11 December 2007

Review: Fish Eat Fish

Doesn't Fish Eat Fish sound like such a fun game? Well, it is. And it's easy and fast. We can usually play a game in about 20 minutes, depending on how thoughtfully people attack other fish.

The premise of the game is to attack your opponents' fish and eat them. You start with five fish, and then you start attacking. You each lay a card face down with a number on it. Then you flip your card over. The bigger card wins. When you win, you stack fish on top of the fish you just ate, thus making you stronger. That means, if your stack has 4 fish in it, and you attack a fish of only 1, you have an advantage of 3. If you lay a 1 you are worth 5. He must lay a 4 to tie you, and if you tie, you both die. Cards consists mostly of numbers (0, 1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 4, 5), but there each person has two octopus cards and a shark card. The idea of the game is to know when you need to win and when you can sacrifice a fish or two. You can only play each card once, so it is also important to pay attention to which players are still holding on to their most valuable cards.

Way fun game. Easy. The box says ages 8 and up, but I think you could play with younger kids. They just wouldn't have much strategy. The game accommodates 2-5 players. And it's probably one of the cheapest games I've blogged about.

3 comments:

Bart said...

You play a lot of board games. We pretty much have stuck with Ticket to Ride and Settlers. Have you bought all of these games for yourselves?

Sherry said...

We usually get our games as gifts. Fish Eat Fish was given to us by Matt and Michelle. I think Eric bought Acquire and Settlers. Tigris and Euphrates was a gift from Eric's parents. Blokus (which I haven't talked about yet) was a gift for my birthday. And Puerto Rico was a gift, too, I think. I'm pretty sure. So no, we don't buy them. We (Eric) ask(s) for them for Christmas.

Bart said...

Fair enough. That's actually a pretty good idea. Especially since it's something that will potentially be enjoyed by the giver and the receiver.