Year: 2014

Clue (Cluedo)

manaiaclemim Clue, Published Games , , , , ,

3.5 - 5

Number of players: 2 – 6

Year of publication: 1949

Creator(s): Anthony E. Pratt (designer), René Goscinny, Matt Groening and Albert Uderzo (Artists)

I Have No Clue…Do:

Clue is probably one of the most popular board games of all time after Monopoly. For those of you living in the UK and a few other places your know this game by the name Cluedo. While it’s a classic its far less boring (and infinitely continuous) than Monopoly and even has a slightly role playing feel to it without directly inviting you to step into a character at all (you may choose to anyway due to physiological imbalances… Like my self).

What’s In The Box:

The Stuff!
The Stuff!
  1. Game Board (with 9 Rooms)
  2. 9 Room Cards
  3. 6 People Cards
  4. 6 Weapon Cards
  5. 1 Confidential Case File
  6. 1 Die (2 dice in later editions of the game)
  7. 6 Miniature Weapons:
    • Lead Pipe (Lead Piping in Cluedo)
    • Rope
    • Knife (Dagger in Cluedo)
    • Wrench (Spanner in Cluedo)
    • Candlestick
    • Revolver
  8. 6 Character Pawns:
    • Miss Scarlet (spelled Scarlett in Cluedo)
    • Professor Plum
    • Colonel Mustard
    • Mr. Green (Reverend Green in Cluedo)
    • Mrs. White
    • Mrs. Peacock
  9. Pad of Detective Notebooks
  10. Confidential Case File
  11. Instructions – found printed on the box of our copy (not pictured)

 Playing The Game:

Objective: To be the first player to correctly accuse the right person of the murder in the right room with the right weapon.

The game starts by the three decks of card being shuffled separately and the top card of each deck being placed into the case file (without anyone knowing what they are). The rest of the cards are shuffled together and dealt between the remaining players. Each player also has a detective notebook and a pencil. The weapons are randomly distributed between the rooms (only one per-room).

The starting set up.
The starting set up.

Each player may then look at the cards in their hand and mark them off on their detective notebook so they know they’re not the cards in the case file. Make sure your notebook and cards are kept out of the sight of other players. Play then starts with Miss Scarlet who roles the dice and moves accordingly (you cannot move diagonally). Play then proceeds clockwise around the board.

Suggesting:

When a player enters a room he/she may make a suggestion of who committed the murder. They can suggest any character (even themselves or one not controlled by a player), on doing so they move the character to the room they are in and then they also choose the weapon they think they may have used and move that into the room.

IMAG2493
So this is a suggestion of Miss Scarlet in the Lounge with the Lead Pipe.

The player to the left of the person making the suggestion must then show one of the cards relevant to the suggestion if they have one, if they do not then the next person must show one relevant card and so on. They must only show the player making the suggestion and none of the other players. If the player to the left of the one that made the suggestion has more than one of the relevant cards they may choose which one to show, and as the game progresses this can be used to your advantage to throw the other players off by making them believe you don’t have a a card that you’re actually holding.

Accusations:

Once you have done this enough and someone is confident they know which three cards are in the confidential case file (and therefore not in play) they may make an accusation. To do this they say “I am accusing, <a person>, in <a place> with <a weapon>”. They do not move the relevant pieces, nor do they need to be in the correct room. They then look in the case file to see if they are correct; if so they are the winner, if not they are out of active play and only stay to show their cards upon the suggestions of other players.

At the end of the game, all prop pieces down.
At the end of the game, all prop pieces down.

Strategy:

  1. Like in real life DON’T BE TO QUICK TO ACCUSE – While you might be eager to win the game and are being hasty to attempt to beat the other players to it, be sure of your facts before you go yelling accusations – otherwise it’s game over for you!
  2. BE AWARE OF WHO’S SHOWING CARDS ON SUGGESTIONS –  Always take mental notes of who’s showing cards with regards to certain things. If a suggestion gets all the way round the board with no one showing any cards then the only person who might have any of the components of the suggestion is the person who made the suggestion themselves.
  3. PLAY YOUR CARDS CLOSE TO YOUR CHEST – An easy game to accidentally cheat on, especially if someone’s stretching at the right time or “just leaning back”. So keep your cards and your detective notebook well covered.

History and Interesting Things:

  1. The game was initially patented in 1944 by Anthony E. Pratt under the name Murder!
  2. The game was originally created to be played in air raid shelters during the War.
  3. Anthony E. Pratt’s wife then presented it to Waddingtons‘ executive, Norman Watson, who purchased it.
  4. It was then given the name Cluedo which was a play on the words Clue and Ludo (which means ‘I play’ in latin).
  5. Whilst the game was created in 1944 and the patent granted in 1947 the game was not launched ’till 1949 due to war shortages.
  6. The game was also licensed to Parker Brothers and renamed Clue to be distributed in the United States at the same time as it was launched in the UK.
  7. The game that was launched in 1949 differed in a few ways from the original concept. The games original design had been to have ten characters one of which was randomly assigned as the victim at the beginning of the game, leaving eight playable characters and nine suspects. Mr. Brown, Mr. Gold, Miss Grey, and Mrs. Silver where eliminated from the game and Nurse White was renamed Mrs. White and Colonel Yellow was renamed Colonel Mustard. Originally there were also eleven rooms, this was canceled down to nine, eliminating the gun room and the cellar. There was also supposed to be nine weapons, some of the  eliminated or replaced weapons were the bomb, syringe, shillelagh (walking stick), fireplace poker and the (later used) axe and poison. Some of these weapons and characters were used in later spin-offs of the game.
  8. Additionally, the game play was different from the published version. The cards were distributed into the rooms for the players to collect. Players also had to land on other players to make suggestions about them through the use of tokens that, once exhausted, prevented you from making any more suggestions.
  9. Both Parker Brothers and Waddingtons‘ produced a number of unique editions between 1949 and 1992 when they were both purchased by Hasbro in the early 1990s. Hasbro continued to produce unique editions for each market until 2002/2003 when it produced the modern version of Clue/Cluedo which was unified for all markets with only localised spelling and regional changes made to each edition.
  10. The version we own (appearing in this post) is a 1989 Parker Brothers North American copy (even though we live in the UK) and we also own the modern UK version.

