{"id":10437,"date":"2024-10-16T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-10-16T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/?p=10437"},"modified":"2024-10-13T18:45:04","modified_gmt":"2024-10-13T22:45:04","slug":"circus-flohcati","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/2024\/10\/16\/circus-flohcati\/","title":{"rendered":"Circus Flohcati."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Circus Flohcati<\/a> is a 1998 game from the prolific designer Reiner Knizia, whose name you can\u2019t mention without calling him a Prolific Designer; he\u2019s published over 600 games, and has a number of all-time classics to his name, including Samurai, Tigris & Euphrates, Through the Desert, Battle Line, Lost Cities, Medici, Ra, High Society, and The Quest for El Dorado. I own seven of those, plus at least four more games by him, just at a glance at his BGG page. He\u2019s good.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Circus Flohcati is actually one of his oldest games, but it\u2019s out in a brand-new printing from 25th<\/sup> Century Games, which brought Ra back from purgatory, and uses art from the 2013 Korean edition. It\u2019s a light push-your-luck game, listed for ages 6+, that is kind of perfect in its simplicity: there are just a handful of rules and the game works fine, with a high luck\/randomness factor that should keep younger players in the game \u2013 as long as they grasp the main scoring mechanic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The entire game is a massive deck of cards, 80 circus cards and 9 action cards. The circus cards come in ten colors, with cards numbered 0 through 7 in each. The action cards have three varieties, with three of each in the deck. The goal is to build the most valuable circus through collecting high cards in each color; through playing trios with three cards of the same numerical value; and possibly by causing the end of the game by collecting one card of each color in your hand.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

On your turn, you may select one card from the face-up cards in the market, or, if you don\u2019t want one, you may flip over cards from the top of the deck until you find one you like. If you flip a card with a color that\u2019s already in the market, you discard that new card and your turn ends immediately. If you flip an action card, you take that action: take a random card from an opponent, choose an opponent to give you a card of their choice, or reveal cards from the deck until you get to a duplicate color and then choose any card from the market that you want.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If at any point you have three cards of the same value, you may play them to the table as a free action, forming a trio that is worth 10 points at game end. If you get all ten colors in your hand, you may call a \u201cgala\u201d and end the game, taking 10 points as your bonus. Once the game ends, each player scores the face value of the highest card they have in each color. Any lower-valued cards in those colors don\u2019t score at all, so getting them out in trios if possible is the only way to get any points for them at all. You add those points to the trio points and the gala points and that\u2019s the whole shebang. There\u2019s no penalty for having lower-valued cards, or having too many cards \u2013 there\u2019s nothing punitive in this game at all. You\u2019re just drawing until you get high cards and\/or trios.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One commenter on BGG gave this game a 7.5 out of 10 and said \u201cIt\u2019s stupid and lucky but I love it!\u201d and that\u2019s pretty apt. I don\u2019t know if I\u2019d say it\u2019s stupid, but it is simple. It plays very quickly, and it works with 2 to 5 players. BGG ratings are pretty heavily skewed towards longer, heavier, less luck-driven games, and this is kind of the anti-BGG game in that way: it\u2019s super simple, quick, very random, and very fun. It reminds me a little of Splito, another small-box card game from 25th<\/sup> Century that was one of my favorite new games of 2023<\/a>. I think I like Splito a little more, and it has the benefit of playing up to 8 people, but they\u2019re in the same vein \u2013 you can bring these games to a family gathering where you have players of all ages and experience levels and you\u2019ll have a good time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Circus Flohcati is a 1998 game from the prolific designer Reiner Knizia, whose name you can\u2019t mention without calling him a Prolific Designer; he\u2019s published over 600 games, and has a number of all-time classics to his name, including Samurai, Tigris & Euphrates, Through the Desert, Battle Line, Lost Cities, Medici, Ra, High Society, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[60,408,455,580],"class_list":["post-10437","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-boardgames","tag-card-games","tag-family-games","tag-reiner-knizia","entry"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10437","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10437"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10437\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10438,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10437\/revisions\/10438"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}