Review on 🎮 Blue Orange Games Animix: Fun and Engaging Strategy Card Game for 2 to 6 Players by Flavio Iyer

2-6 Players Competitive Animal Card Point MashupDesigner: Matthew BossuCover: Simon DuchiPublisher: Blue Orange GamesRelease Year: 2020Origin StoryHonestly, before I played this game I was totally expecting a super easy drawing style card game to come with animals. Nothing too complicated or complicated and certainly nothing that might burn my brain. Dear God, I was wrong. This game is the epitome of a simple strategic card game that will have you exclaiming "Whatoooo?!". after playing your first game. Read on to understand what I mean. Gameplay OverviewGameplay is very simple. After a table of various sizes with random animal cards appear on the table in front of you, each player is dealt a hand of six cards (five in a six-player game). When it is your turn, either play an animal card from your hand face down in front of you, or draw an animal card from the table to the table and place it face down in front of you, then replace the card you just drew with one from your hand. . A mountain token is placed on this placed card, indicating that it CANNOT be drawn again. That's all! So here are the key takeaways from all this gathering and placement. First, when you discard a card face down in front of you, you effectively add it to your point stack. You see that at the end of the game each player hides their animal cards and whoever has the most of a particular animal gets ALL the points for that animal and in case of a tie the points are shared. Of course, you don't want to JUST place cards from your hand, you need to manipulate the table to maximize these adorable animals. And this is where all the plucking comes in. When you draw a card from the field, not only are you maximizing your chance of winning the plucked animal, BUT the card you play from your hand is also crucial to taking its place. By discarding certain animals, you can help yourself by increasing the animals' value, and if you're very clever, you can also find ways to drain your opponents of points from their animal cards, which they may be trying to gain points with achieve. This is repeated until each player runs out of cards, all five or six, and then you earn. Whoever gets the most points wins! Materials/board. There is no playing field as the entire game consists of cards and some tokens. However, the cards are of excellent quality. Somewhat smooth, but they're also a good thickness so as not to warp or bend. Mountain markers are made out of pretty standard cardboard, a little flimsy but to be honest you only use them to mark the animals you've played with so they work well. Box/Storage I love this little box! This item is very small and fits very easily in the extra gaps that may be on the shelves or Kallax bookshelf. It has a magnetized lid that makes a very pleasant SNAP sound when the lid is closed. The inside of the box has a fairly conventional insert, split down the middle so you can separate the decks, but also has plenty of space between them to store the tokens so you don't have to use pouches. Overall I'm very impressed with the box and the insert, they just work great! Visual Appeal / Theme Visually, the game looks great, with each animal species having their own unique image. The colors are fantastically represented on the cards not only to distinguish them from each other but also to give the game a kind of relaxing atmosphere while playing. The subject, on the other hand, lacks any real depth. Yes we have animals and I love how the game's title is artfully intertwined and YES there is a small theme embedded in the scoring (lovebirds score when paired etc.). But even with that, I'm sitting there thinking that you can just add ANY theme to this game and it will work just fine. Of course, this in no way detracts from the merits of this game, on the contrary, I am very happy that other games can be made with this formula. Rules in the game, it works! It clearly explains two actions you can do with picture examples and on the other hand has a good explanation of the scoring skills of each type. It's very easy to understand and play with these rules Player Interaction / Fun Factor The player interaction in this game is SO tricky! As I mentioned above, you can manipulate the state of the table to really fool your opponents... BUT... you never REALLY know what animals they're trying to slaughter, do you? I mean, yes, you can try to track what they're pulling out of the table to keep track, but it only really works with fewer players. Once you have a full 6 player game it gets much, much more difficult. Oh yeah, but there's another way... I've found that in games with lots of players, you can effectively keep track of what players are working on by simply tracking how many specific animal cards are missing from the table. . At one point there was only one chameleon, so all I knew was that someone was stacking them face down to score points. This method may work for some animals, but other animals require a large number on the table to score higher, and it's harder to figure out who scores. Aside from my personal strategies that I've found, there is relatively little interaction between players aside from manipulating table status. There's no animal trading or strategy with each other, and how you can tie that to the player by removing an animal is usually almost a secret. I mean, IF someone removes, say, a wolf card and you add them up for points, you REALLY don't want to yell "NO!" and give you away But even with a lower interaction level, the game lasts only 10 minutes! Even in a full 6 player game, you can complete the game in about the same time, maybe longer for those suffering from AP. So the low level of interaction doesn't really matter here as you can easily set up another game and get through many games in the same amount of time it would take you to play almost any regular board game these days. Optimal Number of Players / Replay Value I can tell you that I really enjoyed playing both 2 and 6 player games. Regardless, the game is fast-paced BUT I will say that if you play with a higher score to score points, you'll probably only be able to focus on one animal. This creates an interesting dynamic that I've found when multiple players are tied. Unfortunately, the rules state that ties are shared, so be prepared to share wins. I played with six players once, it ended in a three-way draw...it was pretty at the end, hmm. Now, with two players, the game is much more intense. The game is structured in such a way that you only use as many different animal cards as the number of players +1. So you will usually always fight for the same species, most likely the key is to find out which ones and WIN. The replay value here is enormous. There are 8 different types in the box and you can play a maximum of 7 of them in a six player game. If you're playing a two-player game, you only use three of them, and in each game you can mix and match different types to really change the way points are awarded. But other than that, this game lasts 10 minutes and I bet you will want to play another game once you finish the first one. This first game will almost be like a wake-up call for you, because balancing placing cards on the table and collecting cards in front of you is a pretty interesting skill. Once you understand this, the game will really open up to all sorts of strategies. It gets deeper and deeper with every game I play. Positive Final Thoughts For the price and size of this game, you get ALL the many games in this package. Don't let the simplicity of this game fool you, it just gets smarter every time I play it. Negative final thoughts My biggest and actually only criticism of the game is the distribution of the draws. I've found this to be more common with more players. I would like to see a more interesting tie-break implemented. Overall I'm VERY impressed with this game and what impresses me even more is that I don't usually like easy games. This totally amazed me, how you take a simple idea and mix it with a depth and complexity that just blew me away. And as fast as it plays, I'll always keep it with me to use as a good starter game for my game nights.