Richard Garfield is a busy bee in our board game world. Besides being a lover of lasagne, Garfield is also the creator of King of Tokyo, Bunny Kingdom, KeyForge, The Hunger and not to forget: Magic the Gathering. With Magic the Gathering, Garfield, among others, gave life to trading card games in 1993. In other words: Garfield is the Walter White who got millions of nerds addicted to cardboard crack. Ripping open packs of cards with frothing mouths in the hope of getting that one special card. Cards that can be worth thousands of euros. Without Garfield, we wouldn’t have MTG, Pokémon cards, Yu-Gi-Oh or Hearthstone. Besides being addictive, Magic the Gathering is also a great and challenging game. With Mindbug, Garfield (together with Skaff Elias, Marvin Hegen and Christian Kudahl) has developed yet another great card game for two players: Mindbug
In Mindbug, players do not compose a deck of 60 cards, but they receive 10 cards from a standard deck for a quick and easy brawl. Players only need to perform one of two possible actions during their turn: play a card or start an attack. In Mindbug, players play hybrid monsters to defeat their opponent, but there is a twist: each player has the opportunity to steal a played card from another player twice during a game with his or her mindbugs.
By playing cards, players gain new forces but can also potentially activate effects. By attacking, players can defeat other players’ monsters and again possibly activate effects. A player who is attacked can defend with one of his or her monsters. The monster with the highest value wins, but some monsters have special properties that can influence the course of the battle. If a player cannot or does not want to earn a life, this player loses a life. Once a player has lost all his or her life points, the game is over.
Mindbug is a wonderfully simple and smooth card game with very funny artwork, sharp tactics and nice combinations. A small but nice game that easily fits in any bag!
