Campy Creatures

5th October 2019

Gaming night at Matakishi's is underway.

The third game of the night was 'Campy Creatures'.

Put yourselves in the shoes of a 'mad scientist'. Misunderstood, never trusted and unloved. But there's a reason why the mad scientist is the way they are and why they kidnap innocent people. It's to stop those other pesky mad scientist from doing it first!!

Campy Creatures is a blind bidding game where you bid to capture teenagers and other hapless victims and put them into sets in order to score points.

What's in a game?
All of the cards in this game are nicely illustrated with art that wouldn't look out of place on posters for the 'creature feature' movies that this game is emulating.

• Bidding decks: These decks consist of monster cards with a value of 0-8. There is a deck for each player
• Victim cards: These are the hapless victims that your monsters will kidnap... err liberate. There are 3 types of victim and also 'assistant' cards.
• Location cards: These will confer some sort of bonus on to whoever acquires them 
• Game board: Used to tally scores, store location cards and break ties.

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How's it play?
As always we begin with set up.

• A bidding deck is given to each player.
• The location deck is created by randomly using 3 location cards. A number of assistant cards will be added in as 2 small stacks between the 3 location cards. all of these are kept in a deck face-down on the game board.
• Finally the victim deck is created and shuffled. Then a number of cards are turned face up.

Then play can begin.
Campy Creatures uses blind bidding. The highest bid gets to go first and pick the victim card of their choice.

• Players keep all of their individual deck in their hand at all times.
• Players can choose any one of their monsters to play. The card is played face down. Once all players have put a card down, all cards are revealed and then resolved.
• Generally, the card with the highest number goes first. However, there are special abilities that can change things. Some special abilities a triggered when cards are revealed, some when a victim is captured.
• Thus the highest score gets 1st pick, 2nd highest score gets 2nd pick and so on until the lowest score has to take the last card.
• A new turn begins and new cards from the victim deck are dealt.
• Any cards used for bidding remain face-up on the table, they cannot be used again in this round.
• When the victim deck is depleted, the round is over. The 1st location card is revealed and will have a specific symbol on it. The player who has acquired cards with the most of the matching symbol will acquire the location card (And whatever bonus it entails.).
• The round is scored, all victims (Except assistants.) are returned to form a new victim deck, the extra assistants from location deck is added to the victim deck.
• The next round begins.

Endgame​
Campy Creatures is played over a total of 3 rounds. After the final round, final scores are tallied, highest score wins.

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Overall
Campy Creatures is a quick and interesting game to play.
This is down to the special abilities on the monster cards. They can really throw a spanner into the works (And player's plans.). Special abilities include cancelling other cards special abilities, acquiring 2 cards instead of 1, forcing someone to discard a card they captured etc.

Learning to watch other players is important. Looking at what cards they have collected gives you the chance to anticipate what other cards they will want. This means you have the opportunity to mess with them! It gives the game an extra level of depth, which without the game would be too simple.

Even so, with so few special abilities (That are identical for all players.), after prolonged play, the game could become 'samey'. But as a occasional filler game, Campy Creatures is a good game.