Fantasy – Easy, Quick, & Fun

This is a game that sneaked up on our gaming group, and we are glad that it did.  I did not know anything about Fantasy, the card game, until I was looking for a few cheap games to throw into my Cyber Monday board game blow out purchase.  Only really having the name of the game and the box art to go on, I made a quick decision to add it to my cart.  I remember thinking something like, “Hmm, with a name like ‘Fantasy’ how bad can it be?”  And since it was on sale, it was well within the impulse purchase price range.

The game is super easy to learn.  The rulebook is very short and everything one needs to know is printed in simple rules on the cards themselves.  Because it is so easy to learn, there really isn’t any curve for new versus seasoned players. I’ve been able to play this game with “non-gamers” and they enjoyed it enough to play multiple sessions in a row.  The box says for ages 12+ but after watching us play once, we didn’t even have to verbally explain the game to a nine-year-old, who jumped right in to the second game like a pro.

Even though my gaming group and even my non-gamer friends greatly enjoy the game of Fantasy, hardcore gamers will probably turn up their nose at it.  However, everyone I’ve played with doesn’t take the game too seriously and there is always a lot of laughter around the table.  This is because right when you think you have a strategy, someone swaps hands with you, or steals the card you were going to duplicate, or something similar that washes your strategy down the drain.

The goal of the game is to have the most cards in front of you when the deck runs out. Players are dealt five cards for their starting hand. On their turn, a player draws a card from the common draw deck, placing it into their hand, and then selects a card from their hand to play by placing the card in front of them on the table. There are 7 types of cards, each with its own special ability, which is resolved when played. The special abilities are all pretty straight forward, like draw two cards, or take a card from an opponent.

If kept lighthearted, the game is quite fun and wrecking other people’s chance at winning isn’t as easy as first expected.