5-Minute One Piece

I feel pressured when I write about 5-Minute One Piece, because I feel reading my post should not take more than 2 minutes. This is a real-time game that is played in 5-minutes when you have four players. With a different player count, the time limit is adjusted. Your goal is to defeat all enemies in the enemy deck before time runs out. 

Every player picks a character, and you take the deck of cards for that character. Every character has a special ability, and the deck also differs from other decks. There are some character-specific power cards in your deck. 

Some of the characters in the game

The game board is a pirate ship. You will play cards here. There will be four stacks of cards. You play cards here to match the topmost fight card of the fight deck. The fight deck is that deck of cards above the ship, each card showing four icons. This is a real-time game, and everyone has a hand limit of five cards. Whenever you play a card, you may immediately draw a new one. You can play cards from your hand to any slot on the ship at any time. You want to have the cards on the ship match the top fight card exactly. Then you get to claim the fight card. You claim fight cards to defeat the active enemy. You have a deck of enemy cards, and you always reveal the top card. Enemies require a certain number of fight cards to defeat. Some enemies have special powers. You win by defeating all enemies before time runs out. 

After you claim a fight card, the next one becomes visible. The cards you have played on the ship remain. If some of them match the new card, then you are lucky and you need less effort to claim the next fight card. 

Your personal deck is finite. If you run out, you don't reshuffle to form a new deck. If you don't have the right card, you can still play useless cards for the sake of drawing new cards, but your deck is a resource you try not to waste. 

That one on the right is a power card unique for your character. When you get such cards, you can place them on the table next to your character card, and you may use them at any time. They don't clog your hand. I should have five cards. When you are busy sometimes you forget to draw cards. 

This is the enemy boss for one of the scenarios. The game comes with many scenarios. Each scenario is a deck of enemies. Note the crosshairs icon on this boss. What this means is if you have a blue (chat) icon which matches the fight card, you can play an additional blue icon on the same spot to claim the fight card, without needing to match the other three icons. 

This is a real-time game so I can't take photos while playing. This was the end of a game. 

Some of the enemies. Some have special powers. 

These are some of the scenarios in the game. 

If you are reading this blog, this game is probably not for you. This is not a gamer's game. This is almost a children's game. This game is made for casual players and non-gamers. I can imagine people who like One Piece will be thrilled by this. It's very easy to play. It's short. So many elements of the TV series are present in the game. The game was originally 5-Minute Dungeon. I think it's great that it is turned into a One Piece game. It will attract people to play boardgames. 

I hope you finished reading this in less than 2 minutes. 

The Kejap Food Game

The Kejap Food Game is not available for sale. You can get this as a free gift if you visit Kejap Food (a Malaysian fast food chain) and buy MYR 30 or more of food. While stocks last, of course. This is a simple, real-time game that is played in five minutes. It is a cooperative game. You work together to serve as many customers as you can within the time limit. 

Before a game starts, everyone gets a character card. Your card tells you which dice you manage and what role or roles you play. Depending on the number of players, you may need to manage up to three dice colours and you may have up to two roles. Let’s talk about how you serve a customer. 

The first step is taking an order. That just means revealing a card from the deck. You can have at most four active orders. You can’t reveal a new order until an existing one is fully served. An order consists of several spaces for dice in different colours. Everyone prepares food in this game. You are in charge of rolling and placing dice assigned to you. On each order card, all dice placed must add up to 10. This is why you need to keep rolling dice. You will need dice is specific values. When all the food is ready for an order, your next step is to serve the food. Someone is in charge of moving the order card to the next column. This frees up space for that player in charge of orders to reveal a new order card. 

Next, you need someone to clean up. That means returning all the dice on a served order to their respective owners, then flipping the card and placing it in the score pile. 

Everyone has specific tasks to do, and you cannot do others’ work for them. You can scream at them to hurry up but please don’t do that. Just ask nicely. You run a timer before you start the game, and you try to serve as many customers as you can within five minutes. 

