And so, with a perfunctory “arrrr!,” we turn our bilge-sucking attention to yet another contribution to all playkind from Mayday Games, this one called “Walk the Plank.”
The big booty of the game is the decks of piratical cards which are, for the most part, about trying to get your opponents to jump off the conceptual plank. Well, there is a plank. It’s three cardboard pieces long, and it leads directly to the toothsome jaws of a scurvy sea monster. At least until someone plays a “Shrink the Plank” card.
You get your own deck of ten cards and your own collection of three color-coordinated meeples. There’s a Captain’s Favor token that helps you remember who starts the round, and a boat deck card for your meeples to shiver their collective timbers as fate awaits.
You select three cards from your deck. You make your selection with utmost strategicality. “Hmm,” you ponder, scurrilously, “perhaps I’ll start with my Shove Left card, forcing the player to my left to advance her meeple one plank closer to its deeply deserved demise, and follow that with a Retract the Planks card, bringing all the plank-walkers within smelling distance of their fishy fate, and follow that with an I Don’t Want to Die card…um, arrrr!” And so, having arranged their cards according to their evilly plotting whims, the round proceeds – player by player, card by card.
Walk the Plank is easy to learn, it’s quick, it’s tense, it makes you laugh, piratically – all the attributes of a game that is truly Major Fun!
Walk the Plank is recommended for 3-5 bilge rats, 8 and older. It was designed by Shane Steely and Jared Tinney, and is © 2013, Mayday Games. Godspeed, mateys.