To Conclude:

Clue (Cluedo) is a good game… It’s easy to see why it’s been such a commercial success. However, in my opinion, it suffers from the same thing Monopoly does… It’s boring. Now this isn’t because it’s inherently boring, it’s just because most people most places have played it LOADS since they were children and therefore have no interest in it. In a sense it’s a victim of its own success when it comes to catching my interest. Like when you’re sitting there with some people and you go “Hey guys, let’s play some Monopoly” and everyone groans and goes “PLEASE NOOOO!” it’s a similar response with Clue just not quite to the same extreme. This being said, it’s still a good and well developed game, and its easy to understand why it’s been around and been popular for over half a century.

Monopoly

manaiaclemim Monopoly, Published Games , , , , ,

3 - 5

Number of Players: 2-8

Year of Publication: 1933

Creator(s): Charles Darrow (Designer) and Frantz Rey (Artist)

If I Can Just Get Past Your Hotel, I’ll Be Fi- NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Monopoly is probably the first game that comes to mind when someone says to you “What’s a really old board game?” either that or Clue. I’m fairly sure that most of the world is familiar with the concept of Monopoly even if they’ve never played it, it’s just one of those games you know about. Now, in our house we have a slightly different approach to Monopoly. We collect it. I think the list is currently at Star Wars Original Trilogy Collectors Edition, Star Wars Episode I, The Simpsons, Lord of the Rings Trilogy Edition and Travel Monopoly. The copy of original Monopoly featuring in this post actually belongs to our sister and brother-in-law, and before them, our Grandma.

What’s In The Box:

The Stuff.
The Stuff.
  1. Game Board
  2. 16 Chance cards and 16 Community Chest cards
  3. Game Money in denominations of 1, 5, 10, 20, 50, 100 and 500
  4. 2 Spare (blank) Title Deed cards
  5. 32 Houses
  6. 28 Title Deed cards
  7. Two standard 6-sided dice
  8. 6 Playing Tokens
  9. 12 Hotels
  10. Rule book

 Playing The Game:

Objective: Buy and develop the most properties to either achieve Monopoly or bankrupt all your opponents.

Because the world is generally so familiar with Monopoly I’m going to try and keep this section brief. Essentially, to start the game you need to separate the Chance and Community Chest cards, shuffle them, and put them in their allotted spaces on the board. Then elect one player to be Banker, they’re in charge of making sure the correct amount of money goes in and out of the bank for the rest of the game. To start they deal out 2 x 500, 4 x 100, 2 x 50, 1 x 20, 2 x 10, 1 x5 and 5 x 1 to every player. Lastly you choose Tokens, put them on GO and then roll the dice to see who plays first. Highest roll starts.

Starting set up for a game with two players
Starting set up for a game with two players

Moving and Rolling Doubles:

Starting with the player who rolled the highest number players take it in turns to roll the dice and move the shown number of spaces around the board, moving clockwise. If a player rolls a double they may move, complete all actions associated with that move (buying property, collecting money on Chance cards, etc) and then roll again, and move again. However, if a player rolls three doubles in a row, they must go to jail. There are several options for things it’s possible to land on, the most common of which is a Property space.

Landing on a Property:

If you land on an unowned property you may buy it by exchanging the amount of money shown on the space with the Banker for the Title Deed for the property you landed on. However, if another player has already bought the property you land on you must pay them rent for stopping there. The amount of rent paid varies from card to card, increasing as you go further round the board. It also changes when a player owns all of a set of one colour of property, or develops the property by buying Houses or Hotels for it.

Chance or Community Chest:

There are three Chance and three Community Chest spaces around the board. If you land on one of these you must draw the top card from the relevant deck and follow all instructions on the back. Once completed you return the card to the bottom of the deck you took it from, unless the card specifies that it make be kept and used later, the only one of these in the decks is the Get Out Of Jail Free card. Once this has been used it is also returned to the bottom of the deck. Chance and Community Chest are a mixture of good and bad cards, they can be helpful things, like cards that allow you to roll again, or take some money from the bank. But they can also be bad, forcing you to pay taxes or go to jail, so landing on one is always a bit of a gamble. Unless the cards specifies money to be paid either to the bank or to another player, all money lost to these cards in placed in the middle of the board and can be claimed by landing on Free Parking.

I landed on Chance and had to pay a speeding fine to the middle of the board.
I landed on Chance and had to pay a speeding fine to the middle of the board.

Income Tax and Super Tax:

These are the only two spaces on the board that can force you to pay money, and this money is paid straight to the bank.

Jail and Go To Jail:

These two spaces are diagonally opposite to each other on the board. The jail space itself is most irrelevant to game play – acting as a space where nothing happens – unless you get a Chance or Community Chest card that sends you to jail, you land on the Go To Jail space, or you roll three doubles in a row. These are the only three actions that can send a player to jail.

