The quiz picture this time is of an old fun favourite game from my younger days

The last quiz picture was correctly guessed as A Fake Artist Goes to New York one of many simple but elegant games from Oink.

I missed last week so a bit of a catch up here

Last week the games played at the club were :-

The crackin' figures that you get in Blood Rage

Table 1 – Flamme Rouge, Glass Road, Blood Rage, Stroop (x4), Sushi Go! (x2)

Table 2 – Tzolk'in: The Mayan Calendar, Tonga Bonga

Table 3 – Spyrium, Art of War

Two weeks ago we played :-

Table 1 – Royals, Rheinländer, Don't Mess with Cthulhu, Bohnanza, Stroop

Table 2 – Duel of Ages II

Table 3 – The Lost Expedition, BANG! The Dice Game, Tiny Epic Galaxies+ Tiny Epic Galaxies: Beyond the Black

I would have liked to have done the spotlight on Duel of Ages IIas it is an excellent game, how I missed it when it first came out baffles me but hey-ho some good games are missed by us all, however despite my enjoyment of that game a couple of weeks ago I have been persuaded to do Stroop instead a game that I am not entirely comfortable playing. I am not sure what category Stroop falls into (puzzle game, speed game, party game), but it is certainly engaging and quick. The box contains a large deck of cards which are split into 2 games, the basic game uses the majority of the cards whilst the advanced game has some additional cards added to it and is played exactly the same way but is more difficult.

(apologies for colour) A sample card from the advanced game, a yellow BACKWARD written forwards

The cards themselves have one word written on them and each word/card will have 4 factors, the first is that it will be one of 4 colours, it will be written in block capitals (big) or lower case (little), it will contain a certain number of letters. The words themselves will be one of these parameters e.g. YELLOW could be written on the card it is written in red has 6 letters and in capital (big) letters or big (meaning Capital letters) has 3 letters is written in lower case (little) and is blue. Following me so far I hope, so what are the rules of the game. 15 cards are dealt to each player which is put in a stack face down in front of them and on the word go a card is turned face up in the middle of the table, players now can use 1 hand to pick up cards one at a time from their deck to fit into their hand and play a card to the middle of the table if its criteria matches the word on the card – HOWEVER - as soon as someone does this their card becomes the one to be matched, there are no turns and it is the fastest to get rid of their cards that wins the first round. so a sequence of cards played could look like this :-

As soon as someone runs out of cards or cannot go having picked up all their cards they call stop. Players now pick up all their cards still left to play and add this to a new hand of cards dealt to everyone, then round 2 begins which is harder. In round 1 you read out the word on the card to help everyone, in round 2 you also read out what is written on the card however this is no help as you are now trying to match a criteria on the card with the correct adjective from your hand thus YELLOW – big – THREE from above would still be correct as a sequence as the word yellow is in big letters (in the first round big was a yellow word), three now says how many letters in big (in the first round three was written in big letters (capitals)) however there are 5 letters in three so “six” is incorrect but “five” would be viable as the next card in the sequence.

Believe you me, it was equally baffling playing the game, these types of speed games I have never been good at, I have a similar problem with Ricochet Robots, and SET the card game, that does not mean I will not play them I will just be setting myself slightly different (achievable) targets than the other players i.e. in our second game of Stroop I aimed to have less cards at the end of the game than when I started, sadly I failed that as well but I was close. Overall it is a fun game, there was laughter and a little cursing as incorrect cards were played and if you enjoy these quick speed style card games with brain acrobatics then I can highly recommend it. The advanced game adds a new dimension, words can be written backwards as well as forwards.

Medway Area Boardgamers