Saturday!

Fluxx is a great game for those who have mastered Uno and are ready for something just a little more complex.

The rules are somewhat simple:
Everybody draws three cards as their starting hand.
then somehow figure out who goes first and then each person, in turn, goes on to
Draw One Card. Play One Card.

Fair enough, right? Well, I suppose that that depends on what the cards are.

Well, there are cards that are Keeper cards (that is, you play them and you “keep” them), there are cards that are Action cards (they describe an action and you/others have to do it), cards that are Goal cards (they describe what goal needs to be achieved in order to win), and there are Rule cards (these can change, among other things, the number of cards you draw and the number of cards you play).

So you might find yourself with an opening hand with a Keeper card that says “Sun”, a Rule Card that says “Draw Two Cards, Play Two Cards”, and a Goal Card that says “Hippyism (the person with the “Peace” Keeper card and the “Love” Keeper card wins the game).

So you might want to play your Rule card and change the rules. Or you might want to put your Keeper out there. You might not want to put the Goal card out there on the off chance that someone else out there has the two keepers in question in their hand and can get them out before someone else changes the Goal.

There’s some elbow room for strategy, there’s a good amount of chance, and every single game is different from every other single game.

If it sounds confusing, know that it’s simple when you have the Rule card sitting out there and the Goal card sitting out there telling you what to go for (or what to keep others from going for). I’d say it’s appropriate for anybody old enough to read and, to go back to Uno, enjoy playing a Draw Four on someone else. So you can play it with kids.

So… what are you playing?

(Picture is HG Wells playing a war game from Illustrated London News (25 January 1913[/efn_note]