Cassandra

What’s The Worst That Could Happen?

Those famous last words are, as it turns out, an excellent basis for a card game. The Worst-Case Scenario Card Game, to be exact. This game is all about comparing hypothetical bad scenarios and trying to guess how your opponents will rate them from 1 (bad) to 5 (the worst). Since many of these scenarios can kill you, the player to go first is whoever has the worst survival skills.

The active player, entitled “The Victim,” starts their turn by spinning the Victim Wheel – this will affect scoring later. Next, they’ll draw 5 scenario cards from the deck and lay them out face-up in the middle of the play area. For instance, your five scenarios might be “only eat one food for the rest of your life,” “wake up to find tarantulas in your bed,” “snowmobile off a 100-foot drop,” “recurring nightmares for weeks,” and “exposed to high amounts of radiation.” At this point, everyone will grab their numbered chips – color-coded by player, with X’s on the backs – and The Victim will rank the disasters by which they deem the worst, while everyone else will rank the disasters by what they think The Victim deems the worse. This is very much a “how well do you know your friends?” type of game, and it would probably be morbidly fascinating to play with people you don’t know. Yet. Because all good friendships start with uncovering one’s deepest fears, right?

…Alright, maybe not. Regardless, each player places their chips X-side up next to the corresponding cards, ideally with The Victim’s chips on the far side from everyone else’s. Once everyone has placed their chips, The Victim will go through one card at a time, first revealing everyone else’s rankings, then their own. The goal is to match numbers with The Victim! For each successful match, a player gains one point… unless the Victim Wheel landed on Score Your Chips!, in which case each match is worth the number of the rank. Other Victim Wheel effects include Double Up! (all players double their points for the round) and Bad Is Good! (players who match The Victim’s #1 chip get a 1-point bonus). The Victim’s score for the round equals whichever other player scored the highest, including bonuses, and a score sheet is included in the box. In a 3, 4, or 6 player game, there are 12 rounds, while in a 5 player game there are 10, so everyone gets an equal amount of turns being The Victim. And whoever has the most points at the end wins!

Check! …ers

I mean, it’s the same board. Though if you were really hoping for a post on chess, don’t worry! You can find that right here. (Why did it take me so long to write about checkers, especially when it’s the same board? I’m glad that you asked, imaginary other half of this conversation! I forgot that I knew how to play.)

How To Play Checkers, a strategy-free overview: each player starts with three rows of four pieces, all on the same color of space. Taking turns, players move their checkers to one of the forwardly diagonals of the same color; if there’s another piece in the way, you’re stuck, unless it’s your opponent’s and the next space down the line is empty. In that case, your checker can pole-vault themselves over the enemy, gloat and send them to checker jail – that’s how you capture pieces! If you’re really lucky, the space you landed in yields the opportunity to do that again, and you don’t even have to wait for your next turn. Just chain reaction your way down the line! Once a checker reaches the opponent’s back row, it becomes “crowned,” (flipped over to display ridges or wearing another checker as a hat, depending on your set) which means it can now move backwards, too… still only one space at a time, like a pawn that got promoted to branch manager instead of queen.

The game is over when you’ve captured all of your opponent’s pieces, when one of you gives up and surrenders, or, occasionally, when the traffic is so backed up that none of your checkers have anywhere they can legally move.

Tiddlywinks, Go!

Who’s that- Wait, no, sorry, Tiddlywinks may sound like a Pokémon, but it’s actually another classic game! Where Jacks requires speed and coordination, Tiddlywinks is more focused on aim. And physics, if you want to be technical about it.

As you can see in the picture above, the play mat looks sort of like an archery target if archery targets were smaller, thinner, and laid flat on a horizontal surface. You may also notice that players are seated on corners, not sides, and that we each have a little felt rectangle over our arrows – these are the launchpads from which the “winks” are fired.

