Rise or Fall (2011)

All the high school cliques – goths, geeks, jocks, cheerleaders, punks, skaters, artists, even the cool teachers – are competing to be as popular as they can be, and naturally that means they'll take the opportunity to slime others in order to make themselves look good by comparison. Can your clique come out on top?

In Rise or Fall, you represent a clique and try to hold on to your popularity points for as long as you can. Each turn everyone plays a card simultaneously, either attacking one opponent's clique, defending your own, or trying your hand at self-promotion. (Brag much?) If you attack someone who didn't defend herself, you take one popularity point from her; if she did defend herself, however, you look like a jerk and have to remove one of your points from the game. If someone defends herself and no one attacks her, she has to throw two points away. (Geez, you think you're so important that everyone's after you? As if...) If you're the only player to play an achievement card, you add a point to your pile.

Run out of popularity, and you're out of the game. As soon as only two cliques remain, the game ends and the clique with the most popularity points wins!

Components:

• 8 screens
• 72 cards (nine cards per player)
• 49 popularity points
• 1 trash bin
• Rule