Board Game Review – Smash-Up

I was visiting my good friend and best man Andrew today, loyal reader, and we tried a new card game he had recently acquired called Smash-Up. If you’ll pardon the lame pun, it was a smashing good time!

The game’s name comes from the fact that each players picks decks of cards from 12 (including the expansion pack) factions of characters: ghosts, pirates, ninjas, zombies, dinosaurs and more geeky staples. Mixing those two decks together gives each player his deck. A deck has two types of cards: Minions and Actions.

A number of location cards (called bases) are placed on the tables. The object of the game is to take over those bases by placing enough Minions on them. Each player can play one Minion and one Action cards per turn. At least, that’s the basic rule.

You see, as in Magic: The Gathering, most of the cards let you do things on top of the main rules (such as playing more Minions in your turn) or even circumvent them entirely (by, say, letting you keep a card after another player has destroyed it). And just as with Magic, the key to victory is to play your cards strategically with each other to both ensure you capture bases or screw your opponents’ plans to capture them.

When a base has enough Minions on it, it gets destroyed and points are awarded to the players who had Minions on it. Generally the player with the most powerful Minions earns more points than the runner-up and so on. The game is over once a player has at least 15 points, with the winner of course being the highest score.

What’s most enjoyable with Smash-Up is the sheer variety of ways to play. Not only does each faction have a different emphasis (wizards are all about making you draw more cards, dinosaurs have a lot of raw power, zombies lets you return destroyed cards to the playing field, etc), but your whole gameplay will be affected by which other faction you pair it with. And, of course, who you play against.

One piece of advice, though: don’t play the game with overly-competitive types. Since a lot of moves depend on sometimes-contradicting rules working together, you will find yourself consulting the rulebook (and the game’s official online forums) to settle disputes over interpretations. But once you’ve gone over a few of those and come to an agreement, it should be smooth sailing.

For its sheet variety and its endless opportunities for screwing over your buddies, Smash-Up is a ton of fun. I can’t wait to play it with 3 or 4 more players and watch some great strategy happen on the fly!