YMBNHHF?

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 interesting combination of elements, though it is a bit annoying trying to find the tiny cards on the board.  The way those card images are arranged makes no sense.  But after a while I found myself sorting useless cards in my and behind the useful cards.  The Jacks add a bit of fun -- you can swipe one of the chips from that 4-in-a-row that was about to win, but in the end there are only 4 Jacks, so the fun moves only come up about twice in a game.

As for strategy, all I can really say is that the middle of the board has more opportunities.

We had fun tinkering with this one.  It fits our preferred style of "easy to win, fun to figure out, and we'll probably keep it and play it a few more times." 

Here is one of Anne's wins.  She was playing red.  She had just blocked my 4-in-a-row at the 5 of clubs, so I could only win with a 3 of hearts or keep building one of my other sets.