Ree@ng's Game ReeView # 05 - DUCK DUCK BRUCE CARD GAME

Oh no! ... One day due … not my assignment review but my son’s big day. I have not got any present for him for his 9th birthday yet. So after class, I decided to take a walk at AMK Hub. And so happen to pop in this shop selling all kinds of souvenirs, toys, novelty items, board games and other interesting stuff on the racks. I saw this card game with an illustration of a funny looking dog scaring away a couple of ducks, titled ‘Duck Duck Bruce’.

I kind of attracted to the box cover design and straight away read the details at the back of the box and ‘bingo’, this is it! A great present for him…and me! This is the last set… must grab! We can play together and I can write my review based on this card game too.

This game Duck Duck Bruce is created by Peter Neugebauer c/o Gamewright in 2007. The illustrations are by Dave Clegg. It is a card game featuring ducks and a dog named Bruce and is a simple game for children.

Duck Duck Bruce is actually fun to play. It will really resonate with children and their parents. The illustration is very cute and eye-catchy. The scoring or counting at the end of the game is a bit confusing for younger children though. But overall the game has a charm that will appeal to many families. My son couldn’t wait to play the game the moment he opened his belated birthday present….pheww…I’m happy that he’s happy. After playing a few times, I found that the game play is merely passable, but my son enjoyed it so much. We ended playing it again and again! The two of us only…

A deck of sixty-six cards is shuffled and placed on the table. The deck is made up of ten suits (initially I asked myself ‘what suits?’, found out later they are simply cards that ‘belongs to the same family’, liked ducks waddling everywhere – the circus, the beach, and even the moon etc) each with six cards (numbered “1”, “1”, “2”, “2”, “3”, and “4”), and six “Bruce” cards. A die (numbered “-1”, “1”, “1”, “2”, “3”, and “3”) is placed near the deck. The last person to feed a live duck goes first.

On a player’s turn, he takes the top card from the deck and places it in front of him, starting a row. After this, he may either end his turn, taking all cards in the row – placing them face down in front of him, or turn over another card and add it to his row. This continues until either the player ends his turn, OR

1. He reveals a duck card of the same suit as one card already in his row. At that point, the two cards, and all the cards between them are discarded, and his turn is over.

2. He reveals a Bruce card. Everyone shouts Bruce!, and he loses all face up cards in the row.

However, the player gets a consolation prize of sorts by choosing another player and announcing the amount of cards (up to three) that he will steal. He then rolls the die. If the number rolled is the same number or higher than the one he stated, he steals that many cards randomly from the player he is going after. Otherwise, he gets nothing; and if he rolls the “-1”, the opponent may steal one card from him! That’s one of the fun parts… All cards stolen must be revealed to all players.

All Players will turn over the cards that they have collected and sort them by suit as soon as the last card from the draw pile is revealed. They need to keep only the highest number of each suit. Players will then add together their score and mark it on paper. The next round is started in the same way. The game ends after a certain number of rounds, time, or points – the players can decide beforehand. The player with the highest score is then declared the winner! He is one lucky duck!


Here are some comments on DDB…

1) Components: The cards are nicely illustrated. Each card shows a number of ducks equal to the number strutting down a path. The paths are of different colour, have a different background from circus to beach to the moon and many more. They are easily recognisable. My son likes the funny artwork. The Bruce cards have a picture of a crazed but funny-looking dog hunting down a scared duck. The deck of cards and die fit inside the small box easily.

2) Rules: I found that the game was easy to teach. I had no problem teaching my son the game play and he had no problem understanding it. Although he had a hard time understanding that he needs only to keep and count the highest number of each suit.

3) Pressing Your Luck: The game is mostly about taking chances. Why take only one card? Why not take another card and if luck is on your side and you get to open a “3” or “4”. If it’s a “4”, you might consider it, but still – why not take another? Getting two cards of the same suit happens occasionally, but more often players are zapped by drawing a Bruce card. I have seen my son starts to realize just how far he could actually push his luck. The game was useful in this regard.

4) Memory: Players must remember who has what cards when they get a chance to steal. Since only two of us are playing, I could only steal from my son and vice versa. If you have drawn the “4” of a colour, then getting the “1” is pretty much useless, unless you want to pad your cards against thieves. Certainly you can play the game without attempting to memorize anything. Playing with children are different. They pick up on the memory element easier.

5) Fun Element: It is fun to shout Bruce at the top of your lungs and there goes the ahh! Argh! Or shout Duck on revealing a single duck. It just adds a bit of wackiness to an already light game. The anticipation of drawing the next card is fun. My son gets a kick out of watching me draw too many cards and lose them all. Duck Duck Bruce is a light game that allows children - in this case my young son- to make some meaningful decisions without really stretching their brains much at all.

