Pop Tarts card game

We've had the Pop Tarts card game for about a year now and did try it once before.   All I remembered was that it had an interesting way of handling cards. So with a rainy day and nowhere to go we pulled it out again. 

Overall, you collect Pop Tarts from the cards on the table and put them on your plate as either toasted or cold, and try to match the combos shown on the goal cards for extra points. 

The layout looks complicated but it makes sense once you've tried a hand or two.   There is a main spread of 7 cards and an arrow card saying which way the conveyor belt is going right now.  You can only take the card at the end where the arrow is pointing.  After you take the card, you move the next 3 cards over one in the arrow direction and deal a new card in the middle spot. 

Above that main layout are the the current goals.  These might need 3 specific cards (hot or cold) or specific colors of hot and cold cards to get those extra 5 points. 

You have a small hand of 3 action cards to manipulate that row of 7 cards to get the card you need.  The actions are: change direction,  swap two cards next to each other, swap two cards that are two cards apart, or swap the two end cards.  I really think they should have an action card to take the middle card, or to take any card by throwing out two cards from your plate.  

So a turn might go like this: you need a blue card to complete a goal,  but the only blue card is the second card in on the wrong side (the side the arrow is not pointing to).  So you play a change direction card,  a swap 2 card and then take that blue card. 

Here, Anne played a reverse card to change the arrow to point left and took that green card from the first spot. 

You can eat any number of cards off your plate to back them for later.  You cannot hold more than 5 cards on your plate. 

After 2 games I was surprised that the official rule for the end of game is the first player to hit 30 points.  Maybe that's good for more than two players.  For us,  we played until the very last goal card was taken and it felt more natural.  We didn't want to be constantly counting and recounting and checking to see if there was a win.  Just play until the goal are used up. 

It started off a bit rough but got faster and felt better as we got comfortable with it.  It's not going to become a favorite but the card handling was different enough that it didn't feel like any other card game on our shelf. 


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