What you get: For your US$18.95 you get a small paper box containing one deck of 110 cards split in two and the rulebook. The cards are sturdy and high quality and will last for hundreds of games. The people behind the game are C.E. Wiedman for concept and design and Andrew Yates for the photography.
The game. As the game itself reads, ‘it is an exciting, fast-paced multi-player card game that combines dark, psychological images with the raw dynamics of a merciless street fight’. The idea is that the players are kids fighting in order to take the other’s lunch money and it is a vicious fight indeed. All players start with 15 energy points (players must provide their own tokens) and five player cards. The objective is to try and beat the hell out of the others, in a definitely free-for-all manner. The winner is the last man standing after all others have been beaten unconscious.
There are four types of cards. Attacks, defenses, weapons and specialty cards form the arsenal with which the players accomplish their goal. Each category is pretty much self-explanatory, but not all cards are alike. Roundhouse and Spinning Backfist are attacks with a twist, First Aid and Disarm are defenses that might mean the difference between staying in the game or dropping unconscious and so on and so forth. Specialty cards are of course the cream of the game. From here players derive most of the tactics used in the game geometrically increasing their combat abilities and their chances to win. Uppercut², Big Combo and the all-time favourite, Humiliation, are only part of what one can use to make his best friends eat dirt!
The strong points: To start with, this is truly an exciting game. Adrenaline pumps up very fast, and although the game is not a speed-based one like ‘Brawl’, players tend to play fast while thinking of the best tactics to put their opponent to the ground. The game supposedly combines some role-playing aspects, for example for the card ‘Humiliation’ to be played the player must actually ‘humiliate’ his opponent in a funny manner (think of Monty Python and the French taunting). This quickly degenerates into the need to pin your opponent down without any role-playing at all, but wouldn’t it be so in reality as well? The game delivers in actually ‘beating up’ your friends and gaming partners without all that messy blood, as the game proclaims.
One deck accommodates two to four players but with the reshuffling of the same deck more people can participate. I have played games of seven and eight players with one deck and they went as smooth as one would wish. Not to mention the fact that it makes the game even more strategic than with two decks. Memory is a good asset to have in what has been played and what not, what to look for and what to avoid.
The tactics of the game while not endless are fair. Players who appear too weak have chances of winning the game against all odds if they play cleverly. I don’t agree to the critique that the need of always having defence cards makes the game redundant. It is a basic feature of the game, as occupying higher ground is a basic principle of war. One has to adopt his strategies around it.
What really amazed me though was the support Atlas Games provides for its products and this game in particular. I bought a flawed box that missed fifteen out of the one hundred and ten cards. Any company would have sent the cards asked. Atlas sent me a new unopened box apologizing for the inconvenience. Excellent service, mates!
To that add an FAQ found on their website (http://www.atlas-games.com/lunchmoney/index.html), rules clarifications, variants and a couple of other things concerning their game. In fact, the existence of the web page enhances the substance rating this game gets.
The weak points: While the game is very good indeed, it holds some weak points. One of them is the art. Art is obviously a matter of taste, I do not believe though that the dark-spirited photos of a girl alone evoke a feel of kids fighting. If the same photo-style were used with photos of actual kids ‘fighting’, the feel of the game would have been served better.
Of course some might wonder if this matters at all. Judging from the fact that good gamers I know have refused to play the game because they found the art upsetting, it matters. Ninety percent of gamers will play the game enthusiastically, but 10% will shun it, sometimes without even touching it. That doesn’t serve the game.
To more practical considerations, the cards are not helpful to the players. The catch phrases are excellent but nothing more. The four colours used are very close and dimmed; even in a brightly lit room players might have trouble distinguishing them. In addition cards should have had an indication on them of the way they are played. That would have made the learning curve of the game a lot easier to master and wouldn’t interrupt the sequence of the game because one has to re-read the rules. With all the specialty cards and the way they interact amongst themselves as well as with the basic cards, this happens a bit too often, something discouraging for a fast game.
To the substance of the game, a few special cards will see very little use because of the prerequisites they need to be played. I do not have a suggestion on how it could be done properly, and I actually enjoy the choice the idea of more difficult cards to use creates, however the implementation is far from perfect. Expect to see some cards being discarded and seldomly used, it just happens.
Unfortunately Lunch Money continues with the bad tradition of most card games and does not include a card index inside the box. Thankfully one can find it on the web on the Atlas Games home page.
Finally, I have some complaints about the box. Being European I prefer the boxes used especially by German games (‘6 nimmt’ for example) and which open from above; the box of Guillotine to mention an American game is a good example. Lunch Money opens from the long side, like first edition Mag Blast. This means easier card damage and box wear.
Conclusion: ‘Lunch Money’ might initially give the image of a filler game, one that will be played while waiting for the odd role-player to show up; it is not. My gaming group has gathered just to play this game and nothing else. It is addictive, it pumps up the adrenaline on your system, it creates loads of fun for everybody! Or almost everybody; apart from the one man standing, the rest will have to take their revenge in yet another game of ‘Lunch Money’.
Some extra notes: Recently Altas Games released Sticks and Stones, an expansion to Lunch Money. Without having played it, and just by reading the rules on Atlas Games' website as well as other reviews, I think I am going to pass on that, for the very simple reason that it appears to enhance the negative points I point out in this review. Should I somehow get S&S I will review it, since I don't intend to buy an expansion I feel lessens my enjoyment of the basic game. However, do not let my scepticism for the expansion prejudice you against the basic game, as it is indeed a blast.
