Andrew Card Games, Family Games, Tile Laying

Shuffle Cards – Connect 4

As a child I had the original Connect 4. I distinctly recall the blue plastic frame with the feet that were impossible to get in and the bright yellow and red playing pieces.

I remember playing countless games with family and friends and really enjoying it. Somewhere along the way though the frame broke and the rest of it went to the great game cupboard in the sky. I never bothered to replace it as an adult, knowing that it wouldn’t have the same appeal now.

Even though I’d outgrown the original, I was intrigued when I saw that they had released a card based version of the game, and at $8 on sale I grabbed it. It doesn’t resemble the original game that much once you start playing it but that doesn’t mean it’s a bad game.

It comes in this little plastic case, shown below. There’s a whole range of these card games based on their famous big brothers and they all come in similar cases. I have a few and I’d expected the plastic clip to have broken by now but it’s held up pretty well. The sticker peels up at the edges though and at some point I’l either have to glue it down again or tear it off.

Inside the case is a set of mission cards and a set of tiles. The cards are quite flimsy and the tiles are the same thickness as the cards, not a nice solid cardboard like in Carcassonne or Cacao. There’s also a tiny rulebook. I would have liked a bit more quality but even at full price these are only around $20AU so you can’t expect too much.

To play, each player gets two mission cards and then takes turn laying out the tiles trying to make the pattern that matches their mission. if you complete a mission you take another and continue until someone has finished four of them.

The tiles either have a four coloured dots, a multi-coloured dot indicating that it’s a wild, a blank, or one of three action symbols – the plus allows you to play that tile over an existing one, the minus lets you remove a tile and the rotate symbol lets you spin an existing tile to help you complete your missions.

The mission cards are straightforward. You either get four of the same colour in a row like in the original game, going in any direction, or a square or L shape of four. If you completed a mission that the other player also has they get to claim it as well so you need to watch what they are trying to do and avoid finishing yours if it will give them the win.

Every game we’ve played has been really fast, under 10 minutes to complete four mission cards. There’s just enough strategy with taking the spots the other player needs or removing their tiles to make it competitive, and it’s actually a lot of fun.

You could teach it in a few minutes and the small packaging means it’s a good travel game. The rules say that if you want to make it more competitive you can play with the mission cards face up, so you can see what the other player is going for and block them, and that could be fun too.

The few things I don’t like are the low quality components, it would have been far nicer with thicker tiles, and I think there’s too may tiles with blanks and actions compared to the ones with just four coloured dots. Other than these minor complaints I’m happy with it for the price. I’ve only tried it with two players but we’ve probably played 10+ times given it’s over so quickly. It’s a decent filler game at a low price.

Andrew Card Games, Family Games, Game Reviews, Two Player Games

Baba Yaga

Woooooooo! Avoid evil spells, gather witches and effectively use large seaside birds on your way to victory in this light card game from Gamewright.

Gamewright isn’t a publisher I normally give much time too. Their range is mostly targeted at a younger audience and doesn’t usually appeal to me but we picked this one up a couple of years ago when  browsing the shelves at the local game store just because the box and description caught our eye.

It’s a standard ‘draw 5 cards and do something with them’ style game where the aim is to selectively trade the cards in your hand with the cards on the table until what you hold equals four or less. It’s quite straightforward to learn and plays quickly but there’s enough strategy in it to make it interesting. We often use this as a filler game when we only have 15-30 minutes free and want to pass the time. It may also have some educational value as you have to do addition of your potion cards to be able to play the other cards but who wants to think about that?

It comes in a small format box, about two decks of cards wide and about 2 decks high. It’s a solid glossy cardboard and seems to be holding up well.

When you lift the top off, you can that there’s a rule pamphlet, a couple of promotional leaflets and the cards themselves set inside a plastic insert. The cards are standard playing card size and have a slight linen finish. They have stayed flat and aren’t showing much wear even after many plays.

The cards come with three different back colours. Most have a black back, and they are the ones you will use to form your starting hand and draw from. The other two are the Owl cards (blue) and Baba Yaga (red) cards. These are never drawn normally and can only be gained by activating the pelican spell card from the black cards. The owl can be traded for two baba yaga cards, while the baba yaga has a value of 0 so reduces the total in your hand.

I initially thought that having different colour backs was a bad idea because it meant that your opponents can see how close you are to winning but once you look at the spell cards you’ll see why it’s this way.

These are what the black cards look like. There’s a lot of potion cards with different numbers, a wild potion card that can be used as any number, plus four different spell cards. If you have a spell card you need to play it plus potion cards exactly equaling it’s point value to activate it.

Each of these does something different

  • Pelican card – when you play this, you can choose to either pick up a blue owl or red baba yaga card. I told you, large seaside birds play a big part in this game!
  • Garlic Card – you can play it at any time without needing to trade potions in for it to block a spell card.
  • Lost Wand – Make everyone but you return either an owl or baba yaga to the table and draw a random card from the draw pile
  • Cats – Take a baba yaga or owl from a player of your choice. Also good for losing friends or making your significant other mad.

Example play

The table gets set up like this, though this is a few turns in to show the two discard piles. During your turn, you can either play a spell card, or discard a card to one of the two discard piles and either take the top card from the other discard pile or the draw pile. The only time you can’t take a card from a discard pile is if it’s a spell card that has been activated rather than just discarded.