GO TO JAIL.
GO TO JAIL.

Getting out of jail is slightly harder than getting in, you can get out of jail by doing one of the following: throwing a double on any one of the three turns following you being sent to jail, playing a Get Out of Jail Free card, either by already having it in your possession before you went to jail, or by buying it off another player for an agreed price, or, paying a fine of £50. If you choose to try and roll your way out of jail, but on your third roll do not succeed in throwing a double, you must then pay the fine.

All the various ways of getting out of jail.
All the various ways of getting out of jail.

After this is paid a players turn may continue as normal, moving and buying property. Whilst in jail a player may also collect rent, buy or sell properties and build Houses or Hotels. The only thing they really miss out on is moving and passing GO.

GO:

When a player passes or lands on GO at any point after the start of the game (with the exception of if they’re being sent to jail) they collect £200 from the bank.

Landing on GO!
Landing on GO!

Houses and Hotels:

A player can purchase these when they own all of one set of a property. For example, they own both Park Lane and Mayfair they would be able to purchase Houses, and then Hotels for them, like this:

Mayfair has a Hotel, Park Lane has three houses. The long and the short of it is that I'm screwed.
Mayfair has a Hotel, Park Lane has three houses. The long and the short of it is that I’m screwed.

 

Before buying a Hotel for a property a player must first buy four Houses. They cannot jump ahead a put a Hotel straight onto the most expensive property they own.

Free Parking:

When a player lands on Free Parking they can collect any money that’s currently in the middle of the board, this is a nice bonus, especially if it was mostly your money to begin with.

I landed on Free Parking, so I got to reclaim my money from the middle of the board.
I landed on Free Parking, so I got to reclaim my money from the middle of the board.

Winning The Game!

A player wins the game when they have either bankrupted all their opponents, or they’ve achieved Monopoly by buying every single property on the board. This is a simple objective that’s actually pretty hard to achieve. When we play we usually end up ascertaining a winner by cashing up at the point that everyone agrees they’re bored. The person with the most money (inclusive of property value) is then proclaimed the winner.

Players in debt to other players can mortgage their properties to the bank to try and pay off their debts, these properties are place face down in front of their owner, and can be bought back from the bank at a later stage of the game. Properties can also be given to a player as part of paying off a debt if you don’t have enough money.

Strategy:

  1. Buy as many properties as possible! I am deadly serious about this, if you don’t buy anything because you’re holding out for one particular property (which you may or may not land on, depending on the roll of the dice) and end up hoarding your money, it’s not going to do you any good. You’ll be able to just pay rent and taxes and such for a while, but then, as there are more and more spaces on the board that you have to pay to stop on, you’ll find that you fast run out of money. Buying up lots of properties also prevents your opponents from being able to complete sets of properties and therefore stops them buying Houses or Hotels. This gives you good trading leverage later in the game.
  2. Don’t be rash. If an opponent wants to trade a property with you, don’t accept whatever they offer first, see if they’ll give more, and if they won’t, keep it until they desperately need it. When this happens, you should be able to name your price.
  3. If you’re playing with someone who’s irritatingly good at this game, team up against them! Rope in all the other players and support each other with loans and stuff to try and bankrupt this one player. Once that’s done and they’re out of the game you can then turn on each other. Not very sportsman-like, I know, but hey, it’s a dog-eat-dog world out there.
  4. Other than that, don’t be too open about which properties you really want, if you’re trying to get a specific set for some reason, this only drives up the price if you want to buy or trade one off another player.

History and Interesting Things:

  1. The first version of the game was designed by an American, Elizabeth Magie, and patented in 1904 under the name The Landlord’s Game.
  2. It was originally intended to show the consequences of Ricardo’s Law of Economic rent and Georgist concept of a single tax on land value.
  3. The game went through so many changes and revisions between its original publication and the Monopoly that we’re all familiar with now that by the 1970’s it had become popular folklore that Charles Darrow was the sole creator of the game.
  4. This was so much believed that it was printed in the rules for a fair few years as well as in a book about Monopoly printed in 1974, and was cited in a book about toys as recently as 2007.
  5. No family I’ve played this game with has ever played it the same way, or followed all the rules, for example, in our house we have a rule that if you pass GO you collect £200, but if you land on GO you can collect £400. I  believe this rule was invented by our mother as a way of getting her more money when she was losing to her various children.
  6. When playing the long version of the game it can literally go on for days. Our record was 5 days, a game left out on the living room floor for almost the whole of a rainy half term.
  7. I don’t think I’ve ever played a game where someone’s managed to achieve Monopoly. We’ve all gotten bored and gone away before that happens.
  8. When Ralph Anspach created Anti-Monopoly in 1973, Parker Brothers tried to sue him for copyright infringement, the case went to trial in 1976, but in 1979 Anspach won on appeals, the ruling being that the Monopoly trademark was generic, and therefore unenforceable.
  9. There have been several video game versions of Monopoly. I remember that we used to have a PC game of Monopoly, which was one of the only things we were allowed to do on the computer when we were small.
  10. http://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nif68iBR3LA

To Conclude:

One of the most classic of classic games, really good fun for all ages, but can be the cause of a vast number of arguments. If you haven’t played it, you should, at least once. There’s a reason this game’s sold so many copies and been reproduced in so many countries and versions – because it’s awesome. Having said that, I have only rated it 3 out of a possible five on our ratings at the top of the posts, this is mostly because the game can take days, and games that have definite ends tend to be more desirable, and less overwhelming when you sit down the play them.

