My boys got a cool new card game for their birthday, Smash Up Game (affiliate link), one we’ve been playing so much since March we’ve already bought two expansions.
Smash UP game, what is it?
Smash UP game has a unique game play, you are choosing two different factions (robots and wizards for example) and mixing them together. Because each faction has a different playing style, it’s not easy to categorize.
Zombies, Robots, and Wizards all play as card cycling. You are moving through cards quickly to get the maximum effect
Ninjas, Pirates, Tricksters, and Aliens are attack cards. They all have cards that will attack other players, destroying their cards or making them not work properly.
Dinosaurs and Tricksters are enhancement factions. They have lots of make this card better for a turn or two.
You see what I mean about not being easy to categorize?
How to play Smash Up game
The game starts with everyone choosing two factions. The first player chooses their faction, then it cycles around as everyone chooses their first faction, and the choice reverses and the last player chooses their second faction first and the first player chooses last. Then you shuffle all of your cards together and draw five cards.
On your turn you can do two things:
- Play a minion.
- Play an action.
How you do those two things determines how the rest of you turn goes. Some minions give you extra actions or abilities when you play them, and some actions let you play more actions.
After you have played all of your cards you check to see if any base has scored (a base scores when the total number of minions there {and any actions affecting them} goes over the point total required), once a base scores all of the points are passed out and you draw two cards.
Play continues like this until someone has 15 points. One nice thing about this game, if everyone is playing well together it can play in about 30 minutes. That’s a rare thing in our house.
Our house rules for a Smash Up game
Because there are several different factions in play and not everyone knows all of the factions, we’ve developed some house rules.
- Play one card at a time, and explain why that card has happened.
- Talents (which are from the Expansions) only apply to minions/cards on the base the character is played. If a minion is moved from that base before the player’s turn comes again the talent applies to the card until the next turn.
- Minions on a base are stacked according to player to make it easier to see which minions go together.
Okay, that’s really it. It’s a fairly straightforward game to play. So far we’ve bought two expansions:
Pretty Pretty Smash Up– Princesses, Cats, Horses, and Fairies, all things cute and pretty and they are powerful. Seriously horses are scary powerful and the Princesses, wow!
Smash Up Awesome Level 9000 Board Game– Steampunk, killer plants, Bear calvary, and ghosts. The boss from the Bear Calvary is what led to our house rule on the talents only applying to a single base. His power is crazy big.
Almost Unschoolers says
What an odd assortment of character types – sounds like something to please everyone.
Ticia says
It really is and it’s interesting which factions work well together. For instance wizards and robots work very well together.
Claire says
Looks fun!
Marie-Claude Leroux says
It’s great to find a game enjoyed so much you need to pick up extension packs – until they run out of extension packs you can buy!
Ticia says
It’ll be awhile before we run out of expansions, but I love the game play is different each time we play because people pick different combinations.
Natalie PlanetSmartyPants says
Sounds like a game designed by Big Bang Theory characters – perfect for geeks big and small 🙂
Ticia says
It does rather.
Heather Kelley says
We LOVE Smash Up, in fact I just blogged about it last month! 🙂
Ticia says
It’s so much fun, we’ve bought 3 expansion at this point, and the kids are eyeing the one with Halloween monsters.