Products

.

Five Crowns is a card game a bit like Rummy but with five suits, Stars being the extra suit. The idea is to be the first to lay down your hand by assembling sequences (6,7,8,9 for example) or sets (three Jacks) for example. It takes skill and a good dose of luck  Each game takes about 45 minutes.

1-7 players

Age suitability: 8+

Here is a good explanatory video from the Board Game Museum:

.

A party game when it pays to think like everyone else, like the herd.

There is a simple question on each card.  You have to guess how the majority of people would answer it.  If you are right, you win cows.  However if you are in a minority of one, hard luck.  You get the dreaded pink cow and your cows are worthless.

4-20 players,

Age suitability: 10 years plus

Jungle Speed is a fast and furious, somewhat chaotic, game of observation and then of lightning reflexes, so that rules me out.

It is a matching game, a bit like snap, but, instead of calling out snap when two cards match, you have to be the first to grab the Totem (the yellow rubber cylinder thing) that sits in the middle of the table.

The cards are divided equally amongst the players (the more, the merrier).  On each card is a symbol in a variety of colours.  Some symbols are quite different, others are deceptively alike. Players place their cards in a pile face down in front of them.  One by one, each player flips over the top card and, as they accumulate, gradually makes a discard pile in front of him.  When one player flips over a card whose symbol matches the shape of the symbol on the top card of another player's discard pile, both players make a lunge for the Totem.  The winner then smugly hands over his discard cards to the loser who puts both these and his own discard cards face down under his cards.  Grabbing the Totem mistakenly results in you getting everybody's discard cards. The winner of the game is the first to get rid of all their cards.  Each game takes about 20 minutes.

To complicate the game further, there are several special cards.  One of these special cards for example changes the rules so that you have to match the colour of symbols rather than the shape. A different special card requires every player to lunge simultaneously for the Totem.  A third one requires everybody to flip over a card at he same time on the count of three.

2 - 8 players

Age suitability: 6 +

Here's an excellent Youtube video from Skip the Rules (NB the Totem has since been changed from wood to rubber):