Smash up is a card game where you are trying to have the most power to control a base. The goal is to win 15 victory points before your opponents.

For me what stands out in this card game is mixing the different factions. This game has a lot of expansions available with different factions of crazy characters that you can combine. The base game comes with 8 factions, which gives a good mix of characters to start with. I love being able to create a different deck every time with cards that normally wouldn’t go together. It makes the game a lot more interesting when you can have a deck of dinosaurs and robots working together.

Smash Up is a 2 to 4 player game, ages 12 and up that takes about 45 minutes to play.

Contents:

• Dinosaur faction deck
• Alien faction deck
• Ninja faction deck
• Pirates faction deck
• Robots faction deck
• Tricksters faction deck
• Wizards faction deck
• Zombies faction deck
• 16 Base Cards
• Rulebook

Each player chooses 2 twenty card factions, shuffles them together and places them face down on the table as their draw pile.

Shuffle the base cards together and draw one base per player plus one and place the cards face up in the middle of the table.

Each player draws 5 cards for an opening hand. If their hand doesn’t have any minions they will redraw. They must keep the second hand.

How To Play

On your turn play one minion, one action or one of each for free. There’s no specific order and you don’t have to play any cards.

To play a minion, choose a base and place the minion card beside it facing toward you. Then follow the card.

To play an action, show your card, follow the instructions and then discard.

After you’ve played your cards check for scoring and draw two new cards. Each player can only have a max of 10 cards in their hands and will have to discard down to 10 if they go over. When a player runs out of cards they can shuffle their discard pile and place it face down as a new deck.

Scoring

Scoring happens when the minions power(top left of the card) equals or exceeds the base’s breakpoint. Before scoring, players are able to use a special ability card. If the card causes the power to be less than the breakpoint, the base will still score.

Their are three large numbers on the base card. The player with the most power wins the base and they get the points on left side of the card. Second place will get the middle amount and third will get the points on the right. You must have a minion on the base to get points. Any two players tied for first will both get first place points.

After scoring any special abilities triggered at the end can be played. The base is discarded and a new base is drawn.

The first player to 15 points wins.

That is the basic way this game is played. The rules of the game seem simple but there is a lot going one with the cards and abilities that really add to the game and switch things up. This is not as easy as it sounds and makes it a great card game for you to go head to head with your friends.