I must declare I have not visited Kejap Food before. I received this copy as a gift from the designer Qing Ye. This is a casual game and I would even call it a children’s game. However I played this with a bunch of seasoned hardcore gamers. Well, it was a good filler in between heavy games. The moment we finished, Julian asked me where he could get one. Now this is definitely not a gamer game. It is not designed or balanced for gamers. We finished the order deck in 4.5 minutes. For gamers, this is not about how many orders we can complete in five minutes. It is about how much time we need to complete all orders. We had fun with it. It’s simple and hectic, and it’s perfect for playing with our families and non gamer friends. 

Designer Qing Ye in white

Qing Ye has been more and more active in designing games, and I find that I really like many of his designs. There is one card game originally about Penang shophouses then rethemed to political ideologies which I find very clever. It’s still work in progress. I like the difficulty of needing to collect both item cards and scoring condition cards at the same time to maximise your points. And your cards are also your money to spend on bidding. I’m looking forward to more of his games from Specky Studio. 

Note Flash

Note Flash is a simple card game designed by Malaysian students for a local fundraising event. This is certainly not a gamer’s game, which means this is not of interest to 99% of the readers of this blog. For me, it is interesting to see people who are not gamers design games because they will come up with ideas which are different. They have fresh eyes which I do not have.

Note Flash challenges you to identify musical notes accurately and quickly. This is a solo game which can also be played competitively between two players. You have a time limit of 4 minutes and a stack of 46 cards. The front side of a card shows a musical note, and the back shows what note it is, i.e. the answer. Before you start a game, you set up seven columns, C, D, E, F, G, A and B. Once the timer starts, you start assigning cards to the right column as quickly and correctly as you can. 

The game ends when you assign all cards, or when the timer runs out. You have a base of 50 points. You earn more points if you beat the clock. You lose points per card remaining if you run out of time. You also take a heavy penalty for each incorrectly identified note. To check whether you get all of the notes right, you simply flip them all over. Each card back is coloured based on what note it is, so you can quickly check correctness at a glance. 

If you want to do a two-player game, you use the other side of the column header cards. The time limit is shortened to 2 minutes, and each player gets 23 cards instead of 46. 

This game is a good exercise for music sight-reading. It serves an educational purpose. It is certainly something different from what gamers usually play. 

I have started work on one game design which is related to music. It is a real-time game about beats. I never got very far with it. I worry it might be too complicated for the average casual gamer who does not know music, yet too easy for anyone who knows music. It's certainly an interesting topic to get into - designing a game related to music. 

Nuts A Gogo

The Game

Nuts A Gogo is a lovely dexterity game from Japan which plays in 15 minutes. The nuts in the game are supposed to be peanuts, but somehow it makes me think of nuts as in nuts and bolts. You don't actually see peanut shaped components in the game. You do see wooden pieces in various shapes and sizes. The core idea in this game is you need to pack as many wooden pieces as possible into a small paper cup. This sounds like the kind of game people come up with at a game jam when the organisers throw a few random ideas together. Crazy! 

A game is played in two stages. The first stage is about claiming wooden pieces, and it is done in real-time. You put all the pieces in the box like in the photo above, and once you say go, everybody grabs pieces from the box to put in their own cup. You want to take as many as possible. The pieces come in five different general shapes. They are not exactly the same, just similar enough that you can tell the type. They also come in different sizes. Smaller is better, because it means you can squeeze more into your cup. 

Once one player decides they have enough, they declare the end of the first half. What you do is you claim the Mr Peanut token from the box, and then count to ten. Once you reach ten, everyone else must also stop taking wooden pieces. Whatever is in your cup is yours now. If anything falls out, sorry, you must return it to the box. This is the first stage. 

The cup is small

At the start of the second stage, you empty your cup and hide all your wooden pieces behind your hand. The player with the Mr Peanut token is the start player, and you take turns playing start player. As start player, you get to issue a challenge. You discard one piece, and everyone else must discard a piece of the same type. If anyone fails to do so, they are eliminated from the game. One by one players will get eliminated, and the last person standing is the winner. 

