Designed by: Uwe Rosenberg
Mamma Mia is a nutty card game that combines tactics, luck, and a little bit of a memory challenge.
Players are competing chefs trying to bake the most pizza. Every player gets a bunch of recipes they hope to compete, one of which is in their starting hand. The recipes show what’s needed for the pizza topping – it might be a mushroom and four pepperoni, for instance. The rest of their hand will be made up of the ingredients cards: jalapeños, pepperonis, olives, mushrooms, etc. Play proceeds with everyone, on their turn, playing matching ingredient cards (or a single card) to the growing stack in the centre of the table. If you want to, you can add a recipe card as well. Why will become clear momentarily.
Having taken your turn, you replenish your hand back up to seven cards – taking either ingredients, or recipes. As soon as the ingredients cards run out, the stack is flipped over and cards are revealed one by one, sorting them into piles of matching ingredients as you go. When a recipe card is revealed, that recipe can only be completed using the already-revealed ingredients cards, plus cards from your hand. If the recipe can be completed, the successful player keeps it face-up in front of them – it’s now worth a point.
After all the stack has been revealed and recipes baked/unbaked as appropriate, the ingredients cards are shuffled again and a new round begins. After the third round, players compare how many recipes they’ve completed, and the most productive chef is the winner!
It's possible for people to 'steal' your ingredients, by getting a recipe down before you can. But it's not the game's overriding feature.
Almost nil. If anyone is pondering their decision too long, they're probably playing the wrong game.
Low. All you're doing is trying to match ingredients with recipes, although card-counters at the table will have an advantage.
A quick-moving and splendidly silly game that has a lot of randomness courtesy of the cards.
2-5
Players
8+
Years
15-30
Mins
Sam says
If your ingredients cards simply refuse to match up to your recipe cards you can sometimes feel a spectator, but the game is not meant to be taken too seriously, and it plays so quickly any frustration is fleeting. I like it.