ScottVee Gaming

SCRAM is a card game of cute cats, trying to score the best combos.  We goofed the rules the first few rounds, thinking we could have more than one active pile.  But there should be just one active cat, and when you score a cat you move it to your "Cat tree". The basic gameplay is: draw a card (from draw pile or one of the face-up cards in the "Pet Shop"), then either 1) add a card to your active cat if it's one more than the top card showing, or 2) throw a 0-point "stray cat" on an opponent's pile to slow them down, or 3) if you really have no moves, turn in your full hand and drew 5 new cards. Now, a stray cat can be immediately blocked by a Scram card, and you can "bank" a cat at any time by moving that pile to your cat tree and starting a new pile.  There are a few STEAL cards in the deck that let you take th top card from an opponent's stack if you can play it right away. Some of the cat cards have special rules printed on them,

For my birthday this year I did a trip to the nearby Barnes & Noble and a trip to the local game shop and found a variety of games to test out ... I have been wanting Azul for a while now, but wow just unpacking it, it seems unusually complex.  I also wanted to try one of those book-shaped games, and went with Baba Yaga, since that is a favorite piece of bizarre folklore.  Someone mentioned the noodles game, and it goes well with another ramen-themed game already on the shelf.  There are two word games, because my girlfriend and I really enjoy word games: WordSpiel I have already done a post about, and Scrabble Slam is coming soon.  Ogre Under looked cute, and Scram had cats.

Here is another super rare card game I have kept since I was a kid.  My dad was a chemistry teacher, so I have always had an interest in molecules and all the possible combinations of elements, and the ongoing research that pushes the boundaries of new types of chemicals. Here is Chem Rummy, from Addison-Wesley, 1974.  It's not even mentioned on BoardGameGeek, and I have no idea how many were printed or if they are still available.  I never could get another player to sit down and build chemical formulas with me, but the idea was to play exactly like gin rummy: draw and discard cards until you can lay down your whole hand of cards as a valid set of molecules. But I always played it like regular solitaire: make the seven piles of one to seven cards, play and move the cards exactly as in regular solitaire, turn the extra cards three at a time, and see how many combos I can make before the cards run out.  With this deck, you do eventually end up with just number cards and no valid bui