Game Like a Mother

Quick Take: Simple strategy with a little luck thrown in. With cards like queens, kings, knights, dragons, and magic wands the theme of the game is something that appeals to every kid I know. This game is providing some fantastic basic math practice for my 6 year old - a key aspect to doing well in this game is being able to look at a random grouping of numbers in your hand and making a basic addition problem out of them (this allows you to draw more cards). It's very easy to pick up the basics to play this game, this is a great introduction to strategy games.  

How to Play: Your goal is to collect queens, the higher in point value the better. The rules have different numbers of collected queens and points required for victory depending on how many people you're playing with. Queens are all placed face down in rows on either side of the draw pile, they are sleeping until they are collected by a player. Queens are collected by playing a king card. Knights can steal queens from other players hands, dragons block the knights. Potions can send queens back to sleep (back to being face down in one of the rows) and magic wands block the potions. There are also jester cards that give you the chance to draw a card and see if you earn yourself an extra play. It's very basic cause and effect, nothing is too complicated except there are a couple cute rules about specific queens. If you wake up the Rose Queen you get to wake up a bonus queen and the Cat Queen and Dog Queen can't be held in the same hand. 

Variations: You could add more math options if you wanted. Numbers in sequence, discarding all your odd numbers, discarding all your even numbers, I like the opportunities available with this aspect of the game. 

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Similar Games To Check Out: Exploding Kittens, Rat-A-Tat Cat, Sorry! Revenge, Kingdomino

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