Category: Quick games

Games that can be learned and played quickly, typically under 30 minutes

Firefly!… Fluxx?

Do you like the show Firefly? Do you like the card game Fluxx? Then this game is for you: the one and only… Firefly Fluxx!Firefly Fluxx

The Keepers have changed: Instead of Time, and Death, and Chocolate, they have Firefly Keepers: Kaylee Frye and Jayne Cobb. Therefore the Goals are also very different: Instead of Rocket to the Moon, where you need the Rocket and the Moon, they have Goals like The Tam Siblings: you need River Tam and Simon Tam. The New Rules and Actions are similar to the original… they just renamed some of them.

This variation also brings with it a less welcome change: Creepers. Creepers are cards like Reavers. You can’t win with them unless specific conditions say otherwise. There are some Goals that include Creepers as part of the winning criteria… for instance: the Crazy Ivan Maneuver requires Serenity and Reavers. Besides these special Goals, getting rid of a Creeper is particularly difficult.

Rating: +1 to rating+1 to rating+1 to rating+1 mto rating+1 to rating

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmail

Fighting with Bullfrogs

Bullfrogs is a fun strategic game. In Bullfrogs, you have little frogs and lily pad cards. You play one lily pad card at the start of your turn. You aren’t competing over the cards, each color frog gets their own deck. You play the card adjacent to at least one other lily pad. Bullfrogs

The amount of moves per turn you get depends on the card you play. The less lily pad spaces on the card, the more turns you get. The lily pad spaces and the turns will add up to 7. When you put the card down, there should be a row of lily pad cards or 2 rows you can manipulate. They have to be in a straight row (like Rooks move in Chess). Any card in this row is a card you can affect.

There are 2 move options for your turn: place a frog or sabotage. When you place a frog you choose any lily pad card in your straight rows except the card you just placed. You may place up to 2 frogs on each lily pad card. There are also 2 types of frogs: Frogs and Bullfrogs.

Sabotaging has the same range as placing a frog. You may choose an opponent’s frog and move it one space to any adjacent lily pad card (adjacent to where it was, not adjacent to you.)

If a lily pad is full, frog wars break out. First, find out how many fighing points each person has. Frogs are 1 point, Bullfrogs are 2 points. The team who wins gets the points from the card.

When the battle is over, the lily pad sinks. The losing team evacuates first. The winning player decides which adjacent space the frogs move to. This is the order they evacuate: loser’s frogs, loser’s bullfrogs, winner’s frogs, and then finally winner’s bullfrogs. If they cannot evacuate, they sink with it. If a frog sinks, it comes back and gets reused. If a bullfrog sinks, it is out of the game. At the end of the game, you count up points. The frogs and cards are worth different amounts of points, depending on the criteria.

Rating:+1 to rating+1 to rating+1 to rating+1 mto rating+1 to rating

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmail

Total Knock Out!

TKO is a Kickstarter that came with Fly (which I wrote about) and everything else in that Pack O’ Game. TKO is, of course, a boxing game. Be warned: there is humor to be found in a game with characters with names like Barry Punch and Will Bleed.TKO

TKO is a game where both players simultaneously pick one of 4 moves: uppercut, body blow, head block and body block. Each area starts at a different point level depending on the character. Then comes the scoring.

Here’s where things get tricky. If one person hits and the other blocks, but blocks the wrong section, the person who hit gets a point on that specific section. If one person hits and the other blocks it, that block earns a point for the person who blocked. Two punches to the same area cancel each other out, and two punches to different areas then both score.

Each round ends when someone has 5 points on a skill. When a round ends the winner gets the round token. Whoever has the most victories after 2 rounds wins, or if it is a tie, they play a third round. The winner gets the TKO Champion card!

Rating:+1 to rating+1 to rating+1 to rating+1 mto rating+1 to rating

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmail

Chateau Roquefort!

Salut! Château Roquefort is a wonderful game full of twists and turns where a bunch of competitive mice split into teams of 4 and race to get 4 pieces of cheese. There is, however, a catch. The rooftops they’re running on are shifting under them! They risk falling into a mouse trap!

Château Roquefort

The roof tiles are only uncovered when the mouse is on that tile, so these blissfully oblivious rodents with unusually small man-made brains* could be set up to fall in a hole! The rules with the cheeses are that each mouse team may only have 1 of each type of cheese. On your turn you may choose to push the blocks once as one of your 4 moves.

When you push blocks, you take the spare piece and push a row. This pushes all the blanks, mouse traps, and cheeses in that row. Otherwise you could use 4 moves to move and uncover roofs. Once you are done with your turn, if there are unoccupied, uncovered roofs they get recovered.

Château Roquefort is the rodent equivalent of the Hunger Games, but with official teams, not just a “You don’t kill me, I don’t kill you” scenario. Instead of finding weapons, you are searching for cheese, for the 1 with 4 cheeses rules them all!  (So long as they don’t cut their cheeses,)

Rating:+1 to rating+1 to rating+1 to rating+1 mto rating+1 to rating

*I’m not sure whether they actually made brains in the mice, but wouldn’t it be cool? Besides, it’s a cute jumble of words, right?

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmail

Would You Use Snake Oil?

Snake Oil Elixir is a game kind of like Apples To Apples, but with a few changes. For instance, instead of choosing a random adjective as the subject, you get to pick between 2 “customers”. The other players then chose 2 of their cards which they put together to make a product for you. They throw a sales pitch and you chose which you think would be better.Snake Oil

Choosing has a few options. You could be practical, but where’s the fun in that? I know people who vote for the most random, crazy thing possible. I personally go for the most wild, crazy, but distantly relative choice.