I read about the history of the game on Wikipedia (and we all know that it’s super-trustworthy information) here.

Update – May 2014

manaiaclemim Updates , , , ,

So this month we’re going to do something that might be considered a little boring… We hope you agree that it’s not, but this month is Classic Games Month! Obviously we’ll try to put give fun and interesting take on them and it should be good as we have just ordered a video camera… So (hopefully) our first fun video will go up this month, depending on time. We tried to think of the most monolithic and iconic games we could think of. Here’s what we came up with:

All the games for this month!
All the games for this month!

Games for May: – Classic Games

Monday the 5th – Monopoly

Monday the 12th – Clue

Monday the 19th – Scrabble

Monday the 26th – Battleships

Other Things to Note:

  • As you may have noticed the site structure has change just a little, with the Games We Have and Games We Want pages now being subcategories of the Games We… page. On top of that there’s the new Games We’ve Made page, which is very small at the moment but will get bigger soon.
  • This is because we’ve published the rules to a card game we’ve invented called Crush the Crown! Check it out and let us know what you think.
  • Also we FINALLY have a video camera (it arrived today, so I’m super excited) so expect cool videos soon.
  • Lastly we’re going to the UK Board Games Expo at the end of this month so expect some awesome posts about that.

Crush the Crown

manaiaclemim Crush the Crown, Our Board Games , , ,

As promised in Update – April 2014 here is the card game we have invented… CRUSH THE CROWN! Click the link to see the rules and try it yourself.

IMAG2445

 

So we’ve change the layout of a few things on the site for this. We’ve created a Games We’ve Made page and a separate page with the rules on it, which you can find here, and a printer friendly page without pictures here.

WE WANT YOUR FEEDBACK:

We would like your feedback, play the game and tell us what’s good about it (or bad about it, as the case may be). Either comment on the page or on this post OR email us at tametheboardgame@hotmail.co.uk if you want to give us a large exposition of everything that’s wrong with it.

Irish Snap

manaiaclemim Irish Snap , , ,

3 - 5 Strike Thro

5 - 5

Number of Players: 2 – as many drunk people you can fit round a deck of cards (wouldn’t recommend with less than 3 people)

Year of Publication: Who knows?

Creator: The Irish

I Guarantee You Will Laugh More Than Any Other Game:

So this has to go down as one of my favourite card games of all time. It’s very simple, huge amounts of fun and anyone can play it (they might just be bad at it, which will make it funnier).

Appreciate our custom cards!
Appreciate our custom cards!

What’s In The Box:

Unlike most of the games we review this game only needs one thing:

1 x Standard 52 deck of cards

Playing The Game:

Objective: Don’t be the person holding all the cards at the end of the game!

Now there are quite a few variations of this game what with it being quite ambiguous and not actually having an official publication or official set of rules, so it’s up to the people playing it to decide what to play by. But here’s how we play it:

The basic principle is the same as Snap (I hope you are all familiar with the concept of Snap – although its real name is Slapjack). The difference between it and snap is that it’s the card that matches what the person is saying rather than the card under it. So the cards are split, face down, equally between players. The first player puts a card in the centre and says Ace, now if the card is an Ace hands go in, the last hand in is the loser and picks up the cards. If its not an Ace the next person puts a card down face up and says Two, if it’s a two hands go in, if not play continues to Three, Four etc. all the way to King and then back to Ace. The picture below should demonstrate what I mean:

You only snap when the card put down meets the card said.
You only snap when the card played is the same as what was said

Now in addition to this you can also choose to snap on actual snap cards, say someone puts a ten down and the next card is also a ten. The game gets interesting when people start to lose all the cards. The person who loses all their cards is NOT the winner, in fact they’re not even out of the game, they still have to say the right card when it comes round to them and their hand still has to go in when snap happens. This way a player can go through phases of having and not having cards multiple times in a game. The game is only over when only one person is left with all the cards in their hand. So even when there’s only one person, or even in a rare case where no one is playing any cards the game is not over until the final snap and one person is left with the whole deck.

For a more concise and directly playable version of the rules see here.

Additional Rules:

These rules you may only want to introduce after playing it a few times:

  1. Flinching – if a person flinches they have to pick up all the cards.
  2. Pace – You have to keep a steady fast rhythm to the game and if you break it by forgetting what you’re supposed to be saying or by not noticing it’s your turn you have to pick up.
  3. Queens – Some rules state that you snap on a Queen too, but this is really up to you.
  4. Change of direction – When Jacks are played (or a card of the players choosing) the direction of play changes.
  5. Word confusion – Changing the word for some of the cards to something obscure and if a player forgets this when saying it they have to pick up.
  6. DRINKING! – This is the most obvious additional rule (it being called Irish Snap and all) but the player who picks up has to drink.

Variations:

  1. Winning – The first and most major variant is that players to lose all their cards are actually out of the game and win… I personally believe this version is for losers with no real commitment.
  2. No speaking – Numbers are counted in your head and you snap in the same way you would if they were said. Makes it much harder as you have to pay even more attention. I tried an interesting variation of this rule (sort of) where half the people playing were Polish and they said the cards in Polish and the English people said them in English… It got very interesting.

Strategy:

  1. HAVE QUICK HANDS! – There is very little strategy that can actually be applied to this game except having quick hands and not getting distracted!
  2. DRUG THE OTHER PLAYERS! – We don’t actually suggest this… But it would help. Also keep in mind you just want to make them a bit slow, not knock them out.

