The blurb on the box says, “Short are the rules – long is the fun,” and those words are music to the ears of Major Fun.
Just 4 Fun is a strategy game for anyone who can do simple addition. The game consists of a board (a six-by-six grid), a deck of cards (numbers 1 – 19), and playing pieces (4 colors, 20 of each). Players are dealt four cards and they attempt to control the grid squares. Four in a row wins.
Each square in the grid has a number from 1 to 36. A player can put a colored piece in the square if they have a combination of cards that add up to that number. Play the cards – claim the spot. Multiple players can occupy a spot. This is where the game gets tricky and moves past the simplicity of tic-tac-toe. If you are alone on the square, you control it. If another player joins you, neither of you have control. When a player places a second piece in a square, that square is closed to all other players and is now permanently in the control of that color.
Even with four players, games are fast. We unwrapped the box, read the rules, and played through a game in less than 20 minutes. There is not much down time and enough strategic decision making so that you’ll want to come back and try again.
We played the German version of the game as it is produced by Kosmos, but our friends at Simply Fun produce a Yankee version of the game called Fourmation. The Simply Fun game board is modular—it comes in 4 pieces— so that you can change the arrangement of the numbers on the board.
In both cases, the design is elegant, the rules a snap, and the strategy—Major Fun.
For 2-4 players, ages 10+
Just 4 Fun was designed by Jurgen Grunau and © 2005 by Kosmos. Also distributed as Fourmation by Simply Fun.