The Play

Nuts A Gogo is quick an easy. It's the kind of game that you'll pick up by just watching others play. It's an excellent casual game. You barely have to learn. The second stage can be quite funny. There is a little bit of psychology. You try to guess what pieces your opponents do not have. Winning is not necessarily about having the most pieces. Even if you have the most, if you happen to be short of a certain type, you can still get eliminated early. 

The Thoughts

For experienced gamers, this can be a good filler because it's something very different from the typical heavy games we play. It's quick. It's a nice change of pace. It's a good break between heavy games. For casual gamers and non-gamers, this game is painless to learn and engaging. 

Fit to Print

The Game

The graphic artist for Fit to Print is Ian O'Toole, who is currently the graphic artist in the boardgame industry. I wasn't aware it was him initially. I thought the art was fantastic and evocative. It was after the game that I realised it was his work. Good artwork contributes a lot to the play experience. 

Fit to Print is about newspaper editing. It is a real-time, spatial game. Over three rounds, you will be arranging the front cover of your own newspaper. It will be for the Friday, Saturday and Sunday editions of your paper. Players work on their own personal newspapers. You try to arrange your front page well in order to score points. After three rounds, the highest scorer wins. 

During setup, you get your own player board (your newspaper front page) and a work desk. The desk is 3D, although you can't really tell from this photo. It's a nice touch. At the start of a round, all tiles are spread around the table face-down. You need a countdown timer to play a round. We were all new to the game, so we agreed on 5 minutes. Within 5 minutes, you have to claim tiles from the centre of the table, and also fit them all onto your newspaper. The tiles are articles, photos and ads. Everyone does this simultaneously. 

When you take a tile. You flip it over to see what type it is. You can decide whether to keep it. If you want to keep it, you place it on your desk. Otherwise, you return it face-up to the centre of the table. That means others can see it and they can decide to take it. When you are still claiming tiles, you can't arrange them on your newspaper yet. Only when you are done with claiming tiles can you switch to tile arrangement. 

Ideally you are able to place all your tiles. Any leftovers entail a penalty. There are rules around tile placement. Articles of the type (business, entertainment or technology) cannot be adjacent to each other. Ads cannot be adjacent. Photos either. Some photos score points based on adjacent articles. You want to place them next to relevant articles. Every round everyone gets a special headline article which provides some special ability or an additional way to score points. Articles can be cheery or gloomy, and your newspaper needs to be balanced. Imbalance leads to a penalty. You also don't want to leave too much blank space. Players will compare their largest blank space at the end of every round. They gain and lose points based on how well they have managed their blank space. 

This particular headline offers an additional way to score points.

This was my newspaper from the first round, i.e. Friday. The difference between the three rounds is the size of your canvas. Friday is 7 x 14, Saturday 8 x 16, and Sunday 9 x 18. 

The ads are orange, and they have $ signs. Over the three rounds you total up your advertising income. Whoever earns the least is automatically disqualified. Only the rest get to compare points to see who wins. This can be quite brutal. 

There are three types of articles - green, blue and pink. Articles of the same colour must not touch. If you make a mistake, you have to flip over the offending tile. This will cause you to score fewer points. In the photo above, my photo tile on the left scores points for each adjacent green and pink article. So it scores 3 points in total. 

Some news articles are positive (cheery), some are negative (gloomy). The positive ones have yellow circles, and the negative ones blue circles. Your newspaper must try to be balanced in this. Any imbalance causes you to lose points. In this photo above I have 3 positive icons and 4 negative icons. This imbalance forces me to lose 1 point. 

The Play

The real-time aspect of Fit to Print feels like Galaxy Trucker, but this is a simpler game and is probably better for families. Being real-time makes the game exciting and engaging. It is not easy to accurately gauge whether you have claimed just the right number of tiles. If you claim too few, you are missing out on scoring opportunities and too much blank space can cost you points. If you claim too many, tiles you cannot place cost you points. 

