Gaming Signal: REVIEW: Gracias by Richard Borg and Alan R. Moon

REVIEW: Gracias by Richard Borg and Alan R. Moon

REVIEW SUMMARY: A fun card game that deserves it's nomination as Games Magazine Family Card Game for 2007.
MY RATING:

BRIEF SYNOPSIS: A card collection game where the object is to have the second most cards in any given color!!

MY REVIEW:
PROS: Very simple rules and a quick playing game.
CONS: Strategy only plays a partial role in winning, and the whole large mouse, little mouse thing is not needed once you get the game flowing.
BOTTOM LINE: A great family game

This is one of those games where setup seems confusing, and scoring seems odd until you play a single hand. Then all becomes obvious, and that is when the fun begins. This game has just about everything I could ask for: screw-your-neighbor aspect, fast play, and the ability to do my terribly bad Cheech Marin accent. So it is bound to get high marks from me, but the game is very fun.

The basic play involves the dealing of two cards to each player as your starting pool, and then the placement of stacks consisting of 2 face up cards and 1 face down. The play then goes from the left of the starting player selecting a stack and keeping one face up card and the face down card. Then delivering the other face up card to another player who must say "Gracias". The objective is to collect a high number of cards from each of the six colors, but not to have the most since at the end of the selection phase - the highest number of cards in each color are thrown away. Now, I am skipping out on some of the rules, but that is the general flow of the game. But it is not hard to see where the screw-your-neighbor element comes from when you hand them a blue card and they now have the highest number of blue cards.

The artwork is simplistic and reminiscent of Speedy Gonzales of Looney Tunes fame - which is a good thing. The colors are also well done, nothing is too bright or too dark. The overall production value is well done with the card stock being similar to nice playing cards.

The only downsides from my standpoint is that there is a logistical step of moving a large mouse and small mouse card to determine who is the first player in each hand, and after you understand the rules - this seems to be an unnecessary step. Also, the game is somewhat random with the facedown card mechanism so planning strategy does not always work, but that is a minor fault. This game is great fun for all ages and was nominated for Games Magazine's New Family Card Game of the year award for 2007 (it lost, but being nominated is pretty good.)