To Conclude:

Ok, the loss of life may be a bit extreme.

First of all take heed of the picture above, this is why the drinking version is good… After a while you start to not feel the pain – but this also how hands are lost.

Note I have not put a “History and Interesting Things” section in this post; that’s because this game doesn’t seem to have a history. Well it probably does, but not a documented one, so if anyone knows anything interesting about it or finds anything beyond my lazy research capacity then please let me know in the comments. I would strongly advise playing this game, it’s only a 2 or 3 out of 5 on a purely objective level but is also a 5 out of 5  because of the huge amount of fun and endless hours of entertainment it has given me.

 

Pit

manaiaclemim Pit , , ,

3 - 5

 

Number of Players: 3-8

Year of Publication: 1903

Creator(s): Edgar Cayce, Harry Gavitt, George S. Parker (Designers) and Randy Asher, Paul Couture, Olivier Fagnère, Nick the Rat (Artists)

Corner the Market!

Pit is an interesting trading game. It’s got very few rules and can be played in any amount of time as the winner is the first person to reach a pre-determined amount of points. So games can be very very quick. Although the game is 3-8 players you should definitely opt for 8 if you can get the people, the more people, the better with this game.

What’s In The Box:

The stuff!
The stuff!
  1. One Pit “Corner” card
  2. One 72 card deck (8 suits of 9 cards)
  3. One “Bull” card and one “Bear” card

Playing The Game:

Objective: To be the first player to score 500 points by cornering the market on a specific commodity.

There are two ways of playing this game, basic, and slightly less basic. The only difference between them being that in the basic version the Bull and Bear cards are removed from the deck before play starts.

Setting Up:

  • Place the Pit Corner board in the middle of the table.
  • Prepare a score sheet.
  • Select a dealer and prepare the deck. The dealer takes one complete suit for every person playing (it’s not in the rules to do this, but we usually play with the highest-scoring suits) and shuffles them, together with the Bear and the Bull if they’re in play.
  • Deal 9 cards, face-down, to each player.

Once all this is done players can then look at their cards and choose which commodity they’re going to collect. It’s best to go for whatever you currently have most of in your hand. Once everyone’s had a chance to look at their cards the dealer announces “The Exchange is open!” It’s not compulsory, but you can do this with as much bravado as you like, just for fun.

Now the Pit is open players can trade cards. You can choose any number of cards from your hand and hold them face down in the centre of the table, you then announce the number of cards you want to exchange this is generally very noisy. You can then trade with any other player offering the same number of cards. If no one’s offering the same number you may want to higher or lower the number of cards you’re exchanging.

This continues until one player has all nine of one commodity in their hand. They then hit the Pit board in the center and announce “Corner on (insert commodity here)!” When playing without the Bear and Bull, the only player who scores is the one to hit the board. They score the amount of points shown on the cards of the commodity they collected, for instance, a corner on Corn would give that player 75 points. The winner of the hand then reshuffles the deck and deals the next hand.

Playing with the Bull and Bear:

When you add these cards in two players will receive 10 cards instead of 9 in the initial dealing. They can then call corner if they have all nine of one commodity and one of another, simply discarding the extra card when they lay down their hand to show the corner. The game is played as normal, but with these two difference:

The Bear is always a bad card, and you should try and get rid of it as soon as possible if you’re dealt it or traded it. If you hold the Bear, but have all nine of one commodity in your hand, you cannot lay it down whilst you hold the Bear, and if another player goes out whilst you have it you receive a penalty of -20 points, even if your current score is 0.

Our score sheet halfway through the game.
Our score sheet halfway through the game. I was spectacularly losing.

The Bull is a wild card and can be good or bad. If you’re holding the Bull and you call corner, your score is then doubled. However, if you’re holding the Bull and someone else calls corner, you minus 20 points, as if you were holding the Bear. With the Bull you can go out if you only have eight of the commodities you were collecting and the Bull, as only two players would be able to collect the full nine.

A winning corner on Wheat, with the Bull. Whoever laid this down scored 200 points.
A winning corner on Wheat, with the Bull. Whoever laid this down scored 200 points.

If someone calls corner and you’re holding the Bull and the Bear, your penalty is -40 points. If you’re unlucky, you can end up getting to fairly high minus numbers when playing with the Bear and Bull. You can trade the Bull and the Bear individually, or in combination. But you can never trade more than four cards at a time.

Strategy:

There’s no strategy to this game. Get rid of the Bear fast, and try and trade the Bull if you suspect the round might be about to end by someone else calling the corner. Other than that, try and trade as fast as possible and hope no one else is trying to collect the commodity you want!

History and Interesting Things:

  1. It was first sold in 1904.
  2. The inspiration was the Chicago Board of Trade.
  3. The game has been marketed under all of the following names: Billionaire, Business, Cambio, Dulux pit, Quick 7 and Zaster.
  4. Versions of the game published, starting in 1970, included a bell to start trading.

To Conclude:

This game’s fun, quick and easy, and you can teach it to anyone! It’s a fantastic family game, or just a quick one for playing with a bunch of friends.

 

Poker – Five Card Draw

manaiaclemim Five Card Draw, Poker , , , ,

4 - 5

Number of Players: 2 – 10

Year of Publication: 1810

Creator: Unknown

Poke-Her:

So the time has come to review the almighty Poker. Now I must admit to not actually being able to play poker before learning it to write this review. This is not to say I hadn’t played it before, I had a couple of times, but always while being guided like a baby by people who were already in the know. I find this is a bad way to learn games because as well as learning the rules you tend to learn things that aren’t the rules and are just made up by these people, but they’ve convinced themselves they are the rules, and also things that are part of the rules get forgotten. As I’m sure some of you are aware there are like a million different versions of poker, but this is a review specifically of the five card draw version. We will endeavour to play and review all versions of poker in the future (over the next 20 – 60 years) but we thought this was a good starting point.