This is mostly a multiplayer solitaire game. There is some player interaction, but it is not direct. You can look at tiles discarded by others to see whether they suit you. You can't really meddle with other players' newspapers. You do have to pay attention to the ads. Being faster than others is useful, because for the next round you'll get to pick your headline tile first. Most of the time you're working on your own paper. 

I noticed Albert tended to be the first to complete his work. He applied a clever tactic. He specifically chose larger tiles of about the same size. This way he didn't have to claim many tiles, and arranging them was easy, almost like laying out a checkered floor tile pattern. This also helped in minimising blank space. However I am not sure how effective this is in scoring points. With fewer tiles, it seems points will be less too. 

Some photos have good scoring abilities. I took a different approach, and claimed many small tiles. I wanted to fulfil the scoring conditions of the photos as much as possible, by placing many relevant articles around them. 

This was my Saturday (Round 2) paper. The rule in this game is similar to that of Blokus. Tiles touching at corners are not considered adjacent, but tiles sharing an edge are. In this photo above, my three photo tiles are touching at the corners, so they are not considered adjacent, and thus their placements are legal. 

At the top right I have a vertical article placed in a weird position. The reason is I wanted to avoid creating a large empty space. Had I placed it along the right edge, I would have a 10-square empty space. Now I had a 6-square empty space and a 4-square empty space. When players compare empty spaces, you don't add up all empty squares, you only look at the largest empty spaces and compare their sizes. My largest empty space is that at the bottom right: 8 squares. 

My Sunday paper. This time I didn't plan as well as previous rounds. I had one extra ad left at my desk (on the right) because I couldn't squeeze it in. This time my headline allowed me to earn extra $ for each ad above the fold, i.e. in the top half of my board. It turned out to be crucial for me. Without this $2 more, I would have come in last in ad revenue, and would have been disqualified. With that $2, I barely managed to squeeze into second last place. This is an interesting mechanism. I know Cleopatra and the Society of Architects has this too. It can be brutal, and that's why it's fun. 

The Thoughts

Fit to Print is pretty, engaging and also easy to learn. It is a pleasant play experience. In real life, newspapers are on the way to become a relic. How many still read them in physical form? Playing this game is like playing a historical game. You get transported to a past age. There is not a lot of player interaction, but the real-time aspect and the spatial element keeps you busy enough. 

Klask

The Game

I want to call Klask a sports game, but that will likely cause misunderstanding. When I say sports game people think of sports themed games. I classify it as a dexterity game, but I know that is problematic too, because people think Jenga and Toc Toc Woodman when we say dexterity game. Or Animal Upon Animal. Technically it is a real-time game too. I'm probably making things worse by throwing all these descriptions about. Klask is a game of skill for two players. I find it best to describe it based on football (soccer). 

The field is surrounded by walls, which means the ball will bounce off these walls. The two players each control just one pawn. You can only move your pawn within your half of the field. You have a goal - the round indent in light blue. Your objective is to score a goal - getting the ball into your opponent's goal. Whoever scores 6 points first wins the game. 

You control your pawn using this rod beneath the board. Both this rod and the pawn have magnets. That's how they are attached to each other. 

The magnets are strong, so when you move the rod below the board, the pawn on the field follows suit quickly. It gives you good control. The pawn is very responsive. However if you move too fast, you can still lose control of your pawn. If this happens your opponent scores 1 point. 

You also give your opponent a point if your pawn falls into your own goal. 

The standard way of scoring points is to score a goal, but there are many fouls which will award points to your opponent. New players will often commit these fouls. When players are new, you will likely score more points from your opponent's mistakes than from actual goals. 

One important element are the three white obstacles in the game. When a round starts (i.e. at the start of the game, or after a player scores and the board is reset) the three obstacles are lined up at specific positions in the middle of the field. These obstacles contain metal. If your pawn gets close, it will attract the obstacle. If you ever get two obstacles attached to your pawn, you concede a point to your opponent. The obstacles can get in your way and also blocks the ball. 

