Впечатления
• Оформление. Главный компонент игры — разноцветные деревянные миниатюрки динозавров, яркие и приятные на ощупь
Это важно, потому что правила игры предполагают, что мы часто будем их трогать 🙂 Личные планшеты игроков из картона, двухсторонние. А вот мешочек в комплекте не понравился, нитки из него лезут будь здоров
• Все механики игры заключены в названии. Мы будем драфтить динозавров! В свой первый ход вы набираете из мешка 6 фигурок вслепую, затем забираете себе одну и передаёте остальных соседу. И так по кругу пока они не закончатся. А, ещё есть кубик, который определяет, в какие зоны должны выставлять динозавров все, кроме активного игрока, который этот кубик бросал, на него ограничение не распространяется.
Выбранных динозавров вы выставляете на свой планшет в одну из зон, каждая из которых даёт очки по своему принципу. Это может быть необходимость ставить только одинаковых или только разных динозавров, ставить парочки, строить пирамиду и так далее в зависимости от выбранного планшета.
• Здорово, что стороны у планшета две, так что у вас будет два режима игры на выбор: один чуть легче, второй посложнее. Разнообразие — это всегда здорово! Но хотелось бы и ещё больше планшетов.
• Кажется, игра очень простая, но каждый раз необходимо подумать, какого динозавра себе оставить и в какую зону «пойти». Всего за игру вы выставляете 12 штук, так что прокачать каждую из зон не получится точно, поэтому нужно выбирать приоритетное направление. И посматривать при этом на соперников, вдруг кто-то тоже решил собрать полный сет из стегозавров, и тогда вам на двоих не хватит! Ведь количество каждого вида динозавров одинаковое, и всегда можно прикинуть, сколько их ещё не вышло.
• Игры на драфт обычно имеют особый режим для двоих, и тут он тоже есть, работает неплохо. Вы просто каждый раз, когда выбираете себе динозаврика, ещё одного отправляете в сброс, чтобы он не достался сопернику. Мы с сыном много таких партий наиграли. Хотя лично мне всё-таки больше нравится играть от 3 игроков.
• Вообще, на коробке написано, что играть в «Драфтозавров» можно от 6 лет, но мы неплохо справляемся с 5,5 летним сыном на летней стороне. На зимней не играла с ним, мне кажется, там есть некоторые концепции, которые будут ему сложноваты, но не сильно. Но конечно, ребёнку очень нравятся яркие классные миниатюрки динозавров, он часто просит поиграть в неё.
• Из недостатков: не очень удобно передавать динозавров из руки в руку, особенно с ребёнком, у которого маленькая ладонь. Но хорошо, что разработчики не поскупились на деревянные фигурки, а ведь могли просто сделать жетоны, которые быстро затёрлись бы.
И не уверена насчёт того, что можно побеждать разными способами и разными сочетаниями зон. Пока кажется, что собирать одинаковых или разных на летней стороне по умолчанию выгоднее, как и пирамиду на зимней. И это создаёт шаблонность. Но надо пробовать, да и кубик, конечно, может вмешаться и просто не дать вам следовать привычным стратегиям. Думаю, он именно для этого тут и сделан.
How to play Dinosaur Tea Party
Dinosaur Tea Party is a light deduction game where players try to be the first to figure out 3 of the other guests’ names. Players do so by narrowing down the various traits of each dinosaur at the tea party to discover who the guests may be.
The challenge is that revealed traits are open information to all players. Thus, narrowing down the information helps others players as well. So there’s also a bit of a race to guess correctly before the other players do.
There are 20 dinosaurs at the tea party. Time to guess who the other guests are!
Setting up the game is a breeze.
All Dinosaur Tiles are placed face up on the table. Each player gets a set of Trait Tokens. And the Dinosaur Cards are shuffled together. Then 3 dinosaur cards are turned over one at a time and a random Quirk is placed on each of those three dinosaurs. Then all the dinosaur cards are shuffled again and one dealt to each player.
Players secretly look at the dinosaur card they were dealt — that’s the guest they are — and they’re ready to play.
There are 15 traits in the game. These traits show up on the dinosaur tiles as well as the dinosaur cards. And each player has a set of trait tokens that represent each trait.
The include things such as if the dinosaur is eating or drinking, what they’re wearing, the color of room they’re in, and whether they’re showing a tail, teeth, spikes, spots, or stripes. Oh, and they may also have a pet with them.
Each player has a set of the 15 traits to narrow down guests.
The game is played by taking turns guessing traits and/or guest names.
On a player’s turn they may ask one of the guests if they have a certain trait. That guest will answer either Yes or No. If the guest answers Yes, the active player gets to keep going. If the guest answers No, that player’s turn is over and play progresses to the next player.
In either case, the guest who answered takes their matching trait token and places it in front of them to indicate their response. If they answered Yes, they place it with the trait showing. If they answered No, the place it with the big X over the trait showing.
