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New Tactical Games With Dice And Cards
World-renowned game designer Reiner Knizia offers 50 new easy-to-play games featuring cards and dice. These fun and novel games require little in the way of materials and offer hours of exciting, varied and original play. This book is perfect for everyone from casual game players to dedicated game designers. Several of these games have been transformed into successful commercial products, but you can play all the games presented here with standard playing materials like cards, dice and a few counters. From the When I originally started to write this book, I was an unpublished author. I had a few games represented in magazines, but not a single boxed game on the market. Today, the archive of my works contains more than 600 published games in more than 2000 boxed editions, and more than 20 million copies have been sold all over the world. What a difference half a lifetime makes when you dedicate yourself to fulfilling your dream! Over the course of those years, a number of games in this book developed into fully fledged boxed games with specifically adapted materials. It’s interesting to see how some of the games evolved. Goldrush was published as a Wild West card game under its original title Goldrausch , Goal became a soccer card game Tor , Swap was developed into the recently published board game Polynesia , Sono became the tile laying game Robot Master , and Card Chase is now the card game Escalation . But, what makes this book unique, is that you can play all the games presented here with standard playing materials like cards, dice and a few counters. So many games to play, so little time! Enjoy! Reiner Knizia
232 pages, Paperback
Published February 1, 2019
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July 2, 2022
Amazing book. First of all, even though I'm a board gamer of 20 years, this book is for everyone. It's written very well, so that it's easy to follow. As a kid I played a lot of war and go fish with my deck of cards but was always looking for something more. I can only imagine what I could have came up with up I had had this book!
Knizia is a well known, talented, board game designer, and he takes simple things around the house, like old game pieces, a deck of cards, and dice, and shows you how to play some simple games that add a little more fun and strategy to our mostly luck based games we knew as a kid. Not only that, he adds suggestions on how we can add and change the game, putting our own rules in.
As I read through this book, I played each game with one of my kids (twin 12 yr olds, and a 14 yr old) to see how they stood up. We all enjoyed them, especially the changing them up part which was so easy to do. One of of our favorites was a 2 page chapter for a game called "goal". On a piece of paper you drew a few boxes that looked like a soccer field and put some sort of playing piece in the middle. Then you play a game something like war, where you each split a deck of cards, lay one down, and whoever has the highest one, gets to move forward, closer to their goal, almost like kicking the ball back and forth. The difference between this and war is that for this game you look at your cards and get to choose one instead of just drawing from the top of the pile. Another neat twist was that the Ace could beat the face cards but was considered a zero when pitted against the number cards. Knizia then proceeded to tell us how to change up the game by making some of the other cards special. If you're a long time gamer like me, you can definitely see some of these thought processes and mechanics in play in some of his board games.
I'd play the game as the book described with each kid, then had each one make up a new rule and play again. I especially like one of my twins making the 5's worth -5. The game was fun, quick, and easy to put together quickly. A lot of them were. We do a lot of camping in the summer so this was a great addition to our trips.
This would be a great buy for any kid interested in games or reading or for camping trips. Each chapter is small and quick and can be easily digested by almost any age. I got this book for Christmas from my kids and we really enjoyed it as a family. Highly recommended!
Knizia is a well known, talented, board game designer, and he takes simple things around the house, like old game pieces, a deck of cards, and dice, and shows you how to play some simple games that add a little more fun and strategy to our mostly luck based games we knew as a kid. Not only that, he adds suggestions on how we can add and change the game, putting our own rules in.
As I read through this book, I played each game with one of my kids (twin 12 yr olds, and a 14 yr old) to see how they stood up. We all enjoyed them, especially the changing them up part which was so easy to do. One of of our favorites was a 2 page chapter for a game called "goal". On a piece of paper you drew a few boxes that looked like a soccer field and put some sort of playing piece in the middle. Then you play a game something like war, where you each split a deck of cards, lay one down, and whoever has the highest one, gets to move forward, closer to their goal, almost like kicking the ball back and forth. The difference between this and war is that for this game you look at your cards and get to choose one instead of just drawing from the top of the pile. Another neat twist was that the Ace could beat the face cards but was considered a zero when pitted against the number cards. Knizia then proceeded to tell us how to change up the game by making some of the other cards special. If you're a long time gamer like me, you can definitely see some of these thought processes and mechanics in play in some of his board games.
I'd play the game as the book described with each kid, then had each one make up a new rule and play again. I especially like one of my twins making the 5's worth -5. The game was fun, quick, and easy to put together quickly. A lot of them were. We do a lot of camping in the summer so this was a great addition to our trips.
This would be a great buy for any kid interested in games or reading or for camping trips. Each chapter is small and quick and can be easily digested by almost any age. I got this book for Christmas from my kids and we really enjoyed it as a family. Highly recommended!
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