Winks are the small, color-coded disks you see scattered across the play area. You turn starts by placing one of these on the felt pad. Then, using a larger disk of the same material and thickness, players press down on the edge of their wink, launching it forward. Once players have alternated their way through all their winks, points are determined by the values of the rings they landed in. The cup in the center is a valid target, and if you manage to get a wink in there it’s 50 points! It’s a challenging angle, though, with a significant potential for overshooting – a lesson we learned the hard way.

There’s definitely a learning curve to the amount of force you use and the angle it’s applied; whether you approach that with physics equations or trial-and-error, it’s a neat new skill to learn! Besides that, the game is quite simple, making it perfect for a lazy afternoon of uncomplicated fun.

C’mon, it’s Harvest Time!

…just ignore the part where I’m posting this in April. In the Midwest. Because hey, the board game Harvest Time is pan-seasonal! It’s also from the same company as Max, The Secret Door, Eyes of the Jungle, and Caves & Claws, which seems to always be good for some simple, cooperative fun.

In this particular game, players are trying to harvest their vegetables before winter comes. There are four gardens – if you have more than four players have some team up on the same gardens, or if you have gardens to spare, a particularly ambitious player might tend multiples.

In standard gameplay, you start with your garden prepopulated – four types of vegetables, with three of each – and roll to harvest. The green dot on the die means you should harvest peas, the red dot means you should harvest tomatoes, etc. with the black dot denoting good soil – pick any vegetable you want! – and the white dot indicating that winter is on its way. If you roll white, choose one of the six winter pieces to place over the fall scene in the middle of the board. Your objective is for everyone’s gardens to be harvested before the winter scene is complete!

There are a few special rules to help with that. First off, you can help other people with their gardens! Whenever your roll would allow you to harvest, you can choose to harvest that color vegetable from a neighbor’s crop (and give it to them; you’re helpers, not thieves). This is especially practical when you’ve finished harvesting your own of that color, and your neighbor has not. If there’s none of that color left in any garden, reroll the die.

The other rules are even ~~cooler~~ warmer: as soon as your garden is completely harvested, you get to remove one winter piece from the board. Furthermore, when you roll white now, you get to remove another winter piece! If you’re thinking “but seasons don’t work like that!” …you probably don’t live in the Midwest.

If you’d prefer to play the extended version, it’s really easy to set up: just make planting a part of gameplay! The fall scene is actually its own set of tiles that cover the spring scene on the board (Why do we skip summer? Who knows!) so gameplay is the same, you just roll for what to plant and dread fall’s approach instead of winter’s. Or rather, before winter’s, because once you’ve finished planting – or fall has finished your planting for you, whichever comes first – you roll straight into the harvesting part of the game! I personally find this version much more fun because the better you do in the first half, the harder the next part is. And on the flip side, a really dismal planting season means you’ll probably be able to bring it all in before the frost! It’s a “glass is always full” situation, really.

Let’s Go On A Brain Quest!

Alright, that’s a rhetorical “let’s,” because this game is definitely designed for people younger than me. But people younger than me exist, so for those of you who are and/or live with such individuals, let me tell you about the Brain Quest board game!

Brain Quest is an educational game aimed at first through sixth graders. Players are seated by age so that the oldest player is on the youngest player’s left, the second oldest is on the oldest’s left, etc. To start the game, the youngest player rolls the die while the player on their left grabs a card from the tray and announces the subject. (The subject of the card is at the top, and cards are folded to have the questions facing outwards while the answers are hidden inside.) Questions are labeled 1-6, but which you answer isn’t determined by your roll. Instead, you must choose a number equal to or greater than your current grade level.

As you might expect, your Reader then reads you the question you chose and you answer it. If you’re right, you get to advance your piece on the board, as many spaces as you rolled on the die plus the difference between the question grade level and your own. (So if you’re a second grader, you rolled a five and correctly answered a fourth grade question, you’ll move seven spaces.) Anyone who’s beyond sixth grade can only answer sixth grade questions, and takes either a -1 on their rolls (if they’re still in junior high) or a -2 if they’re older. Note that even if you get a negative roll, you do not have to move backwards.