When a pawn catches two obstacles, we call it Mickey Mouse. It looks like it has two huge ears. 

Whenever any player scores a point, the field has to be reset. The obstacles are repositioned. The player who conceded a point gets to serve, and must start the ball in one of his corners. Whoever reaches 6 points first wins. 

The Play

Your first game of Klask will be exciting and funny. Since you are unfamiliar with it, you will be clumsy and you will likely commit many fouls. Scoring a goal will be challenging, but when you manage it, you'll stand up and cheer. Klask is this kind of game. The rules are simple. Any observer standing next to you will be able to pick up the game immediately and be able to play the next game. Learning the game is mostly about getting familiar with controlling the pawn. If you are new and you play against an experienced player, you will be at a disadvantage. There is skill in this game. As you get better at the game, it becomes more challenging and rewarding. Maybe less funny, but more intense. 

The three obstacles are a clever and important element of the game. You can intentionally knock them to your opponent's half and thus hinder his movement. He will need to carefully avoid the obstacles. Although the obstacles contain metal and can be attracted by your pawn when you get too close, if you are fast and hit them hard, you can actually use your pawn to knock them to your opponent's side. It's a little risky, but it's doable. 

If you can get all three obstacles into your opponent's half, you will give him a big headache.

The Thoughts

Klask is a game of wide appeal. It is a mass market game. It is easy to learn and fast to play (probably 5-10 minutes). Once you get better at it, it becomes more and more a game of skill, and that can be satisfying. This is the kind of game which startup companies put at their pantries, so that employees taking a break can play a couple of rounds. It's much smaller and more portable than foosball. 

Diner

Plays: 3Px3.

When Allen did some spring cleaning on his game collection recently, he gave me a bunch of card games from Dice Hate Me Games, which he had bought through Kickstarter. I have not heard of most of them, and randomly picked one to play with the children one recent weekend.

The Game

Diner is a real-time card game. You are waiters at a diner and you serve food to your customers. Whenever you finish serving all the food ordered by a table of customers, you score points. However if there are customers you fail to serve when the game ends, you lose points.

This above is how a game is set up. The cards are double sided. One side shows a meal, and the other side a table. The table side shows 2 - 4 meals, representing what that table of customers are ordering. There is also a tip amount at the centre. This is the score value. The first row of three stacks at the centre are the draw decks. They show the meal side. The second row with three cards are the customers waiting to be seated. Below these two rows is a discard pile.

At the start of the game, each player gets 1 or 2 round action tokens. Whenever you perform an action in the game, you must give a token to the player on your left. If you don't have a token, you can't do anything. You need to wait for the player on your right to pass you a token after he performs an action. There is no concept of taking turns. It's all done in real-time.

One action you can take is to simply claim a meal card from the top of one of the three draw decks. There is no hand limit. You can collect as many meal cards as you want, just that each costs an action token. Another action you can take is to claim a table card from the second row. You place that table in front of you. This means you have seated a party of customers, and you will be responsible for serving them. Nobody else can touch your customers. Now that you have meals cards and customer cards, you can serve your customers. When you have the right combination of meals in hand to fully serve a table of customers, you may discard these meals, and then score that table. The table card is set aside for scoring at game end. Claiming meal cards, claiming table cards (customers), and then serving customers form a complete process flow. However there is a fourth action you can take. You may spend an action token to discard a table card. Sometimes you want to do this because you don't like any of the three table cards available. Whenever a table card is discarded (or claimed), you replenish by taking a meal card from the corresponding draw deck and then flipping it over to the table side. Sometimes you want to discard a table card because it is too good but you don't want to take it yourself, and you want to deny your fellow waiters. So you tell the customers the restaurant is full and there will be a 45-minute wait, so sorry sir.

In the photo above I only have one table of customers to serve. If I manage to serve them, I will earn $8 in tips.

