We recently bought the
Minecraft Card Game? for our son,
the six year-old “Little Guy,” because he’s immersed himself in
the
Minecraft universe. I don’t pretend to know much about
Minecraft; I’ve accepted it as one of those fads I’m aware of yet
encourage my son to explore. At his insistence I bought
Minecraft
for his tablet and many of his first-grade friends are into it, so
it’s his “thing” now (having set aside
Star Wars, Doctor
Who, and
Godzilla for the time being). So he now wants any
associated Minecraft toys and, when he saw it, the card game. I was
skeptical at first, thinking I was just pandering to his fad
de-jour,
but upon playing it several times with our family, discovered the
Minecraft Card Game? did a nice job of merging an interesting
theme with easy yet engaging mechanics.
Analog adaptations of electronic games rarely work, especially if
they try to closely replicate the sometimes complex game play of the
digital version on the table top; I still have a set of cards for the
ill-fated
Tomb Raider card game released in the mid-1990s
that, while fun, didn’t satisfy as much as actually playing the
computer version. The
Minecraft Card Game? doesn’t try to
simulate the rich game play of the digital
Minecraft
environment, but harnesses aspects of the setting to entice kids away
from their electronic devices and back to the kitchen table to game
with the entire family.
I’ve
discussed using popular themes to entice young or new
players into gaming; it’s a means of capitalizing on someone’s
interests and porting that enthusiasm to a particular related game.
The
Minecraft Card Game? accomplishes this by extracting
elements of the popular digital environment and transferring them to
an analog tabletop game. The focus isn’t on building a world but on
the basic functions of mining elements and crafting tools, with the
benefit that tools offer additional actions during the game. The game
begins with five piles of resource cards – diamonds, gold, iron,
stone, wood, and “wild” cards (representing any one element a
player chooses) each with a different numerical value – and four
piles of craft cards showing a “recipe” of the kind and number of
elements needed to craft swords, shovels, pick axes, axes, and hoes.
Each tool has another numerical value; the winner crafts enough tools
to reach a particular score based on the number of players (in our
three-player games the winner has to craft 20 points’ worth of
tools). Each turn a player can take two actions: “mine” a face-up
element card from one of the five piles; spend elements from their
hand to craft a tool; or take one tool from the craft pile and put it
in “reserve,” either to craft it on a later turn when all
elements are in hand or to deny another player from getting it. The
resource deck also contains two special kinds of cards: TNT, which
allows a player choosing it to pick two resource cards; and Creepers
who, when revealed after a draw, cause all players to lose one
resource card from their hand. But some crafted tools can affect game
play: swords allow a player to ignore one Creeper attack; shovels
allow the player to reduce another player’s actions by one for a
turn; pick axes allow a player to take an extra action; axes count as
two wood for one transaction; and hoe’s clear the top card off of
each resource pile (another good strategy to deny other players
necessary resources). Once used, however, tools revert to a purely
score-keeping role.
The game package claims it’s good for 2–4 players of ages 8+;
Board Game Geek offers a play time range of 15–45 minutes. We’ve
played it several times with three players, each one running about
20–30 minutes, but I’d revise the age range down to 6+ (Board
Game Geek’s “Community” rating also places it at 6+). Granted,
we played the game with “open hands” of cards, a strategy I often
use for gaming with young children to help them along. The Little Guy
handily transferred his enthusiasm for electronic
Minecraft to
the analog card game. The combination of number identification and
addition skills reinforce school lessons, while mining for elements
and following the “recipes” for crafting various items offer an
extremely basic resource management experience...ideal for eventually
transitioning to more mature fare like
Settlers of Catan. Kids
quickly grasp the very basic mechanics. The cards have illustrations
in the blocky
Minecraft style, along with clear notations on
point values; even the tool functions have very basic, easily
recognized pictograms reminding players how different tools function.
The adult players soon picked up on various strategies to deny other
players actions, resources, and tool cards, which the Little Guy
noticed and started employing himself.
At $12.99 retail, the
Minecraft Card Game? offers a good
family game – not too long with opportunities for strategy and
interaction – enough to entice kids away from their electronic
devices and back to the table top to interact with live humans. The
short play time works well with limited attention spans, yet the game
play encourages kids to focus on some basic addition skills (number
values, score tallies) and matching elements to craft “recipes”
in sets. I’m not sure how much it would interest older children
(beyond 10 years old), but it could easily accommodate a range of
player ages from six to adult. Give the price point, theme, and
quality of the game experience, I’d recommend the Minecraft Card
Game? as a good, game-related holiday stocking stuffer.
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