Not so with Numbers League.
This easy to learn, fun to play, card game had our entire family doing more mental math manipulations than we'd done in ages - and at the end of the game, we all wanted to do it again.
Summary:
In what is, essentially, a low-strategy card-taking game, you create your villain-vanquishing team by laying down cards featuring heads, torsos and feet to build bizarre (and often humorous) Superheroes. Each body-part card has a number (negative or positive) and each completed Hero's value is the equivalent of the sum of its three numbers. Armed with a growing team of numbers/Heroes to add together in various combinations, you capture the Villain cards by matching your team's value to theirs. More number variation is available by virtue of two additional game aspects: the Sidekick and Hero Devices.
Equipment:
Numbers League comes in a heavy glossy cardboard box fitted with a black plastic molded tray that helps keep things organized. It comes with a beautiful full-color instruction booklet (printed in English, Spanish, French and German) which details how to play the game in an easy(and fun)-to-read comic book style. The set also includes four mini-note pads (with the Numbers League logo) which, while not essential, are very useful to the game, and 120 Cards including 96 play cards and 24 Villains.
The 96 play cards include 75 Heroes cards (25 each of heads, torsos and legs) and 21 Device Cards. The 25 "sets" of Hero cards, if laid out "properly", each form a unique and interesting Hero with names like "Magnificent Muscle Maiden" (a Valkyrie-esque blonde with a winged helmet), "Nimble Nacho Nibbler" (a Rat-boy with a cheese wheel sigil and a cheesier grin) and "Mysterious Mister Mindstorm" (a green-skinned bald alien with hypnotic swirls on his clothing).
The fun (and silly) part about the Heroes is, that in game play you're not trying to match up "perfect" Heroes and re-create their logical bodies. You can match any head/torso/legs combination, meaning that you end up with things like "Magnificent Mister Nibbler", a blonde woman with alien-green arms and skinny pink legs with a tiny mouse resting on her foot. We had as much fun giggling about our absurd heroes (and trying to come up with the most outlandish) as we did playing the actual game, and that's saying something, because the game was
Game Play:
Game play is simple. Lay out the Villain cards in a 4x6 grid in the center of the table. This represents the city, overrun with bad guys that the Heroes want to capture. Shuffle the rest of the cards (Hero parts and Devices) together to form the Play Deck and deal out 7 to each player. Lay out three cards from the Play Deck along side the Villain grid to form the Sidekick and set the rest of the deck above it to draw from as needed.
Decide who goes first (we let the youngest start).
Each player has three "phases" on their turn: Play, Capture and Energize.
In the Play phase, a player may play up to two cards in a variety of manners (both can be played in the same way, or one in one way and one in another, or they can play only one, or none, but no more than two altogether in any turn).
One way is to play Hero "part" cards, which are played to start or complete a Hero. Hero cards are laid in front of the player who played them, forming their Superhero team. Each player can have only one incomplete Hero at a time and once played a Hero's parts can't be traded out. Any Hero with a head, torso and legs is complete, and thus becomes Active. (Once Active, a Hero's score never changes, and the above mentioned mini note pad can be used to keep track of their Value so you don't have to re-add it every time you try to calculate possible combinations.) Because players can only play two cards per turn, it takes at least until the second turn to form a complete Hero, although the Sidekick (See below) can be activated the first turn and used to take a villain.
Another way to play cards is to play a Device. Devices may only be played on an Active Hero and each Hero may only have one Device at a time. Devices are items like belts, weapons, boots, helmets or weird looking fish-robots which act as modifiers to the Hero's score on a "one time" basis. Devices can be used or not used as desired, but once used to capture a villain they are used up and are put in the pile with the villains for later scoring.
The third way to play cards is to trade a card from your hand for one of the three in the Sidekick. Trading a card counts as playing one, so trading and then laying it down counts as two cards played (and thus is a player's whole turn.)
Second, in the Capture phase, they may use the values of their active (completed) Heroes and/or the score of the Sidekick (if active) to match the number on any villain in the villain grid and thereby "capture" that villain. You can only use values from completed Heroes/Sidekick, not partial ones. Heroes with a Device attached to them can use or not use the modifier from the Device to manipulate their values.