What’s In The Box:

Card from our amazing Jack Daniel's poker cards.
Cards from our Jack Daniel’s poker set.

To play poker all you really need is a standard 52 card deck. However, we used our Jack Daniels Poker Set which contained:

  1. 1 52 deck of Jack Daniels Cards.
  2. 10 x Black Chips.
  3. 10 x White Chips.
  4. 1 x Small Bottle of Jack Daniels Old No.7.

Playing The Game:

Objective: To have the highest ranking hand after two rounds of betting. Also to take all the other peoples money, until everyone else goes bust.

Now for a good and clear set of exact rules to this game see here (these are the rules we learnt from).

To start choose to play the game either with or without betting. It’s far more fun with betting:

The Stuff.
The starting set up.

With betting you set a starting bet, which is the bet everyone has to put down just to be dealt cards. We set it as one white chip and we decided black chips where worth two white chips. Once the starting bet is placed by everyone five cards are dealt to each player by the dealer. The players then look at those cards and, from the left of the dealer, choose to either:

  • CALL – The player decides to match whatever’s already in the pot. If no one has put anything extra in the pot this means they put nothing in.
  • RAISE – The player decides to raise the pot (normally you set a maximum raise, we set it as one black chip). They do this by adding more money to it. Any player who then wants to stay in the round has to match the amount they’ve added.
  • FOLD – The player decides there’s no point continuing with the round and folds by not matching the raise in the pot and puts their cards face down on the table, taking care not to show any of the other players their cards.

After that round of betting anyone who owes the pot anything (because it was raised after their turn to bet) decides whether to call it or to fold. Then each player, from the left of the dealer, then has the chance to switch up to three cards in their hand. Once each player has done this another round of betting is done, exactly like the first, and then cards are revealed.

The Reveal.
The Reveal.

The person with the highest hand wins the round and claims the pot. The hands are (listed from highest to lowest):

Five of a Kind –  A five of a kind (which is only possible when using wild cards) is the highest possible hand. If more than one hand has five of a kind, the higher card wins (Five Aces beats five kings, which beat five queens, and so on).

Straight Flush – A straight flush is the best natural hand. A straight flush is a straight (5 cards in order, such as 5-6-7-8-9) that are all of the same suit. As in a regular straight, you can have an ace either high (A-K-Q-J-T) or low (5-4-3-2-1). However, a straight may not ‘wraparound’. (Such as K-A-2-3-4, which is not a straight). An Ace high straight-flush is called a Royal Flush and is the highest natural hand.

Four of a Kind –  Four of a kind is simply four cards of the same rank. If there are two or more hands that qualify, the hand with the higher-rank four of a kind wins. If, in some bizarre game with many wild cards, there are two four of a kinds with the same rank, then the one with the higher card outside the four wins. General Rule: When hands tie on the rank of a pair, three of a kind, etc, the cards outside break ties following the High Card rules.

Full House –  A full house is a three of a kind and a pair, such as K-K-K-5-5. Ties are broken first by the three of a kind, then the pair. So K-K-K-2-2 beats Q-Q-Q-A-A, which beats Q-Q-Q-J-J. (Obviously, the three of a kind can only be similar if wild cards are used.)

Flush –  A flush is a hand where all of the cards are the same suit, such as J-8-5-3-2, all of spades. When flushes tie, follow the rules for High Card.

Straight – A straight is 5 cards in order, such as 4-5-6-7-8. An ace may either be high (A-K-Q-J-T) or low (5-4-3-2-1). However, a straight may not ‘wraparound’. (Such as Q-K-A-2-3, which is not a straight). When straights tie, the highest straight wins. (A-K-Q-J-T beats K-Q-J-T-9 down to 5-4-3-2-A). If two straights have the same value (A-K-Q-J-T vs A-K-Q-J-T) they split the pot.

Three of a Kind – Three cards of any rank, matched with two cards that are not a pair (otherwise it would be a Full House). Again, highest three of a kind wins. If both are the same rank, then compare High Cards.

Two Pair –  This is two distinct pairs of cards, and a 5th card. The highest pair wins ties. If both hands have the same high pair, the second pair wins. If both hands have the same pairs, the high card wins.

Pair – One pair with three distinct cards. High card breaks ties.

High Card – This is any hand which doesn’t qualify as any one of the above hands. If nobody has a pair or better, then the highest card wins. If multiple people tie for the highest card, they look at the second highest, then the third highest etc. High card is also used to break ties when the high hands both have the same type of hand (pair, flush, straight, etc).

Hand descriptions loving borrowed from: http://www.contrib.andrew.cmu.edu/~gc00/reviews/pokerrules

As you may have gathered from those descriptions you can play with the jacks as well, these are wild cards and allow the Five of a Kind had to be played. Also you can play Aces high or low depending on how you’re feeling.