Meals have different rarities and values. Pancakes and eggs are cheap, steaks are expensive. Tables which ask for steak will tip more. Often you want to claim these high tip value tables, even though it may be harder to collect the meal cards to fulfill them. Some meal cards are jokers. These are normally snapped up quickly.

When two meal card decks run out, you take a short mid-game break. You shuffle the remaining deck together with the discard pile, then create three new meal card decks for the second half of the game. The next time two meal card decks run out, the game ends. You score points for tables fully served, and lose points for any tables still waiting for their meals.

We used an optional rule when we played. If all action tokens get stuck with a single player, which means he has been particularly slow in taking actions, the player to his left may take one of his action tokens. This optional rule helps keep the game going, and also creates some tension. No one wants to be the slow poke.

The Play

Playing Diner is a hectic affair. I'm always watching out for table cards I want and meal cards I need. I don't have time to pay attention to what others are doing, what they want, what they need etc. Maybe I'm still new, and if I play more, I may be able to watch my opponents better. Even without watching them closely, there is enough competition and tension. Normally everyone wants the higher valued tables and meals. Certainly everyone wants those jokers. You don't need to analyse your opponents' play areas to know they want a joker. Even if they don't need it, they'd take it to deny others.

When you already have a few tables before you, you need to be more careful when claiming cards. Claiming too many tables is risky. You don't want to get penalised at game end for not serving all your customers. Also you want to avoid wasting actions claiming meal cards you won't get to use, even if they are expensive meals.

I found that the children were able to play competitively. I had no advantage over them at all. My much richer experience in boardgames did not give me any edge. There is not a lot of strategy in this game. It is all about being watchful and being quick. A game lasts around 10 minutes. Maybe less. After we finished a game, I suggested trying another card game. As I started explaining the rules of the next game, the children became impatient and said why not just play Diner again. So we did. We eventually played three games, and each of us won once.

The Thoughts

To veteran boardgamers, Diner is nothing to write home about. If I were to read a blog post about it, I wouldn't buy it. Now that I have played it, I don't see myself itching to play again. However I can imagine situations where I would suggest it. Diner will work well as a party game. It is easy to teach, and new players can be competitive quickly. It is suitable for casual gamers and non gamers. They will feel they can achieve mastery easily, and that's a positive experience. It's a gateway game - it looks simple and unintimidating. The real-time nature makes it automatically engaging. It's a good travel game too - compact and simple.

Pit Crew

Plays: 7Px1.

The Game

Pit Crew is a simple team-based real-time game. You are pit crews of 2 or 3 racing teams, and you compete to complete the pit stops in the shortest time possible, allowing your team's race cars to speed off as early as possible.

The game supports up to 9 players. You play in 2 or 3 teams. Each team has between 1 to 3 members. The game is played over 3 rounds. When a round starts, all teams repair their respective cars simultaneously. Once you complete your repairs, your car drives off and tries to go as far as possible. When the slowest team finally completes repairs, their car doesn't get to drive off. Instead they cry halt, and all cars already on the race track stop. The distances they have traveled are their scores. Now you do the end-of-round scoring. All cars are inspected for errors and imperfections. Penalties are applied. When you are penalised, all your opponents get to move their cars forward.

In Rounds 2 and 3, you use different cars, and your team also gains special abilities. After the third round, whoever's car has traveled the furthest wins.

Everyone uses the #27 car in Round 1. The 27 means something. I'll come to that. In Round 1, you need to replace all four tyres, and you need to refuel. Every team has its own deck of cards. Cards are numbered from 1 to 10. The total hand size of a team is 6. In a team of three, everyone holds 2 cards. In a team of two, everyone holds 3 cards. In a team of one, you hold all 6 cards. You perform repairs by playing cards. To replace a tyre, you need to play four cards next to the tyre, one after another. Each card you play must be numbered one higher or lower than the previous number. In the photo above, if you want to replace the tyre at the lower right, you start by playing a 1 or a 3. Let's say you have played a 3. The next card you play must be a 2 or a 4. The big 27 on the roof means the fuel tank capacity. To refuel, you play cards to the rear of the car. There is no restriction when playing cards, but at the end of the round, if the sum of the card values differs from 27, you are penalised. The bigger the difference, the larger the penalty.

