Caesar! and Suzan went to Spiel 2014, my thoughts on what we played and bought
Suzan
Netherlands
Enschede
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So, we're back from another exhausting, but fun weekend at Spiel. As we did previous years, we were at Spiel for four days. This year we made some neon-lime/yellow (more yellow than lime) shirts to promote Board game stats, so if you saw to people whose shirts almost glowed, that was us
We really tried not to buy too much, and I think we really did buy less this year.
Also, we got a chance to play a lot of games. I will try to include everything we bought and played here. First all the games we played (and sometimes bought) and at the end the games we bought but didn't play and all the promo's we got. All comments are welcome of course.
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Suzan
Netherlands
Enschede
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Day 1:
The first day of the fair we decided to pick up some pre-orders and games we already decided we wanted to buy as we passed the booths (all small stuff). So half looking for some booths and half just aimlessly wandering around from booth to booth.
Status: played and bought
First thing we played was Doodle city. We looked at this beforehand and thought we probably wouldn't like is, maybe to simple, maybe like Saint Malo? But when we played we had so much fun, we just had to buy it.
The first player rolls the dice, in a 2 player game, three white dice and 1 blue one. The blue die decides in which column you have to draw, one of the white dice is for the row. The first player gets to pick the first white die, the second player gets to choose between the leftovers.
On you sheet you have to draw roads between houses, shops, hotels and taxis, or add a house. You score points for when you draw for shops, one for every connected house and for hotels, length of the road. Every taxi that is connected to another one scores 4 at the end of the game. If you can't do anything you cross of a tree, and the person with the least trees gets minus point and with the most trees gets a bonus.
It's a very quick and easy dice game, but, I can't stress this enough, lots of fun to play.
Price: €15
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2.
Board Game: Ifrito
[Average Rating:6.17 Unranked]
Suzan
Netherlands
Enschede
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Status: played
Wandering along I spotted Ifrito. This was also on our pre-essen list, so I was excited to play it.
The goal of the game is to collect 3 genies on the, I think, lamp side of your colour, or 8 on the other side. The game consists of two square boards on top of each other, and a genie on every field. You have to push you magic carpet on the board and then you get a genie. You stick that on your carpet and that dictates where you can move, one of eight directions, octagonally and vertically or up and down if you stick the genie in the middle. You get genies by attacking someone else's carpet, if you have more genies than them. You get their genies on one side of the board and one of the genies on your carpet goed to the lamp side.
The idea of the game is fun, but we kept bumping into the board when making moves on the bottom square, and that made all the genies spill on the table. The game itself is ok, but not something we would play a lot, so no buy for Ifrito.
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3.
Board Game: Greed
[Average Rating:6.75 Overall Rank:1388]
Suzan
Netherlands
Enschede
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Status: played
Also on our pre-essen list (wow, we're on a roll, and it was not gonna stop) was Greed. EDIT: this was not even on our list, but we did do some research before Spiel, so it was on the list in my head.
A Donald X. Vaccarino game is always worth checking out for us. I think I was turned of by the theme beforehand, and somehow it didn't come across as a lot of fun.
But when we played it, it was actually a very clever game, although I don't know if we played it entirely according to the rules. You get 10 (I think) cards, draft 3 cards and then each turn draft a card and play a card. The cards you can play are mobsters, buildings or actions. The cards have costs and prerequisites and symbols. You get money (vp) with these cards, some mobster says: get 30.000 if you play another mobster, another said, copy another mobster, or get x money if you have these symbols. If the cards are all played, you count your money and the winner is laughing all the way to the bank (maybe not if you're a real mobster)
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Suzan
Netherlands
Enschede
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Status: played and bought
Next up was Strife. We pre-ordered this game, so we just went to pick it up. But before we got a change to do or say anything, when we arrived at the booth, we were ushered to a table and got the full explanation.
We already knew how to play, through our research beforehand but you can easily forget details so the refresher was very welcome. In this game you each get an identical deck of cards, 0 (or 1) to 9, of characters. In the middle are three locations, that provide points. You always fight in the first location, but some cards can mix the locations, or the place where you fight up.
The characters have a number, base attack value, and two abilities, fight and legacy. You always start by putting 1 card on you personal legacy pile simultaneously. Then you start battle, also by playing a character at the same time, at the fist location. After revealing, the fight ability of the highest card goes first, then the other card. After that the legacy abilities will be activated. The sum of attack values is calculated and the highest number wins the card. The character now goes on you legacy pile, so next turn that legacy ability will be used. This means you really can plan ahead.
