Pre-Birthday

Liz went out shopping today while I was working. She apparently went to Cloud Cap and did some birthday shopping on behalf of herself and her parents. She even had them wrapped. Liz was really excited about it and had me open all of her presents then. She got me games that weren't on my list, but that I had a curious interest in. I still have two wrapped presents in wait.
Afterward, we headed out to get food before I had to work karaoke. We stopped at a place we hadn't been before, Sasquatch, and brought one of the new games:

Red7 2-7 players
Liz said that the shop keeper picked this game out. Liz was looking for a smaller game to add to the pile. It took a little while before she hit one I didn't own. She claimed it was how the game Fluxx should be. I'm not sure I agree.

The deck contains 49 cards (each numbered 1-7 in 7 different colors) Each player starts with 7 cards in their hand and one face up in front of them called the palette. There is a starting card played in the center called the canvas that determines the rule for who is winning. It starts on red which means the highest card is winning. Cards get ranked by number and if tied, then by color. The person to the left of the winner starts. On a players turn they use cards from their hand to do one of 4 things: add a card to their palette, place a new card on the canvas, both of the previous two, or lose. For the basic game there is no drawing of cards. Once one of those moves has been made, that player must have the winning hand based on the rule defined by the canvas card. Each color has a unique rule for winning. If a legal move can't be made, the player loses. That is the basic game. There are rules for scoring, but we didn't bother with that. There are also "action rules" which we did eventually add. There are action icons on the odd cards. These cards force you to do a special action after adding it to your palette.

We started out with the basic game. I wasn't a huge fan. You have very little to think about and I pretty much lost 3 times in a row. The game also seemed too fast to have an level of interesting interaction. We added the action rules and it got better. There were more cool plays and the fact that we were getting new cards every now and then gave a sense that one might get a chance if they could grab the right card. I won all of those games. I'm curious how games with more players will feel. I guess by then we will have to add scoring. So overall, I like the game when you get past the basic rules. It's a bit of a thinker at times.

Tally: 67/156  Bonus: 20/50