Angry Birds Card Game (Game Review)

Bobble is sort of obsessed with a game called Angry Birds. This obsession started when he was an inpatient at children's a couple years back. He occasionally got to use the iPad they had for his floor, and there was a game on there called Catapult King. He loved it a lot, and so I decided to get him the Angry Birds trilogy I linked to above.

I don't want him playing video games all the time, however, so I got curious when I saw the Angry Birds Card Game in the store. I admit, I impulse bought it. It said for ages 5+, and it was for 2-5 players. It also emphasized on the packaging it was from the makers of UNO.

The game contains 56 cards (20 power cards, 36 structure cards), 2 dice, and a king pig.

The game is very simple to play, too. You deal 6 structure cards (blue backed cards) to each player, and they are allowed to arrange them in any order they like on the table for all to see. This stack is called your "castle". Two power cards are dealt to each player (these are not face up). To play, when everyone has their lineup set, the first person rolls the two dice. The dice have various birds on them. If you roll the bird in the first position (at the bottom of your castle/closest to you), you get to remove it. The goal is to remove all your castle cards and then you get to try and knock out the king pig to win the game.

You have to remove the cards in order, but in the above picture I could have removed the bottom two cards from my stack with the below roll:

This is because the red bird removes the red card, and then the other die rolled up a "wild" (all the birds), so that removes the next one. Had I rolled a black bird and a white bird (my second and third position cards), I couldn't have done anything.

The two orange/red-backed cards, your power cards, can be used during game play. Each one means something different, and have specific times they can be used. The +1 card, for example, you may only play during your turn. This makes the opponent of your choice draw a new structure card and place it in the first position of their castle. The No Launch (slingshot) card can be played at any time, and it causes the opponent to skip their turn.

You may only play one power card at a time. If you were unsuccessful at getting rid of any birds from your castle on your turn, you may draw a new power card.

When your castle is gone, you get a chance to win the game (when it's your turn again). The king pig is set up (at least) 2 feet away and you flick a die at him. You have to knock him over to win the game. If you hit him but he doesn't fall over, you didn't win and you try again next turn.

The game is pretty fun, and easy to learn for all ages. I would definitely recommend it if you're looking for something different to play, especially if your child isn't great at holding a hand of cards yet. This requires no more than 3 cards in your hand at any point in time, so that was beneficial for Bobble's small hands. Reading isn't required for this game, either.

The only con I see with this game is that some people get overzealous with the flicking of the die and it ends up across the room. Ironically, that never happened with Bobble, but it did happen with an adult that was playing with us!

The price seems to vary online, but it appears to average out to around $8.

Disclaimer: Thoughts of Fluff is responsible for the content of this post. The product mentioned above was purchased by me, and all opinions are my own and may differ from those of your own.

Uno! (Game Review)

One game that has gotten a lot of play recently has been UNO. Bobble loves this game, and it has been fun for involving other family members. UNO is recommended for children age 7 and up, and you can play it with 2 – 10 players. Bobble is just now 5 years old, but I think any child that knows their numbers and colours can play if you don’t play super competitively (at least to start out).

If you haven’t played UNO, the goal is to go out of cards first. You start with a set number (varies based on number of players), and you lay down cards one at a time, matching by colour or number. There are special cards like Reverse, Skip, Draw Two, Wild, and Wild Draw Four. When you get down to one card you have to say, “Uno”. If you lay your second-to-last card down and don’t say “Uno”, you have to draw two cards (if someone else notices).

We didn’t make Bobble draw cards for not saying “Uno” at first, but we would make other players draw. He caught on to calling other people out for not saying “Uno”, and we would prompt him when he was down to one card. After he got pretty good about calling “Uno” without us reminding him, we told him that we were going to start making him draw cards for not saying “Uno”, just like everyone else has to. We started by counting to 5 slowly in our heads before we told him to draw two cards, and we also didn’t continue play and looked at him, waiting. This let him know there was something more he should do. As he got really good at that, we would just pause for a second and see if he would say anything before he was forced to draw. Now we just make him draw. It took probably 2 weeks before we got to the point where we would just make him draw if he didn’t say it immediately. Now he tends to say “UNO!” as he’s placing his second-to-last card. He knows. J

This game has been helpful in encouraging Bobble to think about alternate plays. It took a little while for Bobble to catch on to using the cards to strategize, but he caught on to the matching colour right away. We helped him a lot with which cards were best to play at first, and explaining why, or we would play and he would help us lay cards down (and we’d explain why we played that card).

One thing that was hard for Bobble to catch on to was the order of turns after a reverse was played. When you’re just play with two people, it essentially acts as a skip since you’d just get to go again. When you play with more than two people, the order of play actually goes the other way. This confused him at first, but he caught on after a few times.

Another thing that he had trouble with was figuring out how to play cards in his favour (versus just doing whatever he wanted or could do). An example of this would be playing a wild card and naming the colour yellow when he only had one yellow card, but 4 blue cards. This was probably the hardest concept for him, actually. He would have a yellow Draw Two card, but that’s it, and he’d change it to yellow, then play his Draw Two, and have no other cards to play and end up drawing. He’s getting better at this, but he still hasn’t mastered the skill.

The difference between the Wild and the Wild Draw Four cards confuses him a bit sometimes, too. A Wild card can be played at any time during the game, regardless of whether you need to play it or not. A Wild Draw Four can only be used when you have no other options. If you play a Wild Draw Four when you have that colour or that number in your hand, you could be forced to draw cards if someone challenges that play. We haven’t introduced the challenging to Bobble, but we do make sure we ask him if he has anything that colour or any of that number because he can’t play that card otherwise.

You can keep score in UNO, but we also haven’t introduced that concept to him yet since he hasn’t fully grasped the concept of playing whatever is in his best interest. If your children are older, you can always incorporate scores into the mix. I think we won’t be doing that for a while.

This game is great for colour and number recognition, though younger children will need more reminders and instruction with special cards. UNO can be found at most retail stores, and is about $6.

*Please note that newer version of UNO have different graphics on the cards. Our version is older.

Disclaimer: Thoughts of Fluff is responsible for the content of this post. All products were purchased by me, and all opinions are my own and may differ from those of your own.