Designed by: Masao Suganuma
Diamonsters is a bidding game where players are trying to collect diamonds, by virtue of playing Monster cards.
Each player is given a starting hand consisting of one of each monster, which are numbered 1 to 5. The remaining cards are shuffled and the top card is flipped over to reveal it. Then all players choose a card from their hand to bid on this new card – picking secretly, and revealing simultaneously. Highest bid wins, but with two caveats: one is that any duplicate bids are immediately discounted, and returned to the bidder’s hands. The other caveat is that although a 5 beats 4, 3, and 2, a 1 beats a 5! After all duplicate bids are removed the highest bidder takes the card and begins a tableau of cards in front of them, face-up on the table, consisting of both the card they won and the card they bid with. They then take a replacement card from the deck to replace their expended bid, and flip a new card for everyone to see: the next ‘lot’ to be bid on.
You’ll notice that the cards (bar the 3, which is blank) have a number of diamonds pictured on them: the 1,2 and 5 cards gain you diamonds and the 4 card represents minus two diamonds from your tableau. There are two ways to win a round: either you assemble five diamonds on the cards on your tableau, or three of the same type of monster. Winning a round gets you an actual (ok, a plastic) diamond to represent your round victory, and after a certain number of victories (how many varies depending on the amount of players) the game ends.
Possibly younger players may get frustrated at being serially outbid (and outfoxed), but there's nothing alarming here.
Almost none. Play is fast and continuously involves everyone.
There's no mental arithmetic here; but your decision-making is based on reading the table.
Cards come out randomly, as do bids. It can be quite a poker-esque game for 2 or 3 players, but rather chaotic with more!
2-6
Players
8+
Years
15-30
Mins
Sam says
Probably too chaotic with more than three players, I would say, when it feels like half the game is trying to work out who has won a bid. But with 2 or 3 people playing, Diamonsters is fun and, if you get a kick out of the second-guessing, rather more-ish. It looks great too - although it does come in a ludicrously over-sized box. Card games really don't need all that packaging.