276°
Posted 20 hours ago

Exploding Kittens Mantis Card Games Fun Family Games for Adults Teens & Kids for Game Night, Popular Kid Games, 2-6 players

£9.9£99Clearance
ZTS2023's avatar
Shared by
ZTS2023
Joined in 2023
82
63

About this deal

This means that if you draw an assassin role card, then you (secretly) know that the game is a competitive one. If you draw a witness role card, then you do not know if the game is cooperative or competitive. So, that’s why the game of Mantis is considered the colorfully cutthroat card game of rainbows. Is Mantis a good game? Inspired by shadowy film noir worlds, Mantis Falls is a thematic journey that requires players to continually weigh the value of cooperation against the implicit perils of trust. Hand management and facedown card play combine with opportunities for betrayal to create a detailed blend of strategy, player interaction and suspicion. At every turn, players make concealed moves and develop hidden plans, but will also have thorough conversations as they discuss tactics, defend choices and bluff to protect carefully guarded secrets. Recently, my husband and I befriended our neighbors, and as fate would have it, they happened to be fellow board gamers.

Each player receives one secret role card at game setup. This role may either be a witness or an assassin. Games may consist of only witnesses or there could be one assassin:This is not a pure social deduction game. I'd argue the split is about 65% hand management, 35% social deduction. This is a challenging game to win even if both players are correctly convinced that the other is a witness and are in full cooperation mode early on. Finding critical cards at the correct time is key to surviving. This play is made as an additional, normal action play (any number of action cards of the same suit), and is immediately processed as a sidebar to all other action. • After this, the player’s "gasp marker" advances one space right. • It is possible to survive Last Gasps if wounds are reduced to below maximum and the gasp marker is below three. In this case, play continues from where it was suspended. Sure. Is it the best game I’ve ever played? Probably not. I wouldn’t say I could play for countless hours, but the game of Mantis falls into the family-friendly party game category. It is incredibly simple to teach. There are a lot of other interesting effects among the Action cards, too many to list here. Most have a way of adding to the tension or tactics. Additionally, there are add-on Modules that aid in fighting any monotony that may develop from playing the base game. Some combinations of Action cards and Events allow you to call on Allies to help as well. Analysis and Thoughts During the Main play phase, each player, with the current player going first, chooses one of four options:

That concludes the turn. If it does not match, leave it in the opponent’s tank. Successfully stealing does not move the cards in your score pile. 3. Play until someone wins You are informed that another witness will join you. By working together, you may have a much better chance of surviving. But what if they are not who they claim to be?There’s been a really interesting trend popping up in board games, lately. I mean, it’s always been present, to some degree, but with the increased prevalence of board gaming societally and the full-court press that Target is trying to pull off in the board game space, you’re starting to see these really intriguing tendrils trying to connect the mass-market and hobby audiences. It’s essentially a gold mine, I suppose, if you can figure out how to get folks moving from the mass-market pool to the hobby pool, but that’s a bit beyond my area of expertise. Just interesting to watch. And so you start seeing more and more games emerge in a really interesting space, as they try to court both audiences, to some degree. I think the folks at Exploding Kittens have been thinking a lot about that space, and so I’ve been intrigued by some of their more recent releases. I’ll be covering a few, so, keep an eye out for those. Here’s one! It’s called Mantis. Let’s see what’s been going on.

Harm doesn’t always come from your would-be assassin. Event cards drawn at the start of each round throw up various hurdles along your escape path. Some of these are incidents, like storms and earthquakes, that can only be mitigated, rather than avoided. Sometimes, though, it takes the form of opposition: an enemy who must be dealt enough wounds to avoid a negative effect, from suffering wounds yourself (you die after a tense ‘last gasp’ window to reduce your topped-out wounds with cards) to discarding precious cards.

In short, it’s a game of matching cards, determining probability and messing with your fellow players along the way. It has a good competitive element without being a hidden traitor game or the use of hidden role cards. Plus, there’s just enough strategy involved to make it fun without being overbearing.

Asda Great Deal

Free UK shipping. 15 day free returns.
Community Updates
*So you can easily identify outgoing links on our site, we've marked them with an "*" symbol. Links on our site are monetised, but this never affects which deals get posted. Find more info in our FAQs and About Us page.
New Comment