Ties are broken with the fate stone (a d10). It starts at 1, and the owner will automatically lose ties, unless he gives it to the opponent, and turns it to two. The number on the fate stone at the end of the game are points for the owner.
Playing this game was very interesting, we played two times now, and you know you have to play a lot more to really get all the combo's. You can also really try to anticipate what the other person will do. Very because you play the exact same deck.
Price: €15
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Suzan
Netherlands
Enschede
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Status: played
In Artificium you try to collect crystals, or gold, or I don't remember what it was called, the tokens were crystals.
You get a few crystals to start with, and a few cards. In the first phase you can trade cards, the second and following cards you trade cost one gold. Then you can play cards. There are three types of cards, action cards, production cards and recipe cards. Every player also starts with a player board to manage his resources. On this boars you put crystals in a resource spot to indicate you have this resource.
You get resources by playing production cards, two wheat or wood. With the recipe cards you can now upgrade the resources to other more expensive resources and continue to do this until you get a wizard or a knight (did I mention the designer walked around in a knights costume the whole fair?). The action cards allow you to score more point, steal stuff and so on. The thing we realized late in the game was that you can also buy and sell resources, so you can always make a potion work, if you want it bad enough to sell other stuff at a low price. This made the game a lot more fun, because before we just thought there were not a lot of things we could do, but selling opened it all up.
This is a nice solid game, I would definitely play it again, but we didn't like it enough to buy.
Price: around €20
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6.
Board Game: Cubist
[Average Rating:6.85 Overall Rank:2363]
Suzan
Netherlands
Enschede
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Status: played
We got a really bad explanation of this game. But we already read the rules, so we were able to play.
In this game you use dice to try to build exhibitions on you personal player board. Each round you may roll two dice, and put them in one or two of your exhibitions or in storage (you save the roll). You can only place dice in you exhibitions next to each other if the number is one higher or lower. And stacking is only allowed with the same number.
The fun thing is, you all compete for the same objects, so if you are very close, someone else can try grab it before you. All these objects score points, and give you a die to build the central museum with. All of your dice used there will also score you points at the end of the game.
Our explainer said the cards in the game are really useless, and didn't explain how to get them very well. During the game it turned out they are very useful, but I'm pretty sure we acquired them wrong.
All in all a nice game, but nothing more.
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7.
Board Game: Carnac
[Average Rating:6.99 Overall Rank:4249]
Suzan
Netherlands
Enschede
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Status: played
I always love these abstract games. But beforehand I read the rules and saw some reviews, I didn't think it sounded very exiting.
You have a rectangular board and a common pile of identical rectangular playing pieces. Each piece fits on one square on the board standing up and on two lying down. On the top and bottom and on each opposite side are the players colors. Each turn one person puts down a stone standing up, choosing what color is on top. The other person then has a choice of laying the piece down, choosing the color that goes up by choosing the direction to lay it down, if possible. After that he can play a piece.
The aim is to get as many of you own dolmens, three squares of you color, as possible. The mean thing, and the intention of the game of course, is to place the stones so that the other doesn't have a lot of choice how to lay it down. And to connect your opponents dolmen, making them worth less.
It's a fun game, and this version looks really nice!
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Suzan
Netherlands
Enschede
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Status: played and bought
Something I also was looking forward to was Patchwork. I love the theme of the game, but the time-track is what really interested me, and of course the fact it's an Uwe Rosenberg 2-player game.
At the start of the game a lot of tetris-like playing pieces are in a circle in the middle of the table. A big pawn starts after a specific piece and it moves clockwise. You can only ever buy a piece up to three places away from this pawn. It will take the place of the piece you bought.
A piece has two costs, buttons and time. Buttons are VP at the end of the game. You start with 10 buttons. The time on the piece indicates how much steps you go forward on the time-track. As long as you are behind someone on the time-track it's your turn.
On the pieces are also some buttons. Every time you cross a button on the time-track, you get new buttons corresponding to the number you have on your pieces.
So what do you do with all these pieces of fabric? You patch them together on your 9x9 playing board. Once build they are not allowed to move (maybe in an "unpicking" expansion). The aim is to fill your field as much as possible before the end of the time-track. Every open field costs 2 points. These minus points go very fast, in my first game I scored a total of 1 point 
Love the game, had lots of fun playing it, so of course we bought it.
