Game: Stacked

  • Publisher: Mr B Games
  • Designed by: Tim Phillips, LeAnn Phillips, Sean Brown
  • 1-5 players
You can place your shapes in odd and wild ways. So long as you can play it, it’s fair game.

From the Publisher: Stacked is a family game from 1-5 players, that is part card game, and part dexterity. The goal is to place blocks on top of a pre-set base to form a teetering tower. Without knocking this tower over, the person to bank the most points in their play pile wins! After much debate on the “proper” way to play Stacked, the designers decided to include their 3 most popular modes of play. Try them all and enjoy 3 games in one!

Tim Phillips, one of the Masterminds behind STACKED

Tim Phillips came by the house and showed me and some friends Stacked, a unique game that he had worked on and is now live on Kickstarter. Since he was kind enough to come and teach us the game, I thought it only fitting to talk about it.

Build on your base. Continue and wait for someone to knock it all down. Score points. Most points win!

In Stacked, you have fifty-six shapes and fifty-six cards to play with. Set-up is simple. Take the cards out and dump the shapes out of the box. It’s that easy. Then, shuffle the cards and prepare to play.

Game One: Draw and Play

So Tim taught us first the Draw and Play style of the game. First we created a base. A base consists of 1-3 cards, 1 being hard and 3 being easy. Then you place the blocks on the table to construct the base. As you draw a card you must place the block on the base in any way possible. The next player will draw a card and make it a point for the shape to not touch the color of the previous player. Each card related to its shape has an amount of points in the bottom right corner. The only to move other blocks is with your own block. When someone knocks over the blocks, everyone scores their points. The one who knocks it over will get only half of his points.

The Base can be 1,2 or 3 blocks based on difficulty.
Game Two: Follow The Leader

The second game Tim taught us involved building a base like before. This time we were all dealt 7 cards. Play a card and its specific shape, then the other player plays either the same shape or color card and then the corresponding shape. If one doesn’t have a card that meets the design, they draw a card. Moving the blocks already on the base does not require another block. When blocks are knocked down, everyone counts their points and subtracts the ones in their hand.

Points are earned when a piece is played. They are then totalled when it all comes crashing down.
I love that the placement of the shapes doesn’t have to fit the norm.
Game Three: Trick-Taking

The final game Tim taught was a trick taking approach. The base is built. Everyone draws 7 cards. Then the first player calls out a color. Each player picks a card and places it face down. Then everyone flips the card face up and compares the number on each card. The highest card winner wins the trick. If a tie of the highest, then the player with the next highest wins. Then the player to the trick winner places the shape matching their card on the base. When it comes to the winner of the trick, they decide who is going to place their shape for them. When the blocks fall, scoring is done with the victory points on the played cards-half for the one who knocked them down.

Components
The game is setup and ready to go.

The blocks I played with were 3D printed. They had a nice weight to them. When the official copy comes out they will be made from a plastic based mold. What is interesting is that the shapes are thin and wide. This makes placement to be uneven where you place the blocks creating an interesting challenge. The cards will be similar in look from the art design and have shapes (circle, square, triangle and to meet the colors on the cards. The shapes on the cards are to help with color blindness. It is possible that they may come out with something to help differentiate the colors on the physical shapes after production. This was something that we discussed as we played. As for the card quality, previous iterations looked like basic card style stock. I think that would be great for sleeving with your basic sleeves or possibly dragon shields as we played with over the paper versions.

The higher the card, the lower the points.
My Thoughts

I enjoyed this game. For a dexterity game, the stacking was enjoyable and I could see this as a family game. It also can make for a fun filler game for adults. I like that there are three modes of playing. There also are plenty of pieces. It creates a level of replayability that works.

This is the crazy creation we made when playing the follow the leader game.

If this is something you want to back, go to the STACKED Kickstarter page by clicking HERE. As of right now it is 33% Funded with 17 days to go.