I had wondered at first why you’d bother rolling before learning the subject and choosing your question, but having played with fabricated ages for a blog-worthy grasp of the mechanics, I realized that how much the dice weren’t helping encouraged me to go for higher level questions, since I kept rolling ones. Similarly, as answering incorrectly means you don’t move at all, the subject can affect how ambitiously you challenge yourself. The Brain Quest subjects are your usual core classes, English, Math, Science, and Social Studies, plus Grab Bag, which is a random mix of other material. (From the card pictured below, I got stuck with “Mick Jagger is the lead singer in what rock group?” Which I believe is the only question we missed, because while I’ve aged out of the academics, I evidently know nothing about rock. Or Rolling Stones. Whoops.)

There are a few interesting spots on the board as well, accentuating the school theme with a track (move along the track that matches your grade level, and don’t worry! They’re all the same number of spaces), a game of foursquare (go through the spaces in numerical order, just like actual foursquare) and a mud puddle, because recess just be like that sometimes. If you end a movement in the mud, lose one turn. The first person to reach Finish wins!

Monkeys? In a Barrel???

I’ve previously blogged a story by the name Barrel of Monkeys, but not the actual game… which struck me as an oversight, so guess what I’m talking about this week?

Barrel of Monkeys isn’t as old as Jacks, but it’s definitely another classic. Your container is – surprise – a barrel, and the contents are a set of monkeys*, each with arms curling in opposite directions. To play the game, you hold one monkey by its upper arm (Pick a side. Congratulations, that is now the upper side) and hook another monkey’s arm through the first one’s lower. Continue to make a chain in this fashion until something drops! It’s not at all complicated, but for young ones it practices fine motors skills, and even older players may find their arms protesting the static hold. That, and if you have cats they will definitely contribute their own Challenge Mode. If you don’t have cats – or they’re not interested – you can make it harder yourself by combining multiple sets!

While the amount of monkeys in a set varies, the official scoring for multiplayer is has each monkey worth a certain amount of points. When you stop (either because someone fell or because you ran out of monkeys), you score however many monkeys are still on your chain, and the first player to reach the victory condition (points equivalent to completing the full chain) wins. Though as kids, we always just went for “whoever can make the full chain first.” It’s your choice by which rules you play! The objective for single-player is more along the latter lines, as you time yourself making the whole chain and try to be progressively faster.

*Monkeys are not required to play this game. You may alternatively utilize a Barrel of Pterodactyls!

Jacks!

This game is a classic! Despite the name, it has nothing to do with folks named Jack – unless your name is Jack and you’re playing Jacks, of course.

For any of my readers who don’t know, a “jack” in this case is a plastic or metal “X” shape, with extra spokes facing front and back to make it 3D. The game Jacks uses these – shocking, I know – and a bouncy ball. “That’s it?” you ask. Yep! Now scatter the jacks on the floor, throw the ball into the air, grab a jack and catch the ball before it bounces twice… all with the same hand! This is how Jacks is played. If you succeed, move the jack you grabbed to your other hand and go for another! The goal is to get all of them (my set has 10, which I’m assuming is standard) without ever letting the ball bounce twice in one throw. If it does bounce twice, re-scatter the jacks and try again.

Got them all? Great! No, you’re not done yet – you’ve just progressed to the next level, which is picking them up two at a time! Once you’ve picked them all up in pairs, go for three in a throw, four in a throw, etc. until you either give up or manage to pick up the whole set in one bounce. Good luck! And remember, you can legally shift jacks without picking any up so long as you still catch the ball in time. Shoving them closer together is a valid move!

If you want to play Jacks competitively, simply trade off turns whenever you miss a throw. The winner is whoever makes it through the full progression first!

Ready for some Adorable Pandaring?

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.

Can you Catch The Monkeys?

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.

Find the Clue, Scooby-Doo!

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.

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