ScottVee Gaming

We found another interesting hybrid card game at the same thrift shop as last post, just 6 weeks later.  By "hybrid", I mean it combines a regular deck of cards with some other major game mechanic.  In this case, Card Caper by University Games is simply a game of trying to guess your opponent's card.  It starts with each player choosing a secret card, and the rest of the cards are dealt out to all players.  Then, each player puts one card from their hand under each section of their side of the board, so you will end up playing a card of a different suit, a card that's higher than your card, a card that's lower than your card, and a card with a different value. Once set up, you takes turns rolling a die and moving a piece around the circular board, which tells you what action you can take on your turn.  If the board says "higher card", you have to play another card in your "higher card" area, and so on.  If the board says "Guess", you

We found YMBNHHF at the Rancho Coastal Humane Society thrift shop a few months back.  They always seem to have a few quirky games down there.  I have no idea what the name means, and nothing in the little rulebook explains it, so my guess is "You Must By Now Have Had Fun".  How weird is that? It is essentially playing Connect 4 on a 10x10 grid of playing cards, except you connect 5 to win.  For two players, you start with 7 cards each,  Each turn, play a card and put your colored token on that card on the board.  Each card appears twice, but Jacks are not on the board at all.  The way Jacks work is: a two-eyed Jack lets you put a chip anywhere you like, and a one-eyed Jack lets you remove one of your opponent's chips.  The only other rule is that if you have an unplayable card because both matching spaces have chips on them, you can trade it for a new card.  Oh, and corner spaces count for all players, so you only need a corner plus four in a row to win. It's an inter

A while back I tested out an app called Chem Merge.  I wanted to do a quick update.  First, the full name in the Play Store is "Chem Merge Periodic Table Game" by Scienchro, although the on-screen icon still just says "Chem Merge".  It looks like it has had a graphics update since last time I played. It's still fairly simple: drop new elements down into the grid and try to make matches.  Generally, you want to put the new block on top of the same block for a match or on top of a higher block, preferably only one number higher (put a 12 on top of a 13, for example) so another of that same block can clear both (another 12 would give 12+12 for a 13 then 13+14 for a 14).  If you put a block on top of a lower block, it will be hard to ever clear out that column -- you're only real move if a 15 is on top of a 12 would be to drop another 15 next to it to pull the 15 over to the next column and expose the 12 for further builds. The power-ups on the bottom are: - un

While that 248Link game is hugely redundant after a while, it is relaxing to drag snakes of numbered tiles and try to complete each level.  You get 30 coins for each completed level, with the option to get up to 20x if you watch an ad.  Since the power-ups all cost 300 coins to use, I will watch the ad if I have <3000 of those coins, otherwise skip it and continue.  This is enough to make sure we never get stuck. There is some strategy to that 248Link game after all.  Sure, you can swipe the longest combos to clear a lot of the board, but sometimes you should keep an eye on exactly when the new piece goes up a tier as you are making that combo.  And there's no point making a 96 tile if there are no tiles near it to make future combos with.  The board can fill up with non-matching tiles if you don't keep a close eye on which numbers you are merging. Try to make combos that are one or two points above the next tier.  For example, five 2s would equal 10, but 10 is not a