Danger Noodle (University Games)

We finally got a chance to play through Danger Noodle, a cute little card game we got at the Julian Garage a few weeks back.  The cards have with animals with smart-aleck names and positive or negative values.  You win by getting exactly 30 points of animal cards.  Each turn you can draw as many cards as you like until you get a negative value (your turn is over) or a DANGER NOODLE card (discard all your cards and end your turn) or one of the few action cards that let you trade in cards or take away opponent cards.  One other card worth mentioning is the ANTITOXIN card which lets you ignore the next 3 danger noodles.  Simple enough.

Our first run through we ran out of cards and it felt like there was no way to ever get exactly 30 points with all the +1 cards.  We hardly ever had a multiple of 5, always 19 or 37.  It was a mess.


The next few games went smoothly.  Anne won one because I had an action card where I had to send her a negative card from my pile and the only one I had was -10 ... while she had exactly 40, so my -10 completed her hand.  That was funny. You have to keep an eye on the options.  We tend to match up positives and negatives and push them off to one side to relieve the clutter, but they are still in play.  The next time around, I won by getting the same card, giving her a -1, pushing me from 29 to 30. 

The names of the animals are funny.  Just say they out loud every now and then, keep it fun.  An interesting card is the one that lets you look at the top 5 cards on the draw pile.  In one case, I could then draw two +1 cards and stop, letting Anne have the -1 (ending her turn), take that juicy +5 and stop, giving her the -10 Murder Log (alligator) card.  Whee.

There were times when I wished I didn't have an antitoxin card -- I just wanted to trade in the whole mess and start with a fresh slate.  It has its fun moments.  Some hands probably do get messy, but others can end after just 20 or 25 cards, 5 or 6 minutes.  I could see playing it again some time when the mood fits.

 


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