Unexploded Cow: How Does Cheapass Games Do It?
Written: Oct 02 '02
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Blow up mad cows in France! Can't get much more fun than that!
Cons: Some of those cards are messed up.
The Bottom Line: Cheap and fun...what more can you ask?
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| Alkaiser's Full Review: Unexploded Cow |
In the board game industry, everyone's always trying to come up with the next big game. They trot it out on a shelf, make some shiny pieces, some glossy cards with pictures, and sell it to you for $25 plus tax, or more.
But not the guys over at Cheapass Games. Their whole idea is that the games should essentially just be modular. Where you have a bunch of pieces around your house ,and all you need are the simple cards, and a cheap board or something.
I like the Cheapass Games way of doing things, because it allows for maximum fun with minimal expenditure of cash. For example, this game, Unexploded Cow (It is a BOARD GAME, I don't know why these things keep getting added as Books, but if anyone marks this Off Topic, I'm going to get mad at you.) costs $7.50. $7.50 for a whole new board game! What seperates this from one of those fancier $25 games you buy at Toys 'R' Expensive?
$18.50, and maybe some injection-molded plastic pieces that you're going to lose anyway.
Anyway, enough about the company, and onto the game. Unexploded Cow takes two problems that have a common solution and brings them together. You've got a bunch of Mad Cows in Britain, and there are a lot of unexploded land mines in France.
Put them together, and you end up with a whole bunch of dead cows, and a lot less land mines. And as the game says, there's just something magical about blowing up cows.
The object of the game is to make a lot of money by having your cows blow up. Person with the most cash at the end of the game wins.
Gameplay works like this:
You draw 2 cards, and flip over a city card to determine where you are trying to liberate. Each city card has a certain number of city points at stake for liberation.
The player whose turn it is may go ahead and pay to put cows into play in whiever field they desire. If a cow is placed in another field, the player who owns that field pays for the cow, but the owner of the field now controls the cow...unless it is a Spy.
Event cards may also be paid for and brought into play during a player's phase. After the player is donw with his cow placement and event cards, they then roll a 6-sided die to determine which cow blows up. If the number is greater than the number of cows on the board, nothing happens.
If it is not greater than the number of cows on the board, counting from right to left, you count of the number displayed on the die, and where it stops, cow goes boom. The player gets money for blowing up the cow, and if the exploded cow belonged to the player who rolled, and is in that player's field, they have liberated the city and get the number of city points displayed on the City card, and another city is brought into play.
After all City cards have been played, the person with the most City Points takes the money in the Pot and the Bank and you tally it all up.
For the price you pay, I'm fairly sure the guys playtest the game pretty well to make sure it's all relatively balanced. Unexploded Cow plays out pretty well, with no real overpowering cards, although the "Stampede" card which will send up to all of one player's herd to another player is pretty messed up...especially if you just put a whole much of negative money cows in that guy's field.
The game is fun, easy to learn, and pretty fast paced. Definite party game, and suitable for kids who can read and do math.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
Alkaiser
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Member: Clayton Chan
Location: Irvine, CA
Reviews written: 655
Trusted by: 346 members
About Me:
Broke the 700 pound mark on my leg lifts.
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