ability (action-activated) was to accuse someone… you can see why I liked this space.
Now where things get really interesting: Arrest A Colonist! A Colonist may only be arrested if they have at least one Accusation on them. The price of arresting someone is their Reputation value in Influence tokens, minus one per Accusation on them… hence why accusing is so useful! The exception to the price is if they’re already in someone else’s Circle, in which case there’s a +5 defense bonus to that there sum. All the Colonist’s tokens are cleared and they’re placed to the left of your Faction card in the “Arrested” area, where they’ll remain for the rest of the game. Following this, and closely related, is the Spectral Evidence action, which moves the corresponding green token onto any Colonist of your choice. Nearly the opposite of Protection, this token nixes the +5 defense bonus, the Colonist’s Influence Icon, and their character ability. Fear Tokens are the less potent, more abundant version of this: two Fear on a Colonist blocks their Influence generation, while three blocks their ability. It’s your choice whether you use this action to place two Fear (and gain two Influence) or to remove one.
The Accusations action is, effectively, both Meet in Secret spaces combined. You get two Influence Tokens and two Accusations (which don’t have to go to the same Colonist, by the way!) at the price of it being the second-to-last action in a round. The final action to resolve is the most important: bringing a Colonist into your Circle. Which is a lot like arresting someone, really, except Accusations don’t bring down the cost (you value their reputation, therefore, you pay full price) and they keep any tokens already on them at the time of their adoption. Also, you now have their abilities at your disposal! Plot wisely! But remember – you may not bring anyone into your Circle who’s marked as an opposing faction (T vs V), just like you can’t arrest members of the family you’re supposed to protect.
Once all Messengers are reclaimed from The Esteemed action board, the two rows of Colonists are refilled. First, shift remaining cards all the way to the right in the row, and if none of the bottom row (common Colonists) have been arrested or brought into a Circle, boot the one on the very end to the bottom of their deck. Then refill all empty spaces. If the Prominent Colonist deck runs out, refill from the normal Colonist deck before refilling the normal Colonist row. The privileged folk demand priority, even if they’re artificially inflating their relevance.
When either Mary Spencer Hill or Increase Mather is drawn, the game ends immediately. Points are tallied as follows: one for each Colonist in your Circle and each Colonist you’ve arrested, one for each Property Icon on Colonists you’ve arrested, two for each successful arrest or adoption of your target families, and then the conditions of your Grievance card as listed. As usual, whoever has the most points wins!
Affliction is especially interesting in that the very strategy that will lead you to victory will also leave you grimly appalled, because “people actually did this. And it got people killed.” It’s both an engaging strategy game and an effective way to emphasize the atrocity of what occurred in Salem, 1692.