(Obviously, players must answer truthfully…unless they’re a dinosaur with a quirk (explained soon))
Vincent is drinking tea and showing teeth but isn’t in a green room nor eating. Are they close to guessing who I am?
Instead of guessing a trait on their turn, the active player can also guess one of the guest’s name. If they’re wrong, there turn simply ends. However, if they’re correct, they take a sugar cube and that dinosaur tile is turned face down. The revealed guest also discards their dinosaur card and draws another (takes on a new identity) and removes all their revealed trait tokens in front of them.
When guessing a guest’s name, whether the player is right or wrong, their turn ends. If they’ve claimed their third sugar cube, they win the game!
Otherwise, play continues to the next player.
See how simple that is?
Of course, we also need to tell you about the dinosaur Quirks!
Reginald has a quirk this game.
As mentioned, during set up 3 dinosaur get random quirks placed on their tiles. These quirks may cause these dinosaurs to give false answers — throwing a twist into being able to correctly deduce guests.
- Always Says No: When a player asks about a trait, this dinosaur must always answer No (even if the correct answer would be Yes).
- Always Lies: Whenever asked about a trait, this dinosaur answers the opposite of the truth.
- Switches Answers: When asked for the first time, this dinosaur answers honestly. Thereafter, they answer opposite of their last answer. Thus, they’ll continue to switch from Yes to No with their answers regardless of what the correct trait answer is.
Players continue taking turns until one player has correctly identified 3 guests (claimed 3 sugar cubes). That player wins the game!
Looks like Carlton will always say “No” this game.
Can the whole family enjoy Dinosaur Tea Party?
If you haven’t already guessed, we think Dinosaur Tea Party will be a hit with everyone in the family.
This light deduction game is just the right amount of deductive work for players of almost every age.
Since all information is open information (except for which dinosaur card each player is holding), the game is all about figuring out which traits to guess of which player. Should you keep asking the same guest more trait questions or moving on to another guest? You could narrow one guest down further, but if they answer No, then your turn is over and you’ve just revealed more information for the other players.
When it’s narrowed down to 2 possible dinosaurs, it’s often best to make the leap and guess one.
Inevitably, you’ll narrow it down to where a guest could be one of two dinosaurs. And then it’s all down to lucky guessing on who they are. If you get it right, hooray. If not, then you know the next player to go will guess correctly and gain a sugar cube.
It’s that light tension that keeps everyone on their toes.
It’s really fun when traits are narrowed down enough so that you can figure it out because of your own dinosaur traits. For example, one guest may be narrowed down enough to know it could be between two dinosaurs. But if you’re one of those dinosaurs, then you know exactly who they are.
Likewise, you may choose to guess traits of other guests based on which traits your dinosaur has so that when they’re being narrowed down, you know slightly a bit more than others.
I’ve got 2 sugar cubes already. Can I be the first to get my third and final cube to win?
And then there are the quirks!
Those add a lot of fun to the game. They keep the game from being straight out open information. To get that extra edge, players should always keep those quirks in mind. And we love it when we get a dinosaur card showing us we’re one of the dinosaurs with a quirk.
The Switches Answers quirk is a fun one to play.
It’s also fun asking and answering questions with more than just “are you eating?” or “do you have spots” and “yes” and “no”. Instead we like throwing in more thematic questions and answers such as “Why on earth did you let your pet come with you? How disgusting.” and responding, “Oh, I’m sorry. You must have me confused with someone else because I most certainly didn’t bring a pet with me. My pet hates these type of parties.”
Dinosaur Tea Party is actually based on a Parker Brothers game from 1976 called “Whosit?”. However, Restoration Games has brought this game back to life in wonderful fashion. They updated the game play by tweaking some of the rules and streamlining it a bit. Then for fun, they tossed in dinosaurs to take the place of the humans and visually rocked it out of the park!
Overall, Dinosaur Tea Party is a fantastic deduction game for families!
I’m now Dennis!
How does Dinosaur Tea Party score on our “Let’s Play Again” game meter?
Dinosaur Tea Party is another game that cries out for multiple plays in a row. We have yet to get away with just playing the game once. That’s because it’s kind of addicting!
It seems that win or lose, everyone wants another crack at it.
The game flows so nicely and even though players are taking turns, there’s really no downtime. Because even when it’s not your turn, you’re trying to work out who the other guests might be based on the traits being revealed. So everyone is invested in the game the whole time.
Playing multiple games in a row is also simple to do because there’s really nothing to set up between games. Simply turn all the face down dinosaur tiles back over, randomly distribute the quirks, reshuffle the dinosaur cards, deal one out to each player and you’re ready to go again!
Restoration Games did a wonderful job dusting off an older game, making some key game play changes, and bringing it to colorful life again. Yes, the addition of dinosaurs is also a huge hit in our book!
We highly recommend grabbing a copy of Dinosaur Tea Party for your family!
