Too Many Cooks Review

Too Many Cooks is a card game designed by Reiner Knizia, and it's a perfect game to play with kids. My daughters are eight years old, and they love it. (It's one of their favorites, in fact, and it's probably the most requested card game at our house.) But my son is almost sixteen, and he loves the game just as much as they do.

Too Many Cooks is a trick taking game, but who takes the trick is determined by who played the card that makes the total for the trick wind up at 10 or over. To make things even more interesting, players have to set a goal for each hand by selecting a menu at the start of it. Each game of Too Many Cooks is played out over five rounds, and once you've used a given menu, then it's gone for the rest of the game.

The menus consist of :

• chili
• onion soup
• pea soup
• mushroom soup. 

There's also a "no soup today" menu, where your goal becomes to avoid taking any tricks at all. (It's sort of like going nil in a game of spades.)

Points are counted at the end of each round. You only get points for the cards in your hand that belong to the soup that you're trying to make. If you're making one of the vegetable soups, then you LOSE points for any chili cards you've taken. And if you're making chili, then you lose points for any bullion cards you've taken. (The bullion card is the lowest valued card of each vegetable soup suit, and it counts as 0.)

There's also a boil over card, which resets the total to 0 any time it's played. During play, each player has to follow suit until a chili card is played. Once that's played, the soup is ruined and any card can be played into that batch of soup.

Too Many Cooks is a terrific game. There's enough strategy to keep adults entertained, but it's easy enough to play that young children will be able to follow along. The decks are cute too. The only complaint I had with my edition, and I'm sure this has been corrected now, is that the deck included some 0 cards which should have been labeled 10. But it's easy enough to remember because those cards are distinct from the bullion cards. (It's like remembering that an ace can be worth 11 or 1 in blackjack.)

Five Crowns Review

Five Crowns is a pretty good and reasonably fast card game that will probably appeal to gin rummy fans. For some reason, this game has 0 appeal for my kids, even though the rules aren't particularly complicated.

In fact, I bought Five Crowns for my daughter for Christmas, and she turned the present down! She told me that it looked like a game for grown-ups, and she just plain didn't want it, and I could have it back.

I did convince my other daughter to at least TRY playing Five Crowns with me one day, but she only played  a single hand with me and then didn't want to play any more.

I think my daughters' reactions to this game probably says more about my daughters than it does about Five Crowns, but think twice before buying this game to play with the eight year olds in your family.

On the other hand, my Sunday night game group and I played Five Crowns, and everyone enjoyed it. They're not all clamoring to play it again, and it doesn't hold the same appeal that Dominion has, for example, but it's still a fun and quick little diversion.

The game has two decks with 58 cards in each of them. The decks have the standard four suits plus a fifth suit: stars. So the suits are as follows:

• clubs
• diamonds
• hearts
• spades
• stars

Each suit has 11 cards in it, ranked 3 through king. The game also includes six jokers, which serve as wild cards.

In the first round, each player gets 3 cards, and 3's are wild. In the second round, each player gets 4 cards, and 4's are wild. This continues until the final round, when kings are wild.

The goal is to get rid of the cards in your hand by making sets or runs. A set is any three cards or more of the same rank. A run is any three cards or more of consecutive, suited cards. (Like a straight flush in poker.)

When you get rid of all your cards, the other players get stuck with points. Each card is worth its face value in points. The wild cards and face cards have point values as follow:

• kings are worth 13 points
• queens are worth 12 points
• jacks are worth 11 points
• jokers are worth 50 points
• the current wild card is worth 20 points

The Five Crowns card game is nothing earth-shattering, but if you're looking for a fun, quick game to play with some other adults, this is perfect. And since it's easy to learn and fast playing, it's not a huge time investment even if you decide you don't like it.

Why I Play Blackjack

Blackjack is the only casino card game I play. (I don't count poker as a casino card game, because I'm not playing against the casino when I'm playing poker. I'm playing against the other players.) Chevy Chase made it a point to explain in Vegas Vacation that blackjack is one of the only games where a skilled player can get an advantage over the house. I'm not sure that he understood that to get that advantage you have to count cards. But I understand that.

