YORKTON - Well here we are on the eve of Halloween so one more card game that fits the season – Vampires & Villagers.
This is a card game which uses a 52-card deck, but in a way not common to card games, as this one is a co-operative game for two players.
Co-op games can be great – Pandemic is likely the best-known of the type, and it’s a definite Meeple Guild favourite as a board game.
But here designer Don Scurlock uses the mechanic extremely well in what is a very simple and yet very challenging card game.
Players strip the face cards out of a deck, shuffle the numbered cards and then deal a 3x3 grid from those cards. Players then get a hand of three cards each, the rest are a draw deck.
The face cards are randomly laid out around the initial grid. The red face cards are villagers you hope to rescue. The black cards are vampires you want to eliminate. Do either before the sun rises and you win.
You ‘save or remove’ the face cards by playing a card – with some restrictions -- to the grid so that red cards in a row or column are greater than the black ones in the grid, and equals a face card on that row or column (11, 12 or 13) you’ve done it.
As you draw cards time passes. Get through it, and shuffle to continue play, but only after removing five cards. If you run out of cards it’s sunrise and you lose.
There are a couple of details rules, but this is basically it.
It seems easy, but it isn’t. You will generally be close to a victory, but the sun rises more quickly than you will want.
Definitely a game where you need to plan as a team, but even then your hands are only three cards so having just what you need can be challenging – so talk it out as a team.
Vampires & Villagers is just different enough from most card games to be highly recommended to try.
