MANTIS
Designed by: Jeremy Posner,Ken Gruhl
MANTIS is a luck-pushing, risk-taking game of card collection of simple rules.
Players are trying to bank cards for points, but they need cards to bank. So: on your turn, you can score or steal: scoring is an attempt to bank points you already have, and stealing is an attempt to take cards from your competitors. In either case, you flip the top card from the deck to reveal the colour – if you’re scoring and it matches any of your face-up card colours, you bank all of this colour you have. If it doesn’t match, keep it face-up in front of you.
If you’re stealing, you announce who you intend to steal from before flipping the card. If it matches any of their colours, you claim all of that colour for yourself and move those cards into your face-up area (not your bank!). If it doesn’t match, that player keeps the card face-up instead.
The catch – or hint – with MANTIS is that the back of every card shows three of the game’s seven colours, and you know the front will be one of these three – just not which. It’s a game of risk/reward and pushing your luck where the first to bank ten cards wins.
Sam says
Dumb but fun, what stops MANTIS being a total lottery is that one-in-three chance of flipping the colour you need, at the best time for you. Like HIT!, there’s a lot of luck involved, but just enough player agency and speedy pacing to counter-balance the sense of being at the mercy of fate. If it’s ten minutes of your life you won’t get back, well, that ten minutes could have been spent in far worse ways.
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Take That!
It's present - players are stealing from each other!
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Fidget Factor!
Very low - turns are super-fast.
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Brain Burn!
It's an exceedingly simple game of <sort of> stick or twist.
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Again Again!
It's fast and occasionally furious, and if it doesn't have a huge amount of variety in the box other than the semi-random card-drawing, MANTIS doesn't exactly outstay it's welcome either.