The person who wins the round gets the Customer card. The person to the left of the previous Customer gets to be the new Customer. The process repeats until everybody has been the Customer. Then the person with the most Customer Cards wins, unless there’s a tie, in which case you keep playing. In both games we played my mother won.

I like this game because you stretch the boundaries of reality to make the most ridiculous, odd and amusing inventions to please our customers. Of course, its nothing I can’t handle as I effectively do that every time I write fiction. Some things we came up with included Fairy Pickles and Pearl Musket. One thing to note is the more people, the better the game play is.

Rating:+1 to rating+1 to rating+1 to rating+1 mto rating+1 to rating

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmail

Which Dojo will Win?

This is about one of the most epic battles of all time; a view into the 15th century; a mystery left unsolved: this week I present to you, Ninja versus Ninja! It was published in 2008 by Out Of The Box Publishing. In Ninja versus Ninja you start with your master at 0, as he scores points, and your spy at 0, as he keeps track of how many points each mission could potentially reward you.

Ninja vs. NinjaThe slightly shaded spots on the board show where the ninjas start at the beginning of the game. Each turn you roll the pair of swords for your movement roll. Then you may move any one ninja that amount of spaces, allowing only one 90 degree turn in your movement unless you are in the opponent’s dojo. If you are, you may have one move that turns him back towards you (a reversal) and a 90 degree turn.

You may only have one ninja in either the opponent’s base or in the neutral zone at once. Once they have left your dojo, they have two more turns to return to the dojo or they will be taken out of the game and their points will not be scored. The same consequences awaits any ninjas that are taken during their mission. You can take a ninja by landing on a ninja from the opposing dojo, but you must end your turn on him, not just pause there and then keep going. When you take a ninja it gets set aside for the rest of the game.

I like this game because it is mainly about logic and fun*.

Rating:+1 to rating+1 to rating+1 to rating+1 mto rating+1 to rating

*Of course, what games aren’t about fun?

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmail

Can you build Machi Koro?

In Machi Koro you build a town, starting with only a Wheat Field and a Bakery. Buy Establishments and build your landmarks, roll dice to activate Establishment-related events to get more money. Some Establishments include The Forest, The Fruit and Vegetable Stand, and the Furniture Factory.

Machi Koro

I got this game for Christmas from my cousins. It was sort of funny, as we had gotten them the same thing. I enjoyed it because it is a good balance between logic and luck. Of course, Dad won, just like with most logic games. Such a surprise! Oh, wait….

There is also a fine balance, as you have to buy Establishments to get money, but don’t want to spend it all, because then you don’t have enough to buy the Landmarks, which you need to win. There are 4 different types of Establishments, which are color-coded.  The red ones allow you to steal money from other players when they roll the number of that card. The blue ones are activated on anybody’s turn, and the green and purple ones are only on your turn.

Rating:+1 to rating+1 to rating+1 to rating+1 mto rating+1 to rating
Continue reading Can you build Machi Koro?

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmail

In a Fluxx?

There is a wonderful game called Fluxx. It is a Looney Labs game (click here to see my previous post). In Fluxx, the rules are always changing. I like this game because of that fact, though my grandmother found it a bit confusing. I don’t remember when and where I first tried Fluxx, but it might have been because of the numerous Fluxx decks we have floating around the game closet (a.k.a. the Ultimate Closet of Doom, or UCD).

Fluxx 3.0

There are several variations of Fluxx, including but not limited to: Monster Fluxx, Zombie Fluxx, Pirate Fluxx, Fluxx 3.0, Fluxx 2.1, Cthulhu Fluxx, and Wizard of Oz Fluxx. The version we played this time is Fluxx 3.0. That’s a lot of Fluxx!

There are different types of cards. Keepers like The Robot are played to help achieve Goals like The Appliances, which requires The Toaster and The Television. Actions like Draw 2 and Use ‘Em are played to either mess up the other person or get you closer to winning(or both!). New Rules such as Hand Limit 1 make it tougher to win for both players. There are also other cards like Creepers and Surprises in other decks.

Rating:+1 to rating+1 to rating+1 to rating+1 mto rating+1 to rating

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmail

Brass Balls and Nerves of Steel

What has brass balls and nerves of steel? If you guessed a board game, you guessed right! Okay, Iron Man might have them too, but that’s besides the point. Anyway, Brass Balls and Nerves of Steel is a board game where you are rolling little metal balls across a three-by-three grid with small holes for the metal balls to fall in. Sounds tough, eh? Wait until you hear the spin-off options!Brass Balls and Nerves of Steel

In the original the scoring is based off of the rows. The farthest row from you is 3 points, the middle row is 2 points, and the row closest to you is 1 point. Included in the instructions are 4 possible spin-off options. These include games such as Tic Tac Toe and Four Corners. I like this game because it is a challenging, hand-eye coordination game in which you rely on a little metal ball. Okay, 6 little metal balls, but still….

Rating: +1 to rating+1 to rating+1 to rating+1 mto rating+1 to rating

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmail

Checkmate!

This post is for all those chess fans out there. I first learned chess in a simple way: I found an old chess board in the game closet and my dad taught me how to play. This newfound interest in the strategic board game led to my enrollment in the after school chess club, where I learned even more, like forks and pins.Chess

I learned the point values of the pieces (when you play at home the points don’t matter, you win or you don’t) and received several chess key chains to add to my wonderful collection. I also learned en-passant at a gaming party some of our friends hosted.

The picture is actually from one of the times my dad and I played chess together and the board itself is of sentimental value. You see, my father actually made that board for a school project. There’s the wooden box and board, which he didn’t actually finish putting the wood finish on, and the pieces are homemade out of acrylic resin.

Rating:+1 to rating+1 to rating+1 to rating+1 mto rating+1 to rating

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmail