Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)I had the pleasure of playing this card game at the 2007 OwlCon in Houston, and it's pretty sweet. I describe it as poker-flavored Uno with trump colors. Four players, 64 cards with two occurences of each of the numbers 1 through 10 in each of three colors (i.e. there are two red 9s, two yellow 3s, et cetera), plus four special cards. Red trumps yellow trumps green. All the cards are dealt out at the beginning of each round. You want to ditch as many cards as possible. The round ends when someone plays their last card and earns a score of zero, and everyone else is scored based on the number of cards left in their hands (their face values are irrelevant), with multipliers applied to certain range brackets, e.g. if you have 9 cards, you are tagged with 18 points, if you have 15 you are hit with 45, et cetera. Game ends when someone explodes over 100.
Whoever leads a round can choose to play one, two (pair only, as I recall), three (three of a kind only, I believe), or five cards (straights, flushes, full houses, straight flushes). Each succeeding player MUST play the same number of cards and must top whatever was last played, e.g. if Player A dropped a flush, Player B has to come in with a better flush or a full house. (Factoring in the interplay of trump colors is a bit tricky at first.) When no one else can (or will) play, that round ends, and whoever laid that last set of cards that no one could top gets to start the next round. Note that one exception to the rule that you must throw down the same number of cards as at the start of the round is when you deploy the dreaded Gang of Four. If you stun everyone with four of a kind (colors can be mixed), you bring that round to a screeching halt, UNLESS someone can fling out a superior Gang of Four.
In the first of our two games, the scores from best to worst were 0, 18, something in the 20s, and 100-mega+. Once we knew better what we were doing, the Game 2 scores were something like 42, 55, 80-something, and just barely over 100.
Note that an interesting feature is that after the cards are dealt to start a new round, but BEFORE play begins, the loser of the previous round has to slide his top card over to the winner, face-up, and that winner in turn can dump a trash card off to the loser. Also, the direction of play alternates with each hand.
It sounds a bit complicated, but you can learn it in about 10 minutes and it plays pretty quickly. This is a great game to bust out when you have maybe an hour to kill and don't want to fire up that 18-hour session of Axis & Allies. Plus, as a card game, it's obviously extremely portable. With a good balance of luck and skill, this one is highly recommended.
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Gang of Four is an exciting game of Cunning, Strategy and Power. Originating in the gambling backstreets of Hong Kong, Gang of Four is the most popular card game to emerge from Asia in decades. Filled with an endless variety of strategies and tactics, Gang of Four is fun, entertaining and full of surprises, yet is simple to learn and play. The game's premise is simple - be the first to rid yourself of all your cards and ascend to supreme power. But beware - a strategic misstep may find you in a struggle to survive. Gang of Four is terrific fun for adults and children and is a highly addictive card game for your family or friends.Ages 10 and up.
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