Even if you don't count cards though, you can play blackjack and know that you're getting some of the best odds in any casino. If you master basic strategy, then the house edge on any given blackjack bet is less than 0.5%. Compare that with the 5.26% house edge in roulette, and you can see what a great value for your gambling dollar that blackjack really is.

Learning how to play blackjack is deceptively simple too. It's a comparing game, where your goal is to beat the dealer. You do this by getting a hand with a total higher than the dealer's without going over 21. Another way to win is for the dealer to bust by getting a hand over 21.

The point values of each card in blackjack is determined by the card's rank. Numbers are ranked according to the number on the card, and suits are meaningless in most games. For example, the two of spades is the same value as the two of hearts or the two of clubs: two. All face cards are worth ten points each. And the ace is a "semi-wild" card--it can count as eleven, or it can count as one.

Blackjack Point Values

• Face Cards = 10
• Aces = 1 or 11
• All other cards = point value same as rank

Players are each dealt two cards to start. If the hand totals 21 on the deal, then the player wins 3 to 2 on her bet. If the player has less than 21, then she can choose to take more cards or stand pat.

The dealer also gets two cards, and one of those cards is face up. The dealer's face up card can make a difference to a player's strategy. For example, if a dealer has a 4 showing, then a player is more likely to want to stand than if a dealer has a 9 showing. Every total has an optimal play versus every potential dealer upcard.

If you play well, you pretty much break even at blackjack all the time. Or at least come close. And if you use your player card, you can get comped breakfast and stuff like that.

Online blackjack games can be a fun way to learn to play if you want to practice a little bit before playing in a live casino.

Review of Munchkin: The Card Game

Of all of the card games I have ever played, Munchkin is still my absolute play-any-time-of-day favorite. Munchkin has a rule explaining that if the rules are not clear then the one who yells the loudest wins, and the final say goes to the owner of the game. How legit is that?

Munchkin is a card game that encourages players to cheat to win. One card even allows you to openly cheat in front of all of your friends. Using this card you can attach body armor to your head or maybe have three arms to hold your three handed sword.

The gist of Munchkin is to level up and become stronger than your opponents. In other words, Munchkin spoofs a certain style of roleplaying game player.

Leveling up is easier said than done, because a lot can happen quickly in Munchkin. Also, you never know what your buddy might play against you.

Munchkin is easy to jump into, especially if you're familiar with RPG's. The game can be played with between two and eight players.The better you know the rules, the easier it is to break them. And in Munchkin it isn't cheating until you get caught.

Munchkin has outstanding replay value, which I am always looking for in any game. Tons of expansions to the standard dungeon style Munchkin are available, too. These expansions add environmental effects, new cards, and funny monsters to battle.

Some of the available expansions for Munchkin include pirate themed Munchkin, space opera themed Munchkin, and Lovecraftian horror themed Munchkin. 

Here's a list of available Munchkin  games:

• Munchkin
• Star Munchkin
• Munchkin Fu
• Munchkin Bites!
• Super Munchkin
• Munchkin Impossible
• Munchkin Cthulhu
• The Good, the Bad, and the Munchkin
• Munchkin Booty 

Lost Cities: The Card Game Review

Lost Cities is a two player card game created by Reiner Knizia. It contains cards with gorgeous artwork. The game has simple rules too. Lost Cities is popular with serious gamers looking for a card game filled with strategic game play. It's simple enough for anyone to just jump in for a casual game. It only took me about two minutes to figure out how to play my first time with Lost Cities. (The scoring subtleties took me a hand or two to get the hang of, though.)

Lost Cities consists of sixty generously sized illustrated playing cards of five suits.  Each suit is numbered two to ten with three unnumbered “investment” cards. Provided is a board with spaces for each of the five suits. This board serves as a playing mat for discarded cards.

The aim of the game is to commit to at least one of the five suits (expeditions) to earn winning points. Each expedition cost twenty points to start. Every card played on the suit will lower the needed twenty points by its face value.

Each card is played sequentially from low to high; skipping past numbers is fine and sometimes can’t be avoided. The game ends when the drawing pile has been exhausted. Normally three games are played to complete a match, and the higher total score wins.

