Merry Grinchmas

I can't remember the last time we bought a holiday-themed game.  But we were at B&N today, and Merry Grinchmas was on the shelf, and the back of the box showed a basic roll-and-move type board.  The Grinch is one of our favorite holiday characters of all times.  The Grinch wouldn't let us down or steal all our trees ... would he?

It turns out, it is NOT a roll-and-move game at all.  It's more interesting than that.  Honestly, we looked for the little player tokens when we unboxed it and thought there might be pieces missing.  There was only a Grinch piece, a stack of Wish cards and a bag of Gift tokens.

It's actually a very clever cooperative game where the cooperation doesn't feel forced or silly in any way.  You start by putting a gift on each of the A,B,C spaces and each of the houses (except the houses that the players choose as their homes).  And deal out the four Wish cards to the spaces.  Then, each turn goes like this:

  • - spin and move the Grinch
  • - if he lands on A,B or C, he steals the gift from A,B or C
  • - if he lands on a Gift space, he steals a gift from the bag
  • - if he lands on a house space, he steals a gift from that house
  • - if he lands on Max the dog, he steals A, B AND C, just like a Grinch
  • - if you spin Grinch feet or he lands on Grinch feet he stands there complaining and steals nothing


Cute.  After the Grinch does his thing, the player gets to pick whatever is left in A,B or C.

After the Grinch move, the Grinch can spend his gifts to buy a Wish card.  And after the players pick their gifts, they can also choose to buy a Wish card.  The Grinch keeps his Wish cards on his little deck spot, while the players collectively put their gifts around the Christmas tree on the Town Center piece.

When all spaces around Town Center are filled, if your Wishes are worth more stars than the ones the Grinch took, you win.  Simple.  Nobody feels cheated or feels like they're getting a participation award for showing up.  It's even fun when the Grinch steals A,B and C and then the player gets nothing.  I suppose.

This was a surprising win on the just-plain-fun scale, and also gets points for being unlike any other games we have tried.  Thumbs up.  I can see dusting this off every holiday for a spin around Whoville.

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