If you want to bring on a head ache to avoid school or the draft or whatever Dobble is your man. It is of itself the simplest of all games however it’s frantic and competitive to the point where you want it to stop because Hulk Head Hurt. (Maybe it’s just me and I should get a check up). Anyhoe Dobble is piddly simple. It works as follows BOOM!
Look at the picture I’ve provided first… (not around the picture at the picture)
Each player puts a card in front of them with a number of symbols on it. Dogs, Card, Anchors, Krakens whatever
then the first card on the stack is turned over and it’s a race to shout out which symbol you have on your card that matches the one on the card in the center. ALL cards have one symbol that matches another symbol on every card. yes it’s true. I’ve checked. Go on get the grid paper out and work through it. You see! it’s true all cards related to each other in a family way.
So it’s Snap++. When you get a card you put it down as your play card and another is turned over from the stack and the process repeats. The person or persons (up to 4) who didn’t get a match have a slight advantage insofar as they’ve been staring at their play card longer than the player who just landed the last match.
With about fifty cards in the stack games usually end in five but definitely not longer than ten minutes (unless you’re taking part in a sleep deprivation experiment for a particularly evil group).
There’s a number of variant games in there, who can get rid of their stacks first, who can match with others and so on but the whole sizzle is matching symbols to another card.
To mix it up the symbols are often different sizes and orientations and (for me anyway) the brain has to spin up to full power to be competitive. It’s fast, there is no downtime, it’s frantic, there is no time to talk or think, it’s a very intense game and with four other people doing their damndest to beat you it’s hard work. Certainly not one to play for a long period with adults. It does however work fantastically with kids.
Kids love this game and you can vary the difficulty with them very easily. It’s also cheap (around €15 or so) and very portable. If you have kids and you want to introduce them to gaming, this is a great start, if you have a gaming group that consists of big kids this is a winner too. Personally I have a love hate relationship with this game (I love it, it hates me), not because it’s bad, but because it’s too intense. Quite a statement, I don’t like a kids game because it’s too intense….. To paraphrase every cheesy cop movie. I’m getting too old for this shit 🙂
Huzzah!
Vic
Victor Gannon Games 
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