How to Score a Game of Lost Cities

• Add up all the cards and subtract 20 points.If one, two, or three investment cards were played, sum is multiplied by two, three, or four.
• If an expedition has eight or more cards played, earn 20 bonus points. 
• Total the five expedition points. The player with the highest score is the winner.

Matches are fast, and strategy is key to victory. Investing too much or drawing too often can result in a loss. I enjoyed Lost Cities, and I will continue to play in my spare time.

Call of Cthulhu: The Card Game Review

Call of Cthulhu: The Card Game can be described as a mix between Wizards of the Coast's card game Magic: The Gathering and H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos. Dark horrors lurk in the dark, waiting with diabolical schemes to bring about the end of the human race and the world as we know it.

You compete with another player to win "stories" by gaining success tokens. Five success tokens wins a story; three stories win a game. As with Magic, if you run out of cards to draw from you lose. This makes a mill deck a very viable option.

One of the things that makes Call of Cthulhu: The Card Game interesting is that there are factions to choose cards from. These eight factions give you the chance to mix and match cards from across the story to make a winning strategy. These expandable mythos factions include:

• Miskatonic University
• Syndicate
• Order of the Silver Twilight
• Cthulhu
• Hastur
• Yog-Sothoth
• Shub-Niggurath

The Call of Cthulhu Card Game is currently produced in the form of a core set, featuring cards from all 7 factions, neutral cards, story cards, success/wound tokens, a full-colour manual, a game board, and Cthulhu-shaped domain markers. The game is ready to play straight out of the box, and decks can be made quickly by combining cards from two of the factions along with several neutral cards.

Fantasy Flight Games produces booster packs called "Asylum Packs" designed to increase the players card pool in a balanced and affordable way. Each booster pack contains 11 cards (including 3 'uncommon' and 1 'rare'). This gives you the chance to form many different decks with plenty of different strategies to play with. I love that new collectible card smell.

Once I started playing I soon realized that this was just as addictive and exciting as Magic: The Gathering. I soon bought new boosters, turning my deck into an unstoppable force, of course this only lasted until I started my first tournament. Call of Cthulhu: The Card Game gets five out of five stars for being a good mental game complete with the Cthulhu Mythos that I love.

Magic the Gathering

Magic the Gathering is a collectible card game that can be played with as few as two players and upwards to as many as you would please. (I have played a game with ten different players before. That was a fantastic match.)

Magic the Gathering was created by mathematics professor Richard Garfield and was introduced in 1993 by Wizards of the Coast. Even after nineteen years, Magic the Gathering has a strong and healthy following of six million players, including myself, across seventy countries.

Magic the Gathering game play is so solid that just about any game style could be created based of of Magic's founding rules. For example, some people play games like "two headed giant," where four players team up into teams of two and battle the other team for victory.

I should touch on some game playing facts. When you get into Magic (and if you haven't, you should) you'll find that you have many options to choose from when playing. You can play to battle in tournaments where the rules for cards in your at least 60 card deck are much stricter. Only cards in recent series can be played in a tournament.

I want to be able to play some older cards. For players like me there are legacy tournaments. In these tournaments you can play with most any cards as long as they are not band.

Once you have some cards and a couple of people to play with you will soon find that it's near impossible to stop. New cards come out like clock work, and this allows tons of new combos to win with. This game is endless--a perfect collectible card game.

Dominion

Dominion is a fantastic card game that really enforces the idea of strategy; this is why I enjoyed it so much.  The name of the game is to build a better deck then your opponents and win by gaining the most victory points.

I started off a little slow with the game, but I soon got the hang of it. After playing three games with two other players, I'd already won my first game.

One of the coolest things about Dominion is how the game changes after you rotate the available cards or after you add cards from expansion decks. These changes give the game tremendous replay value.

Dominion plays very fast--most games can be completed in 15 to 30 minutes, but newbies might play a lot longer. Dominion has a style all its own, and it quickly won me over. The game really stands out from a crowd of lesser card games.

Dominion probably isn't going anywhere anytime soon. It's become very popular very quickly.

If you want to see a good demonstration of the rules and basic game play there is a good YouTube video you can watch.