And now for something completely different ...

My wife and I attended a game Meetup right here in Norwich last night which was a lot of fun.

It's easy for gamers, especially wargamers, to lose sight of how specialized a niche hobby gamers occupy in the universe. Our hostess was a woman who was a self-described game addict who had a fairly extensive collection (several dozens) of games of the sort you'll find in mass market retailers. Many party-type games, trivia games, card games, Scrabble, Apples to Apples, and more of that sort. She had recently played a game of Puerto Rico at another meetup but wasn't really aware that the game represented a doorway to the whole "euro" game scene. She'd never heard of Acquire or Settlers of Catan, let alone something like Cosmic Encounter or Small World that I had also brought along.

She had heard of Fluxx, however, having an edition of the game from 1998, so we played that, largely because it was quick and easy to get into and we were expecting a fifth player to show up any moment and Fluxx is one of the few games you can join in progress. The fourth player was another woman who had recently joined the game Meetup but wasn't yet a "gamer" in the hobbyist sense. Player No. 5 arrived midway through our first game and he jumped right in.

The game was a big success, as it has been every time I've introduced it to a group, and we played three complete games of it. I then suggested we try Martian Fluxx, which was even more popular than the basic Fluxx game. It is slightly more involved, though, so I think it's good to break in novice players on a game or two of the basic game before playing Martian Fluxx.

We played two games of Martian Fluxx (did I mention that Fluxx is quick?) before moving on to something I had never seen before called Sequence. It's not a new game, being around since the 1980s. This is a board game using four decks of cards and some chits. The board depicts two standard decks of cards less jokers and jacks laid out in a grid pattern, with each card shown twice. A play consists of revealing a card and placing a chit in the space showing that card with the objective of getting five chits in a row, rather like Pente. one-eyed Jacks, when played, allow a player to remove an opponent;s chit from anywhere on the board. A two-eyed Jack is a wild card, allowing the play of a chit anywhere. Naturally these powerful and relatively rare cards are the main strategic tools in the game.

I remarked during the game that the main difference between Euro games and traditional American games is that usually in Euros a player is faced with a whole bunch of things he'd like to do but the game forces him to make a choice, while in American games the pattern is more like you have many things you;d like to do and the game won;t let you do any of them. Or another way to look at it is that euros force you to choose between attractive options while in American games you're often stuck without any good moves.

Sequence definitely fell into that category. It's a pretty intense game of strategy, but ultimately rather frustrating because it's pretty easy to be stuck with no good moves. We played twice and the second game turned into a real epic that exhausted the draw deck and was well on its way to exhausting the deck again before someone finally won.

Still, it was an interesting game and while I doubt I'd buy a copy, I would be willing to play it again.

Martian Fluxx -- a Creepy version of the game!

Martian Fluxx contents

Copyright Looney Labs

I'm a serious fan of wargames and simulations, but I also have a definite weakness for silly multiplayer card games and there are few sillier, but great multiplayer, games than the Fluxx series of games from Looney Labs.


The fundamental structure for all versions of Fluxx is extremely simple. You deal out three cards to each player and they start laying by following the Basic Rules: Draw a card and then play a card (following the instructions on that card, if any).


The key cards in Fluxx are New Rules, marked in yellow, that change or add to the Basic Rules. They may change how many cards, you draw or play introduce new rules such as a limit on how many cards you can have in your hand. New rules take effect immediately, so if you play a Play 3 card as your first play you can now play 2 more cards from your hand. These might include Action cards, marked in blue, which allow you to perform the action listed on the card such as draw more cards or trade hands with an opponent.


At the start of the game you don't even know what you have to do to win. You find out when someone plays a Goal card, marked in red, which might say that whoever had 10 cards in their hand wins. Most, however, center on having certain Keepers, marked in green, the fourth type of card in the game, played on the table in front of you.

Zombie Fluxx introduced a new type of card called the Creeper, marked in black, which is basically an anti-keeper. If you have a Creeper in play in front of you you can't win, even if you otherwise meet the conditions of the Goal currently in play. Unlike most other cards, if you have a Creeper you must put it in play instantly in front of you. It's not all bad news, though, because occasionally a Goal may actually require a certain Creeper to win. The Creeper idea has been popular and shown up in every version of Fluxx published since Zombie Fluxx came out and was even retrofitted back to the basic Fluxx game when its 4th Edition came out, so it can be considered a core element of the game

Martian Fluxx brings the role of the Creepers to a whole new level. In previous versions Creepers were pretty uncommon -- just four cards in Fluxx and seven cards in Monty Python Fluxx, for example. But Martian Fluxx has 14 Creepers, most of which are Pathetic Humans. Yes, in Martian Fluxx the players are the Martians, out to invade the earth with flying saucers, ray guns, mother ships and abduction chambers, with just the Pathetic Humans, their Army and the Germs standing in the way. There's even a small chance the humans will win. One of the cards is an Anti-Goal card called Retreat and if its stiff conditions are met the Invasion is called off the Martians retreat in defeat!

It's all good fun and demonstrates the flexibility of the Fluxx game engine, which seems adaptable to any theme so long as there's some silliness involved.

Like all versions of Fluxx the game is very easy to teach (although so chaotic that some folks will need a game or two to wrap their minds around it), very quick (half an hour or less), and very scalable (the box says up to 6, but I've managed 7 OK). It's one of the very few games that someone can join in-progress (just deal them 3 cards and they are in).

While all Fluxx-series games have the same art on the back, and could theoretically be mixed together, the trend with the latest themed versions has been to discourage that. Martian Fluxx explicitly says that the theme of Martian invasion doesn't fit in well with the other themes, and shouldn't be mixed with other decks.

I haven't played every version of Fluxx (others are Eco-Fluxx and Zombie Fluxx), but every version I've played has been a hoot, so it's highly recommended.