Designed by: Paul Peterson
Smash Up is a like a violent Wacky Races – a cross between a race and a fight,where players take two decks of cards – they could be zombies and dinosaurs, or ninjas and robots or a number of other factions – and shuffle them together to make your team for the game. Each faction has it’s own unique abilities that will be brought to bear during play.
A series of bases are then set up on the table which the players will be fighting to be the one to ‘break’.
A turn is fairly simple: play an action and place a minion. You want to play an action to screw with the other players’ plans – each card has a brief description of what the action does and they are usually aggressive. You want to play a minion to further your own objectives: when bases accrue a certain amount of minions on them, they break and players score points depending on how many minions you have their – first is obviously best, although it’s possible to win the game with some cannily judged and reasonably frequent second-places.
Play ends as soon as one player reaches 15 points – that person is the winner.
I think I've played Smash Up once, and it's not really my thing. But for older kids and grown-ups who want to knock lumps out of each other, it's probably a blast. And works well with three players, which could be useful.
Pretty heavy, and pretty arbitrary at times.
If you play it fast and loose, low. But moderate for gamers who want to keep tabs on everything - there's quite a lot going on.
Your choices are limited, but who you target may give you pause for thought. There's a bit of working out: whose minions are where, and how do the various cards affect things?
Big variety in the game, so if you like the theme and play, it should get a lot of visits.
2-4
Players
10+
Years
30-60
Mins
Sam says
If you like it; you'll like it a lot. I found Smash Up to be a bit dull, but then I don't gravitate to games where you're essentially taking turns to muck things up for each other. I'm also not a fan of continually referring to text on cards to see how the rules have been tweaked on this particular occasion. I should balance that by saying there are games I love that lovers of Smash Up would find tedious in the extreme! A good one for older kids, if they don't mind taking a battering on the table.