Strategy:

Now there are whole books on poker strategy and the art of reading a persons tell, etc. But I’m not even going to pretend to know even 0.001% of that information. HOWEVER, this is a list of things you should keep in mind when playing with very low level amateurs:

  1. THEY’RE PROBABLY BLUFFING – The other player is probably bluffing because it’s far more fun than not bluffing, especially if you’re not betting anything of real worth. They’re almost definitely going to bluff rather than go out.
  2. KNOW WHICH HANDS ARE WORTH WHAT – This is hardly a strategy comment more a comment of common sense, but having just learnt the game I made quite a few mistakes by not knowing what was worth more that what.
  3. DON’T BET ANYTHING OF WORTH – If you’re learning the game don’t go straight into high stakes betting, it’ll just make you hate each other and give the person who wins false confidence is their poker skills.

History and Interesting Things:

Again there’s whole books full of history and interesting things on poker so I’ll just cover a few:

  1.  One of the earliest recorded uses of the game is by Joseph Cowell who wrote that it was played in New Orleans in 1829 with a 20 deck of cards.
  2. The exact origins of the game are uncertain.
  3. While there are a LOT of different versions of poker there are only four main categories of poker and these are; Straight poker, Draw poker (what this is, as the name might tell you), Stud poker and Community Card poker.
  4. It is possible the most popular card game of all time.
  5. It is probably the most popular gambling game of all time.
  6. It has featured as plot devices in many films and books including the James Bond film/book Casino Royale and in many other Bond films. It has also been shown as a common recreational activity in films and TV shows alike. For example in Star Trek: The Next Generation and the film How to Lose a Guy in Tew Days.
  7. The example of poker in film and TV mirrors the spike in interest in it that happened in the 21st century. With the introduction of online poker and hole-card cameras it became a spectator sport and something you could do from the comfort of your own home.
  8. With this spike and the ability to make it a spectator sport many poker tours emerged, including World Poker Tour and European Poker Tour, both of which were televised.
  9. In 2009 the International Federation of Poker was founded to be its governing body and to promote it.
  10. They then launched two new events; The Nations Cup which was held on the  London Eye and The Table which featured 130 of the best poker players in the world.

To Conclude:

Poker is an interesting game and I can see why it has mass appeal. However, can someone please explain to me the appeal of online poker? Apart from the fact you don’t have to get out of the chair by your computer or off your bed with your laptop why would you gamble with people whose faces you can’t see? Does that not defeat the whole point of trying to read peoples tells and take away a large part of the whole psychology of the game? Correct me if I’m wrong.

Also, we all know Casinos fix games in their favour (and who can blame them? It would’t make a very good business if they didn’t) but to gamble online in any form is surly to leave yourself open to an even larger con? I could write a fixed version of any gambling game as a computer program in like a day and I’m a bad programmer. With poker there’s less of a fear of this because everyone playing is supposed to be a real person and there is no “house” to take the money… Eccept how do you know all these people are real and one of then isn’t the “house” and the game isn’t fixed in their favour? I’m half tempted to write a fixed version of poker, put it online, and see how many people I could convince to play it… Except then I could be arrested for all kinds of things… But it would make for a rather interesting experiment/business… But anyway, I have digressed.

Back to the point, poker is a good game, if you don’t know how to play it, learn as undoubtedly you’ll be somewhere with some people and they’ll be like “lets play poker” and you’ll be that one person who doesn’t know how to play and they’ll “teach you” but in that way where you only ever really pick up half of it.

 

 

Switch (Blackjack)

manaiaclemim Switch (Blackjack) , , , , ,

4 - 5

Number of Players: 2-lots

Year of Publication: Unknown

Creator(s): Unknown

Appreciate Our Custom Made Cards!

Switch is one of the many versions of Black Jack around, we aim to cover them all between now and eternity, but that could take years, so don’t hold your breath for any exciting Blackjack posts any time soon. I think this game is good because it’s simple, can be played anywhere, and is very quick.

What’s In The Box:

Well, as it would transpire…. Nothing! All you need to play this game is a standard deck of cards, and at least two willing people.

Playing The Game:

Objective: To be the first to play all the cards in your hand.

So to start the game each player is dealt a hand, usually of seven cards. The remaining cards are placed face down in the middle of the table, and the top card is drawn to determine how play starts. If the top card is a Power Card, then another card is drawn until a card is revealed that has no other purpose in the game. The starting player (typically left of the dealer) should then find in their hand a card that matches either the suit or the rank of the face up card. If a player cannot play a card from their hand they must draw cards from the deck until they can.

The starting set up for Switch.
The starting set up for Switch. Appreciate our custom made cards!

Power Cards:

  • 2 – if a player places a two in their turn the player next to them then has to draw two cards, unless they have a two in their hand, they can then play this and make the player next to them pick up four cards. This can continue round players until all four twos are played if possible, forcing the last player to pick up eight cards. The player that has to draw cards also forfeits the right to play any cards that turn.
Twos!
Twos!
  • 7 – a seven must be covered, so the person who played it must put another card of the same suit over it, or pick up a card if they cannot. If they pick up the next player must then cover the seven, or draw a card, this continues until someone has managed to cover the card.
Sevens!
Sevens!
  • 8 – when played eights make the next player miss their turn. There is an optional rule that allows that player to also play an eight, passing the missed turn on in the same way stacking two’s works, with the last player who cannot play an eight missing the same number of turns as there are eights in play.
Eights!
Eights!
  • 10 – reverses the direction of play.
Tens!
Tens!
  • Black Jacks – a black jack is similar to a two, when it’s played the next player must pick up five cards or play the other black jack, which would then make the next player pick up 10 cards.
BLACKJACKS!
BLACKJACKS!
  • Red Jacks – a red jack can be used to cancel out a black jack, if two black jack’s are in play then to cancel them both you must play both red jacks.
Redjacks!
Redjacks!
  • Ace – an ace can be played onto any card, irrespective of suit or value, whoever played the ace then chooses which suit play will continue in, and the game carries on, but with the new suit instead of whatever was being played before.
Aces!
Aces!