Because the other players can take the card you discard, you have to be careful with what and where you discard. Assuming that the other player discarded that pelican to make room for potion cards, you might try and pick it up to use it. On the other hand, you may want that 7 instead to activate an owl card next turn so you go for it instead.

Imagine you have these cards in your hand. You have a pelican and potions totaling seven so you can play it to one of the discard piles and take either and owl or a baga yaga

This is what your hand will then look like. You still need to draw three random cards from the draw pile so you have five again, but if you do the same thing a few times you’ll soon have a hand worth less than four and are the winner. You may instead decide to go for the owl card rather than the baba yaga knowing you can get 7 points worth of potions in your hand fairly quickly and then trade for two instead.

I really like the game. I know some other reviewers have said that there’s too much “discard one, pick up one, repeat” to it but I really haven’t found that to be a problem. You may have to change your strategy a bit based on what comes up in the discard piles and to slow the other players down but it’s always fast and I’ve found it really playable. We’ve only played it with two players and it works great there, I’m sure it would be fun with more as well though.

Sadly it seems to have been discontinued by the publisher but it’s still available online in a few places so it’s worth getting a copy while you can.

Andrew Card Games, Game Reviews, Two Player Games

Dead Man’s Draw

The blog’s first review is Dead Man’s Draw. It’s a neat little card game with a pirate theme.

The game comes in a small box about two decks of cards wide and twice as high. Inside it you’ll find a rulebook and about 8o standard sized playing cards with a nice textured linen finish.  The box itself has a linen finish as well and is quite solid. It could have been about half the size if it wasn’t for needing to fit the rule book in but it’s still quite compact. The cards have held up well even after around 30 plays and aren’t really showing any wear. They shuffle well and don’t stick together.

The rule book is one of the better ones I’ve seen, with clear setup and play instructions as well as information on all of the possible variant cards. For the price the component quality is quite high and I haven’t noticed any imperfections in my copy.

The majority of the cards are numbered and have one of ten suits on them. These are the ones you’ll use when playing. The aim of the game is to collect as many points as you can by drawing cards one at a time from the face down draw pile and trying to get as many as you can without getting a duplicate.  You can either play it safe and bank the cards you’ve already drawn or keep going in hopes of scoring more points. In the normal game only the highest card in each suit is scored. The impression I got the first time I played it was that it was very much like Blackjack where you keep drawing cards until you go bust, but there’s a lot more to it than that.

Each of the ten suits has a special ability that is activated as soon as it’s drawn and placed into the play area. You can see what they are in the picture below. It can be a little tough to figure out how best to use them when you first start playing but after a few hands you’ll not need the cheat sheet cards and you’ll start to see how you can use them most effectively. For example, if you get a sword, you can take the top card from another players banked cards and activate it. You could use it to bring an anchor into play to secure the cards already drawn, or an oracle so you can see if you should continue to draw cards or stop.

The base game by itself is a lot of fun. Watching your hard won cards get taken or blown up by the other players is annoying but amusing at the same time. The winner is generally determined by luck more than skill but the way you use the abilities does matter. We’ve found it generally takes around 10-15 minutes per game making it great if you only have a little time. It only takes a few minutes to teach as well though the more you play the easier it becomes, I think we’d played about 5 games before we stopped needing the guide cards.

If you want a little more though there’s two options for adding to the game already in the box – traits and variants. The traits deck is a set of cards that change how each ability works, but only for the player who has that card. Each player draws two of these at the start of the game and chooses one to keep face up, discarding the other. It really changes up the base game as you have to rethink your strategy based on not only what you have but what the other player has.

The other option is to use the variant cards. You randomly draw one at the start of the game and it changes the rules of the base game. You can use these either by themselves or with the Trait cards to add even more depth to the game. We haven’t actually felt the need to use these yet as there’s enough with just the traits to keep the game interesting but it’s nice to have them as an option.

Example Playthrough

Step 1 : On your turn, flip a card over from the draw deck. There’s also a discard deck (not pictured) that contains all of the cards with a value of 2 to start with, that will increase any time you go bust and be used when certain suits are drawn.

This turn you got the anchor. It’s not actually any use to you coming out first as it can only protect cards to the right of it.

Step 2 : You decide to draw another card. it’s a chest. If you continue to draw and find a key you are able to take both the cards you have drawn plus the same number from the discard pile so you decide to press your luck a bit. If you decided to bank the cards instead you’d get to move these two into your bank area instead.

Step 3 : because you decided to continue, you take another card. You draw a kraken. This forces you to draw two more cards regardless of if you wanted to or not

Step 4 : You draw another anchor and because you already have one you go bust. You don’t get to bank any cards and they all get added to the discard pile. If you’d not had that first anchor though both the kraken and the chest would now be protected and you’d have been able to bank them no matter when you went bust. Play now moves onto the next player. When the draw pile is empty the game ends and you total up the highest card of each suit from your bank. The highest total wins.

Summary 

We’ve played it a lot with two players and once with three players. It’s fantastic at two player but scaled to three with no issues and I’m sure it can go higher as well.  It’s around $25AU and I highly recommend it.