You can find good things inside little mint tins. Mints for a start. I love mints. Can't just take a couple either, got to have the lot. They can also contain teeth, as I discovered at a sicko/friend’s house when I found a tin and expected to pop a delicious mint. They can even – and this will boggle the mind – hold an entire game…
This, then, is Galen's Games Mint Tin Series 2, a collection of 1-2 player games that somehow fit inside those self-same tins. Genius, I tell you. The idea behind these super portable games is to make them super accessible as well. Most of them can be learned in about 5 minutes, and played in 15-20 minutes, so there's no excuse for not taking them everywhere you go. Keeping with the portability of the games, the cards are all made with waterproof and durable PVC, so they should happily endure a fair bit of play.
Let's have a look at the Series 2 line up: first up, the Action Bundle brings Kickabout and Hard Drive.
Kickabout is a 5-on-5 footie game in which you pick and reveal a card from your hand each turn. The Defender is trying to match the Attacker in order to steal the ball. The Attacker is trying to complete passes by not being matched. When the Shoot card is played, it's time to roll some dice...
Hard Drive is a game about racing in a digital universe, where you'll race to be first to hack the Mainframe. It uses a simple dice system that leaves lots of room for clever tactical play. Easy to get to the table with kids or grown-ups, this game packs an intense head-to-head racing experience into a 15-20 minute game. You'll be using Hacks, Mods, Routers, and Overclock to outsmart the course and your opponent.
The War Bundle, meanwhile, contains That's An Order! and Mint Mechs.
In That’s an Order! - which has a solo mode and a sandbox feel wherein you can create your own maps - players take on the role of commanding officers issuing orders to the field with the goal of destroying the opposition or capturing their base. The delay between orders being issued and actually being carried out make for an intense tactical experience that is full of surprises...
Mint Mechs is the one I most like the look of, and hinges on dice drafting and placement. Dice drafting takes place on the map. It's reportedly a slightly longer teach for a slightly deeper game. Players will use Fuel and Teleport Spaces to traverse the map, gain resources, and pick up dice that will power their Mechs. Once a player has drafted enough dice, they can choose to run a Sequence. A Sequence involves taking the dice off of your systems one at a time in sequential order (ascending or descending) and activating their Sequence Effects. This results in massive damage combo attacks, but it also can overheat your Mech.
On top of all this, the Kickstarter contains optional expansions for some games and an opportunity to catch up with any of the Mint Tin games you've missed (good luck resisting the many, many options available). There isn't long left on this crowdfunding campaign - which has smashed through its target - so head over here and stuff your pockets with gaming goodness.
About the author:
Steve is currently a freelance board game blogger, but often dreams of life as a pirate, or as a ghost herder in the Lake District, or as an evil estate agent who sells haunted houses for his own dark pleasure. Instead of figuring out how to do these jobs in real life like a normal lunatic, he tries to write about them instead, and releases the resultant books upon the unsuspecting world via famous digital bookstores. More books are bound to follow. Find this peculiar entity here.