Price: €15
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Suzan
Netherlands
Enschede
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Status: played
After last years hype, was sold out very fast, we really wanted to play this, this year.
The author explained it to us and played the game with us. Of course he won by a big margin
On the board there are nine types of animals, three columns of three. The top most animals eat the middle level and the middle level eat the bottom animals. Everybody has six card corresponding to these animals, top and middle row.
In a round first you throw all dice, the middle and bottom animals are on them. They are put on the corresponding places on the board. Now everybody is allowed to play a card. First the top animals eat the animals (dice and cards) on the middle level and then the middle animals eat the dice below. In case of ties, you share, if equal share is not possible, nobody eats.
This is a really fun to play game, lots of I think you think so I do this but then you think the same so.... I just don't think we would play this a lot.
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Suzan
Netherlands
Enschede
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Status: played
we never played the original Trains, and I didn't even noticed until halfway through this was Rising sun (and that Rising sun existed).
This is a deckbuilder where you also have to build trains and make routes. So Dominion meets ticket to ride? The cards that we used (I really don't know if there are more) were just not very interesting (to basic maybe) if you are used to playing Dominion with everything. For instance: If you buy some train or build some rails you get waste in your deck, that doesn't do anything. You can rest (like in Thunderstone) to get rid of it, or get a card that lets you dump one waste.
It was nice to play, but I just wasn't impressed.
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11.
Board Game: Star Realms
[Average Rating:7.63 Overall Rank:88]
[Average Rating:7.63 Unranked]
Suzan
Netherlands
Enschede
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Status: bought and played
Somehow I got the impression that there might not be a lot of this game at Spiel. So we bought this without playing,with 12 euro price tag that wasn't a big risk, we did play it on the iPad before the fair. We also got a promo or alternate art cart, but I haven't looked at that yet.
In the hotel this was the first thing we played. It comes across as Ascension in space, but instead of fighting monsters you fight each other. You can buy spaceships and stations. Space ships are discarded, stations stay on the table, and give some bonus every round. A station can be an outpost, and then it has to be attacked first always (its got taunt, so to speak). If you attack a station, you always have to completely destroy it.
Every card also belongs to a faction, and can have a faction advantage. You can use this faction advantage when you play another card of the same faction.
We just played the one game, but I really liked it.
Price: €12
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Suzan
Netherlands
Enschede
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Status: bought and played
When we bought this (very) small game, the box was opened, the French card and rules were removed and the German cards and rules were included. (My German isn't really great, but we know enough to read (most) game rules and card texts. This is very useful when buying games sometimes )
In Verone you get a hand of cards that belong to one of two factions or are neutral. Some cards have winning conditions on them. You also get some bidding pieces. In your turn you play a card on the table, in the council or in exile, and you use the characters ability. Then you can make a bet on a card that you think will win (there can be more cards that win in a round). You can bit a piece with a high number or also a zero to trow of you opponent, so he thinks you will make this character win (and will also bid). Includes is also the expansion in which you can poison (of give antidote to) a character.
Once you know the characters this plays very fast. Really good bluffing, and fun game, plays well with two.
Price: €7 or €8 I think
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13.
Board Game: Ciúb
[Average Rating:6.16 Overall Rank:4675]
Suzan
Netherlands
Enschede
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Day 2:
Status: played
Lets start with saying Ciúb was the biggest disappointment of the fair. We arrived at the Amigo stand first thing on friday, only to see it was sold out! This big publisher, I never thought we had to be there on Thursday to get a game.
And then we played it, and I was disappointed even more, I really loved it. Lots of big colorful dice, using abilities to change them, buying cards with the right combinations. I really don't want to talk about this game anymore until they have new stock and I can get my hands on one of them (and then I won't shut up)
Price: €20
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Suzan
Netherlands
Enschede
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Status: played and bought
We also already knew a lot about this game before the show. But playing it yourself is sometimes the only way to find out if it is fun to you.
I heard Progress described as a pure tech-tree game. I don't care about that, I just like to build stuff in a nice cheap train.
In Progress the cards are divided into 3 (or 4) ages. You start with 3 cards. You build cards by sacrificing other cards at first. When you build a card you can get tokens you can use to build new cards, and you can progress on a variety of tracks. There are tracks for number of handcards, number of actions, number of cards to draw, number and duration of developing and for just points (competing for first on this track with you opponent).