Duck Duck Bruce is for children to play with their parents or teachers or even friends. It is definitely a fun game that you’ll enjoy playing and laugh at. The young and young at heart will learn about risk taking minus the stress. The game is simple and has loads of simple yet fun choices – from deciding how many cards to steal to how many cards to draw. You are guaranteed the big 2F- FUN-FIRST- before you eventually get sick of it.

This game has a funny theme that comes with funny little characters. My son loves it. He often requests to play more of it and more of other games before his next birthday… and on a PS3!

Ree@ng's Game ReeView # 04 - TICKET TO RIDE BOARD GAME

When Ingrid, a classmate, introduced me to the board game titled ‘Ticket to Ride’, all I can remember is the song sung by The Carpenters in the early 70s. I was told that the game is fun to play and popular among those who enjoy playing board games.

So on Friday, 21 August 2009 a group of us (see a nice photo of us) met at The Mind Café along Purvis Street around Bugis area. That’s the start of my whole ‘exploration’ or I would call experiment of this game plus some other board games. As someone who is a hands on person, I would not understand any game by just reading the guide or manual. The polite and accommodating staff there usually will try their best to ‘brief’us, upon request, on how to play the game. Still the best way to learn playing any games for me is play straight away with assistance of course along the way. Kind of learning the hard way. Yuku, his colleague, Devi (my new friend) and I board the first train and had a wild ride across North America…

The Goal of this board game is simple– to build connections between various cities in North America. Each city is connected to 2 to 7 other cities across the continent by routes. A route has between 1 and 6 spaces. And each route is distinguished by different colours, 8 to be exact: purple, white, blue, yellow, brown, black, red, and green plus gray – a special free building colour. Popular paths have two routes. All these are already imprinted on the board. Only playing cards are in players’ hand.

Generally, at the start of the game, you'll keep two of your original three Destination Cards, and these will give you a general indication of initial cities that you want to connect.

Players claim routes using Train Cards of appropriate colour; 18 Wild cards may be used as any colour. 5 train cards and face-up are positioned next to draw pile.

Destination Cards: list 2 cities each and a score eg .you have to contiguously connect 2 cities with your trains to score pts, and will be penalized if you don’t (hence discard)

On Each turn you either take one of the following 3 actions:

Draw Train Cards

Claim a Route or

Draw Destination Cards

If you draw train cards - take 2 cards from face-up cards of draw pile. Replace 2 taken cards face-up from draw pile. If you take face-up colourful card engine, that counts as two of your draws.

If you claim route - lay down as many cards of appropriate colours to complete route (1, 2 or up to 6) depending what is on board. If light gray route is chosen, lay down number of matching cards of any colour. Place your trains in the route spaces on board. Others cannot claim same route unless those cities connected with 2 routes.

Competition is a real issue, as other players can purposefully or accidently steal routes you want to take. This can force you to take much longer, more round about paths to complete connections. Or else you can give up on them entirely. You’ll probably get to complete most of your connections in a game through careful playing.

Scoring points goes like: 1pt for a length of 1 route, 2pts for 2 routes, 4 pts for 3 routes, 7pts for 4 routes, 10pts for 5 routes and and 15pts for 6 routes ….longer routes are more valuable…erm …Yuku, my ‘opponent’ succeed in claiming the longer routes, and not just once, but a couple of times. Perhaps my Destination card is not among the good ones to build …if you are by chance lucky; you will get a better destination cards. Better luck next time…the rest part of the game depends on your strategy, what’s your next move so as to block your opponent from completing the routes before you… I found out that choosing more Destination Cards throughout the game is key to winning, both to direct you toward more building, and also to give you bonus points at the end.

You may finish up one set of Destinations before drawing more. You may also draw a number at the start, to give you more idea about how you want to expand. Each method has its own dangers.

You can only claim one route on each turn.

If you draw Destination Cards: you can draw 3 Destination Cards and choose 1 and return 2.

Game ends when Yuku finished his turn with no trains at all in hand (in other case, 2 or less trains in his stock)….At this point Devi and I got to complete our one last turns following Yuku’s successful ride. The game is done…and we start counting scores.

Everyone has points for their routes.

If a player successfully completed a Destination Card by forming a contiguous route between the two cities, he adds the points from the card to his score; else he subtracts them (ouch!) I had to do that…

Whoever has the longest continuous path of routes gets +10 points.

The player with the highest score wins. And that’s Yuku! Devi second and me, bronze…hee3.

Two & Three Player Games: If you play with two or three players there's one slight change: for the double routes, where there are two routes between a pair of cities, only one can be used. This help keeps the game very tight.

Ticket to Ride is overall quite a quick, enjoyable game and plays well.