Winning The Game!

The first player to play their last card immediately wins the game. However, to win you must call LAST CARDS as soon as you are able to go out, this must  be noticed by other players. If you fail to do this and then play your last card you must pick up another card. Play also cannot end on an  Ace, if you finish with an Ace you must pick up another card.

History and Interesting Things:

There’s not a lot of history going on for this game, but there are a few entertaining things I can tell you:

  • There’s a variation of the game called Peanuckle in which player with only two cards left in their hand must say “peanuckle”, and a player with only one card left must say “supper-peanuckle”. I have no idea why this is, but this is the way of it.
  • There are loads of variations of Black Jack, most of which are played in Casinos around the world, like 21 Blackjack, also known as Pontoon.
  • We were familiar with this game before we decided to write about it, but the variation we’d previously played had slightly different rules and Power Cards.
  • Three points is two more than I thought I’d write, so I’m doing well!

To Conclude:

A good game, I like it a lot because it’s easy to learn and you can play it anywhere with anyone. I also like that there are so many variations of it, makes it always interesting to play. Although, because there are so many variations of the game it can lead to interesting disputes over Power Cards and rules regarding winning the game. We played with a bunch of people when we were in Brazil and we had three different ideas of what the rules should be. There had to be a little bit of universal rule deciding before we could start playing.

The most comprehensive information I found on this game was on Wikipedia, but most of it’s in this blog post. Annnnnnnd, yeah, that’d be about it, have fun playing cards!

 

The Stoning of Mark Meaning…or the Meaning of Marker Stones!

manaiaclemim Updates

I’m writing this post because the last review post (Spartacus: A Game of Blood and Treachery) before this was our 50th post! YAY! Also March was full of marker stones; we passed 1000 views (and then 1600), we gained 40 followers (and then 47), 3 months of meeting deadlines without failure (please don’t jinx it), over half a year of blogging, our highest view/visitors in one day record so far… And our highest amount of views in one month by quite a lot!

Thud Mile Stone!
Thud Mile Stone!

Now, to some of this, you might go “HA! it’s taken them over half a year to even have 1000 people look at their blog” well to you I say… It’s a board game blog, not exactly current events or something with fire in it. We understand that in many respects what we blog about is quite niche and probably not something people will want to read every post of. It’s more likely that people will find the posts when they’re looking up particular games (or at least we hope so) which makes subscribing to our blog less likely than say, a blog on food or sport. So the 1000 marker stone is quite a big one for us, especially when you consider we’re not the only people existing in this niche, there are many other board game review sites/blogs that make cool exciting videos (we’re working on that) not to mention Board Game Geek which dominates the landscape for all board game knowledge.

Thank you

So really what I’m saying to anyone reading this is thanks a lot! It’s very encouraging to see progress, to see that, even though it’s slow, you’re making progress, the amount of views we get per day is steadily increasing. We haven’t had no views in a day in a very long time and getting less than 5 is now rare. We’re well on our way to 2000 views, in the same month that we hit 1000, that’s pretty nice going. You could say “Don’t judge it all by the statistics” but what’s the point of writing if no one reads it? The statistics let us know someone’s reading, and that means there’s point in writing.

Update – April 2014

manaiaclemim Updates , , , ,

This month is going to be Card month! Yes I know there are enough card games in existence to fill a whole blog just with card games but we’ve picked a few of our favorites, a couple of classics and a couple of less classics, and perhaps we’ll do another card month next year and do a few more games. Also these posts will probably be quite short in comparison to our other posts as the games are mostly quite small and simple in comparison.

All the Games for this month...and our awesome card shuffler...if you don't have one get one.
All the Games for this month…and our awesome card shuffler…if you don’t have one get one. Also our awesome custom Tame the Board Game cards.

Games for April: – Cards!

Monday the 7th – Switch also known as Blackjack

Monday the 14th – Five Card Draw Poker with our Jack Daniels Poker set

Monday the 21st – Pit

Monday the 28th – Irish Snap

Other Things to Note:

  • As you may have noticed we’ve added a picture of all the games of this month to this update, this will now be a common thing with every update post.
  • Rules to our very own card game Crush the Crown will be going up sometime this month (hopefully) and we’ll be asking for feed back. All you need is a standard deck of cards and a friend so get ready!
  • Also we have gone back through all our old posts and added our ratings of them and updated the games we have page accordingly.
  • This month we’re also thinking of starting to hyper-link inside the posts so from an index at the top you’ll be able to jump to any section of the posts. We hope this will make the layout more accessible.
  • Penultimate we have to put a huge thanks out to grognard.com who are a website all about war games! Thanks to them posting our posts our viewing has gone through the roof this month and there’ll be a post specifically on that tomorrow. So go check them out.
  • Because of this we have decided to: a) include links to other suggested reviews of that game in out posts from now on (if there are any) and b) in the update post for each month a few links of websites that will be worth checking out inline with that months theme. So below this you’ll find some suggested sites.

Sites on Cards:

  • Pagat.com – For any and (mostly) all card game rules for any games you wanna play.

  • Card Game Reviews Blog – Not the most imaginative name for a blog but a solid site for card game reviews and somewhat fitting after my comment: “there are enough card games in existence to fill a whole blog just with card games”.

  • Play Some Card Games Online – And finally a place where you can play some card games online.