Instead of paying to build a card, you can also build most for free if you have the correct prerequisites. If you can't or don't want to pay for a card you can also develop it slowly (over 4 rounds of less if you already advanced on that track). You don't get the cards bonuses directly, but you can use it as prerequisite for building the next card.
Another interesting mechanic of the game is that is you chose the action to pick up cards, you can do so from all decks (age 1/2/3 if you advance to that age yet) or their discards. So you have to be careful what you discard, and in what order.
Overall really liked this game, need to play it some more to get to know this tech-tree thing
Price: €35
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Suzan
Netherlands
Enschede
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Status: played
A card game in a fairy-tale setting. You play cards from you hand. They do stuff. You can play more cards next turn they do stuf, maybe even with cards played before, like pick up a male character. You can score points with cards, score 2 for all merchants. Sometimes you get some items when you play a card.
At the start of the game two cards are revealed that show you what you can do with these items. In game that can be trade them for other items or cards. At the end of the game for points. But the exact points you get for items are different from game to game, so they can be more useful from one game to the next.
My impression was that there were a lot of cards, but a lot of the same cards, or that had similar abilities. It was ok to play, would play it again, but don't think we would play it at home if we had it.
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Suzan
Netherlands
Enschede
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Status: played
In RoboRama you have to get your four robots from one side (four squares) to the other side of the board, before you opponent does the same with his robots. You do this by using the tiles you get at the beginning of the game, numbered 1 to 6 (or maybe 5) and a special tile. If you use a tile, you have to move robot that exact number of spaces, straight ahead. Then you tap the number tile. On the board are numbers, if you land on a number you tapped, you can turn it back, and it's available again. If you use the special tile you can choose one of your robots and you un-tap the number it is standing on.
All tiles also have a special ability that you can use once per game. If you've used it, you turn the tile over, and just use the tile as normal. The special abilities are stuff like, being able to turn during movement of jump over another robot.
There is also a chaos robot that you can operate at the end of your turn, using a card. It can move and so block your robots, or it can shoot, then your robot can't move for a turn, which doesn't seem useful until the end, when someone only has one or two robots left, otherwise you just move another robot this turn.
The whole idea of this game seems like it should be ok, but for me, I didn't really like it.
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Suzan
Netherlands
Enschede
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Status: played
Then I saw some cute sheep... no way around it, we had to play the sheep game, even though it's not even playable with two.
In this game you drive your cart around Wales picking up sheep and doing some jobs for people. In the end the sheep are VP and some cards also score. On your turn you pick up a sheep that's in the area your train is in, if it's the last sheep you get the lost sheep bonus tile, and two lost sheep from the supply. Then you can move your train one area, more with cards or coal.
If you are in a area with no sheep and you have a job cart there, you can play it. This gives you more sheep, and sometimes coal or gold. The cards have double use, you can play them as job carts for points, or as an action (like for movement), but then you cant get the points. At the end of the turn you choose a new cart.
It was a fun game, and I guess if everybody understands the rules it can be played very quickly (not a lot of downtime between turns) and I like that, 'cause I'm really impatient. We didn't buy it because of the not two player thing. That's not a negative thing by the way, I don't mean I think it should have been two player also, some games are just not as good with two, and I really appreciate if that's reflected on the box.
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Suzan
Netherlands
Enschede
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Status: played
In Sushi dice you have to roll dice and hit a bell, real fast. Ow and look at what others are doing at the same time.
In the middle of the table are a few cards depicting some ingredients you have to roll this turn, red, blue, green, pink or orange fish, or a combination of all.
Two players get a bunch of dice, on these dice are the ingredients and a starfish and a skull. You start rolling at the same time, put aside the ingredients of the card you want and if you have them all (starfish are jokers) you ring the bell. The twist is, you have to keep looking at what the other is doing, 'cause you have to yell "bah" or "yuk" or something if he rolls a skull. He then has to start over. If you roll a skull and you opponents doesn't see it you just roll again like nothing happend. Other players are looking at your dice and if you both roll a skull at the same time they yell and the round stops and the dice are passed around.
This is really a party or children's game, but that never stopped anybody from playing did it?