The board is not your main playing area. It is mostly a scoring track. You do not race to complete five laps. Instead you try to move as far as possible within the three rounds. You are just trying to score as high as possible.

You use these 6 cap cards to mark sections which are fully repaired. There is one cap card for the engine, one for the fuel tank, and four for the tyres. The engine card is used in Rounds 2 and 3 only. Whenever you complete the repairs for one part of the car, you must place the corresponding cap card there. Once the cap card is placed, you cannot change the cards already played to that part of the car.

Take a closer look, and you will notice that some numbers are white, and some are black. If all cards played to a section have the same colour, you gain a turbo bonus. Your car moves two additional steps. It's not easy to do though. When you are scrambling to find the right numbers, sometimes you don't have the luxury to get the exact colour you need. In this photo you can see we have failed to assemble consistent colours in all six sections.

Car #31 is for Round 3. The XX YY at the engine means you need to play two pairs of cards to repair the engine. We have played a pair of 3's and a pair of 9's. All of them are black, so we are getting the turbo bonus.

When you don't have any cards you can play in hand, you may discard and draw. In fact, you must. However for every two cards in your discard pile at the end of the round, you suffer one penalty point, i.e. your opponents get to move one step forward.

These special ability cards (called Monkey Wrench cards) are gained at the end of Rounds 1 and 2. A number of cards are drawn according to the number of teams in the game. Each team picks one card, starting with the one furthest behind. So this is for balancing in addition to spicing up the game. That card on the left can be used as a 4 or a 5 during a round. The card on the right increases the hand sizes of two team members.

You "drive" your race car by rolling a die. When your team is done with repairs (and you are not the last to do so), one of you becomes the driver, and you keep rolling the die to move your car. You move one step ahead each time you roll a 6. This can be nerve-wracking if you keep failing to roll a 6. If there are three teams, the second team gets to move their car too in the same way. Once the last team is done with repairs, they declare the end of movement. You then do the round-end scoring.

The Play

We did a 7-player game. I was on the same team as Abraham and Allen. The other two teams had two players each. Having three players is probably more challenging, and I'm not saying that just because we lost horribly. Really. With three players, there is a higher need for coordination and communication. Playing Pit Crew is a tense experience. There are multiple parts of the car you need to worry about. You need to coordinate your card plays to avoid getting stuck with no card to play. Finding a valid move doesn't mean it will be a good move. You shouldn't blindly play any card which is technically valid. You need to consider the other cards your team has in hand, and whether your next move can help getting those cards played, and will keep your options open. Then there is also the colour to think about. None of these are particularly complex, but when you are under time pressure, it becomes very hard to keep your cool and to stay rational.

If you find that you really are stuck, waste no time in finding impossible moves. Just discard and draw. Time is precious.

The most stressful part of the game turns out to be also the most brainless part - when you are driving. It's just rolling a die over and over hoping to roll a 6 as many times as you can. There is no skill and no strategy (unless you are trying to cheat). It's all luck. Yet this is when you and your teammates will be holding your breaths, or cheering, or groaning.

My team had a poor start. We were last to complete our repairs in Round 1, and we also had a huge discard pile. Our opponents sped far far ahead of us. In Round 2, we managed to not be last. I took the driver's seat, and hard as I tried, I could not roll a single 6! By the time the bell sounded, I was still in the pit. What a waste! Needless to say, despite having first picks of the Monkey Wrench cards in both Rounds 1 and 2, we still came last. By far.

The Thoughts

Pit Crew is a party game. I think it will be best with 9, i.e. the full complement. The more chaotic the better. The rules are simple so you can easily get casual gamers and non-gamers to play. It will work as a children's game too. It is not a particularly deep game. You shouldn't be looking for depth here. It's a face-paced, heart-pumping fun kind of game. There is also a sense of satisfaction when your team manages to work well together.