More Dino’s, more cards, more chaos…
For the uninitiated, Happy Little Dinosaurs, is a hilarious card game where players take control of adorable Dinosaur meeples, trying to score points each round by playing a variety of weird and wonderful weaponry, score modifier cards, or quirky gadgets to steal, swap, or invert scores. The highest scorer then moves their tiny Dino meeple along a track to victory whilst the lowest score takes a Disaster card, bringing them one step closer to extinction as if you have 3 of the same, or 1 of each colour…You’re extinct!
More Dino’s, more cards, more chaos…
For the uninitiated, Happy Little Dinosaurs, is a hilarious card game where players take control of adorable Dinosaur meeples, trying to score points each round by playing a variety of weird and wonderful weaponry, score modifier cards, or quirky gadgets to steal, swap, or invert scores. The highest scorer then moves their tiny Dino meeple along a track to victory whilst the lowest score takes a Disaster card, bringing them one step closer to extinction as if you have 3 of the same, or 1 of each colour…You’re extinct!
Preparing for Disaster is still easy!
Setup for Happy Little Dinosaurs 5-6 Player Expansion is still incredibly easy even at the new higher player count available with this expansion. All players pick a cute Dino meeple of their choice, the respective board and then two decks are shuffled, one Disaster deck, which you want to avoid, and the player deck, which is then dealt out until all players have a hand of 5 cards containing a mix of weapons, score modifiers, or Disaster avoiding cards (depending on your luck!)
Rounds still play out the same way with a Disaster card being drawn then each player playing a scoring weapon card, which may or may not have an effect that impacts the round. Any effects are resolved or cancelled, then players move to the scoring phase where special effects cards can be played to cause chaos, swapping points between players, boosting or sapping point scores, or even inverting the winning and losing players scores.
Once the dust has settled from the furious scramble of cards played, the scores are finalised, and the winner moves their tiny meeple up their track by how many points they won, and the loser takes the Disaster card adding it to their board…Unless they have a card in their hand to avoid it…
So, what’s new? I hear you say?
Well, alongside adding a bunch of new cards keeping up with the comedic descriptions from the core game, the expansion for Happy Little Dinosaurs also adds in a new wrinkle in how the new Dinosaurs trait modifiers work. The delightful new meeples added through the expansion, named the Raging Raptor & Pterry Dactyl have traits on their boards that operate a little differently, as they have more significant positive & negative modifiers. For example, in the core game most Dinosaurs, have a +1 modifier to one trait and –1 modifier to another. This means depending on the Disaster card drawn, they can have +1 or –1 to their score. The expansion Dinosaurs have bonuses across several traits but also have more significant negative modifiers which means you may have the play more aggressively than players using the core box Dinosaurs when a negative trait Disaster card pops up in play.
The rules have also been adjusted slightly for the higher player count, now allowing the top two scoring players to advance their meeples but also accommodates for ties in 2nd place. This means points flow more freely in higher player games to try and keep the pace moving briskly but the extra player count can occasionally lead to moments of pause whilst everyone scrambles to calculate their scores when several score impacting cards are played at once.
Final Thoughts…
Happy Little Dinosaurs 5-6 Player Expansion does a fantastic job at expanding an entertaining game to more players and whilst it doesn’t add much more in terms of complexity or new additions to the core gameplay, it maintains the winning formula of snappy gameplay with hilarious and inventive card illustrations to create an entertaining tale of tiny Dinosaurs desperately fighting to avoid becoming extinct due to ridiculous Disasters.
There are some occasional swings in pacing due to the number of points flying around at higher player counts but if you want an easy to learn game that adapts well to a decent group size, then adding the Happy Little Dinosaurs 5-6 Player Expansion to you core game is a no brainer for board game night!