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Suzan
Netherlands
Enschede
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Status: played
We then spotted a free table with La Isla on it, so quickly sat down. No-one was explaining here, so Eerko had to read the rules, while I did the set-up. Fortunately this is not a very complicated game, so we could play soon enough.
On the round board, the island, are animals that you try to collect by surrounding them. On your turn you get three cards, choose which card to use in which phase A, B or D and then the round starts. In phase A you put the card you chose on top of your player board, you can now use its ability. This can be something like: you need to pay one resource less if you place on a hat symbol on the board. Or if you do something you get an extra resource.
In phase B you get some resources. In phase C you place your explorers on the board and hopefully collect some animals. And in phase D you move the scoring track of one of the animals up, and score that animal.
When the total number of all the animal tracks exceeds some number the game ends. You then score all your animals and the highest score wins.
What I like about this game is that rounds are really fast, except for placing on the board, most things are done simultaneously. And of course, cute animals!
Price: around €20
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Suzan
Netherlands
Enschede
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Status: played
This is a quick dice game. On the dice are three symbols, Monsters, Maidens and Knights. You want to collect as much maidens as possible. So you roll all dice, set aside all maidens. Then you make pairs of knights and monsters, and look if you have more monsters or knights. If you have more monster, each monster that's not stopped by a knight kidnaps a maiden. If you have more knights they bring back maidens (kidnaped earlier). You then decide to roll again or score.
This is a fun push your luck game, but I really thought the maidens should still be kidnapped when it's the next players turn, somehow it felt wrong just getting them al back.
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Suzan
Netherlands
Enschede
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Status: played
No explanation for this game, so it was the rulebook for us. Maybe we played it totally wrong but this game really didn't click for us. Lots of cards, but we saw a lot the same cards, and felt like we were playing the same round over and over again.
Not a big succes for us.
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Suzan
Netherlands
Enschede
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Status: played
In terms of cuteness this was the cutest game we played. Lots of cute cats.
In this game you get 7 cards and need to collect two sets of 3 and 1 pair. In your turn you take a card and discard a card. You can make sets with the cards others discarded (I'm sure I've heard this before).
In the end the person who got his sets shuffles his cards with some heart cards and then somebody else needs to pick a card blindly and if it's the heart card, he (the person that made the sets) wins.
This game was a bit weird, I really didn't get the end with how many heart cards you get and why, but did I mention it's cute?
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23.
Board Game: Lost Legacy
[Average Rating:6.50 Unranked]
[Average Rating:6.50 Unranked]
[Average Rating:6.50 Unranked]
Suzan
Netherlands
Enschede
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Status: bought and played
We just took a gamble on this game, and got the German version. In our hotel we played a few rounds of the Flying Garden.
In this game, like Love letter, you get one card. Every turn you get a new card and play a card. The difference is, in the middle of the table is a closed card, and you can add to that row, switch and look at those cards. At the end of a round, if you're still in the game, you may take a guess at where the Lost Legacy is (one of the cards). It can be in the middle or in a players hand.
Really liked this one, we really had fun playing, immediately wanted to play the next game/turn. Can't wait to play the other cards, the Starship. And I think you can even combine the cards.
Price: €8
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Suzan
Netherlands
Enschede
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Day 3:
played
In this game you collect cards you use to dig up artifacts, the more expensive the dig, the more change you have to dig up something really good (a card with 3 artifacts). The cheaper digs gets you cards with 1 or two artifacts or nothing.
You can also do an exhibition with the artifacts (score some points), some other exhibition cards score more points, but then you lose some artifacts.
This is a nice little game, maybe a bit to simple (for us).
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Suzan
Netherlands
Enschede
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played
In this game you get a hand of 10 cards, and a few cards on your own draw pile, you always fill your hand to ten, if possible. The goal is to get rid of your cards. Every cards had three characteristics: color, person and number of persons, each having three options. The game also has three dice, one for each characteristic, each option on it twice.
One player starts with rolling one of the dice, his choice. Everybody then tries to be the first to lose a card of that type. So if he rolls green everybody wants to trow a green card. Only the first person can actually play the card. Then the starting player rolls the next die, and you have to match both characteristics, so for instance a green, tall guy. And then the last die, two green, tall guys.
If at any point nobody has a card that matches, you re-roll the last die, and discard the previous die/dice.
This game is not for everybody, because not everybody likes quick reaction games. It was fun to play a game, but it's not really my thing either.
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