All Hands on Deck! Kickstarter Preview

This post is not a review, but a preview of a game currently seeking funding on Kickstarter.

All Hands on Deck! is a family set collection game with a fun, cartoony pirate theme. The game consists of 108 cards made up of 3 different bands of pirates (colored suits) as well as a variety of actions cards. 

The goal of the game is to assemble a team of winning pirates - either 7 consecutive pirates from one crew, or 3 consecutive pirates from all 3 crews. Players go about this by participating in auctions and through clever play of their action cards.

Each round, there will be a card from the deck put up for auction. All players will put up cards from their hand into the blind bid auction. All pirate cards values are added up, and the highest bid wins. Any actions cards that are included in the bid are also resolved in turn order.

Once someone assembled a winning hand, the game ends!

That it pretty much it! The game is great for families - it is easy to understand, has fantastic artwork, and a fun theme. Decisions in the game - like knowing which cards to give up in your bids and which to hold onto as sets (as well as which type of set to shoot for) are simple, but also not so easy as to make the game uninteresting. All Hands on Deck definitely has enough gameplay to be enjoyable for everyone, and definitely doesn't outstay its welcome!

If you think All Hands on Deck will be a good fit for you, go check it out on Kickstarter!

Wanted: The Outlaws Kickstarter Preview

Wanted: The Outlaws is a game currently funding on Kickstarter from publisher Bibelot Games. It is a light, family style game of cards and dice set in the old West.

In Wanted, players use Loot to recruit to hire characters and build their posses. They then use these posses to go on jobs and earn Reputation. After all of the cards have been used, the game is over and the player with the most Reputation wins!

To set up, the deck of cards is shuffled, and dealt out into 6 piles which are turned face-up. Each player starts the game with 12 Loot. On her turn, a player can do 1 of 3 actions. She can recruit a face-up character by paying Loot, she can use the characters she already has to go on a face-up Job, or she can Report a Tip. Reporting a Tip will gain the player 1 Loot, and the ability to place any of the top cards in the middle of the table on the bottom of its respective deck. 

The action that drives the game is going on Jobs. These are the horizontal cards that describe something to be done in town. A player can use her posse to go on a job as long as her characters' cumulative stats for Smarts, Power, and Will either equal or exceed those stats on the job card. If a player decides to go on the job, she rolls the number of dice pictured in the upper left hand corner of the job card, and gains the benefits (and suffers the penalties) from that roll. Players can gain either 1 or 2 Loot or Reputation or suffer either 1 or 2 wounds.

Wounds are placed on characters that went on jobs, and if a character takes wounds equal to their hearts, that character dies and is discarded.

Uh-oh! Looks like some of these Outlaws are going to make it home for dinner!!

That is pretty much the game! Play continues in this way, each player getting 1 action per turn, until all of the cards in Town are gone. At this point, whoever has the most Reputation is the Outlawiest Outlaw of the All!!

The theme is a lot of fun, too. There are a good number of games set in the Wild West, but I can't think of many that fall into the light, family category. For that, I can't recommend The Outlaws enough!

The game is definitely light, but doesn't overstay its welcome, and gameplay is smooth since each turn is so short. This is certainly a game that I would pull out with my family, or with my younger niece and nephew for a short, rootin' tootin' dice filled romp. It would be even better suited to playing with grade schoolers because players would need to practice adding their character's stats to see what jobs they can do.

If you think Wanted: The Outlaws would be a good fit for you, then go check out their Kickstarter campaign!!!