For example, if a player has built "Magnificent (3) Mister (-1) Nibbler (0)" the Hero's value is the sum of all three cards: (3 + -1 + 0 = 2). If the shark villain with the value of 2 is out on the grid, the player may capture it and put it in her Trophy Pile in this phase of her turn. However, if she has put the wand-looking Device that has "X 3" on it on the Magnificent Mister Nibbler, she also has the option of using the device with the Hero and taking the ninja-like villain with the value of 6 instead. If she did so, the Device card would join the villain card in her Trophy Pile, and on the next turn Magnificent Mister Nibbler would be back to his old value of 2.
Thirdly, after playing up to two cards, and capturing a villain (no more than one per turn), the player Energizes, by drawing cards from the Draw Pile to refresh her hand up to 7 cards. This ends her turn and play passes to the left, with the next player doing the same three phases.
(NOTE: For those of us who sometimes find ourselves with nothing but torsos and legs for FIVE TURNS IN A ROW (yes, it happened.) there is the option of Returning to Headquarters. As the sum-total of your turn, you can discard any number (including your whole hand) of cards and draw that number from the draw deck. After doing so, shuffle the discarded cards back into the draw deck. You can't capture villains on a turn when you Return to Headquarters, but sometimes, when the body part you need to complete a Hero isn't available any other way, it's a good option.)
Sidekick
The Sidekick is a neat little part of the game that offers two kinds of extra options for play.
First, it acts as an extra three card pool for trading. During the play phase, a player can choose to trade one of the cards in his hand for one of the three face up cards in the Sidekick. This allows you to snag a body part you need without the drawback of having to Return to Headquarters (and not capture a villain that turn).
Secondly, if there is ever one head, one torso and one leg card forming the Sidekick, the Sidekick becomes Active. What this means is that its value (the sum of its parts scores) can be used by any player alone or along with one or more of their Heroes' values, to capture villains. This ability remains as long as the Sidekick is Active (and let me tell you, deactivating the Sidekick (by trading one of the cards from your hand in for a different type of body part, thus breaking the "one of each" needed for it to be Active) is both a clever move and one which may have your fellow players ready to wring your neck!)
Scoring:
The game ends when all villains have been captured. At this point, everyone counts their devices and the point value of their villains (which is not the value it took to capture them, but instead a small 1, 2 or 3 on the card) and adds it to the number of devices in their Trophy pile to create their score for the game. Thus a player with a Trophy pile consisting of 2 3-point villains, 1 2-point villain and 4 1-point villains along with 3 devices would have a score of 15. High score wins.
Alternative Play
While the game is really great as-is, there are alternative ways to play as well. The Villain cards have Hero (yellow dot) or Superhero (green dot) levels, with Superhero having negative numbers and a wider variety of values you have to reach to capture the Villains. (With Hero level, you take out some of the Hero/Device cards as well, making it a shorter game.)
You can play a short game, by laying out fewer of the Villain cards and using all of the Hero/Device cards.
You can play solitaire, tracking how many turns it takes you to clear the city and trying to come in under your previous speed. And plans are in the works for an Infinity Level Expansion Deck, which will add more Heroes, Villains and Devices and incorporate Division and Decimals into the Addition, Subtraction and Multiplication of the Numbers League boxed set.
Conclusion:
Like many gamers, I originally was a bit skeptical about a math "educational" game being fun. But after playing a few games of Numbers League, I stand wholly corrected. It's very entertaining, on several levels, and seems to be as appealing and re-playable to kids as it is adults.
The art is /awesome/. Chris Pallace has captured the perfect mixture of wacky fun and homage to classic heroes that will appeal to both children and adults (especially those who are fans of superhero comics). And Ben Crenshaw's layout and graphic skills makes the game visually interesting /and/ easy to comprehend (a difficult combination.)
All in all, I can't say more than this: the game is as fun to play as it is easy to learn, and it really works the simple math skills (but you don't have to tell your friends that part...)
