The Three Stooges Card Game

Nyuck, Nyuck, Nyuck! Spread Out! BONK! POW! Hommina, hommina, hommina...

Heh heh. Women just never get the "stooge thing." I'm not one to make universal semi-sexist comments, but I've yet to meet a member of the Double-X chromosone set that had a high tolerance for the antics of Mssrs. Moe, Larry, Curly and Shemp (Curly Joe DeRita and Joe Besser were lame, so I ignore them). Must be the nurturing urge. If you encounter a MALE, however, between the ages of 16 and 60, and profer two extended fingers in the general area of the eyes, I daresay you will encounter the ritual response of a hand extended parrallel to the nasal ridge along with the reponsorial "Nyuck, nyuck, nyuck!" It was with great affection, therefore, that I discovered THE THREE STOOGES CARD GAME in my review box.

For starters, this is no High Concept. The players act out the parts of "stooges" themselves, attempting to commit all those exquisitely painful activities that are such a highlight of the Stooge film body of work. Imagine a giant Stooge Slap fight (what, ten seconds of film time?) rendered frame by frame onto cards. The mechanics of the game are entirely card-based; there are no external elements such as tables, dice or charts (well, okay, you do have to keep track of points, so a piece of paper and pencil stub might come in handy, but not essential). Play is absurdly simple, and extremely (EXTREMELY) fast paced. Not a game for the Advanced Third Reich crowd, but sometimes that is exactly the sort of thing I'm looking for.

What You Get For Your 8.95 Plus Tax

The deck of cards consists of 55 playable cards and 5 double sided instruction cards (this is an interesting twist--) instead of including a small, densely printed and stapled rulebook, the folks at Archangel Entertainment opted to include all the rules on five *seperate* cards. I predict this could be a real huge pain in the butt. The instruction cards will, inevitably, go astray. Fortunately the rules are easy enough to memorize. Only a knucklehead would have a hard time with this one... nyuck nyuck!

The cards are illustrated with black and white movie stills of the actions they are attempting to illustrate-- for instance, the DUCK defensive card depicts Moe ducking while Larry delivers a furious slap in the face to Curly (the blow being meant for Moe but he ducked, git it?). The black and white graphics are ENTIRELY appropriate, much more fitting than illustrations or even color (which would be sacrilege).

In any event, the cards are very well done, both from an artistic and quality perspective. They are pretty stiff and have a thin plastic lamination coat, similar in size and execution to modern playing cards. They should stand up to a few years of abuse. My only gripe was that there is no graphic distinction between Attack and Defense cards at first glance (you have to read down in the text to figure it out). This is no big deal but it does require you to take the time to look. 1 deck of cards should be all you need to play comfortably with 2-3 players. The rules state that an extra deck would be handy for 4-8 players, and I believe it. During playtests, we went through the deck (and thence the game) rather quickly.

How The Game Plays

As mentioned above, each player plays the part of a "Stooge." The players get inolved in a mock combat, with cards representing the slaps, punches, pokes-in-the-eye, et. al, that were prevelant in the series. The game sequence is played out like so:

(pregame stuff) Write out a score sheet. Put everybody's name on it and record points lost there. Choose a dealer. Deal out five cards each. Remaining cards are facedown in a draw pile.

(game stuff) Dealer goes first.

Play attack cards on opponents

Play until 1 of these 2 conditions are met: A defense card is played (and reactions to it resolved)

or

The attacker runs out of attack cards.

Everyone replenishes cards from the draw table.

The next player takes a turn.

When all cards are drawn from the draw deck, the game goes into the *Larry, Moe, Cheese phase*. The player with the *lowest* point total gets to execute ALL his attack cards on anyone else in the game with them only being able to respond with defense or matching attack cards (a word on that later).

At the end of the Cheese phase, the player with the lowest amount of damage is the winner!

I know this sounds incredibly simplistic, because it probably is. However, there is enough chrome in the game to contribute to an intensely variable, unique experience. For instance, there is the concept of Matching attacks. If an opponent plays an attack card (on anybody) that has one or more of the same word in it as one of YOUR cards, you can play that card on anybody. For instance, Moe plays the SLAP card on Curly. Curly has a BIG SLAP! card in his hand, whih he retaliates with back to Moe (the SLAP! in Big Slap! matches the SLAP in the SLAP card that Moe played). Most of the game is in the cards themselves, however, with interesting counters and defenses such as DUCK, SLAP, OLD SWITCH-A-ROO, and BONK ON THE HEAD being de rigeur for a game.

In preparation for this review, I played once against my wife and once against two friends. By FAR the better experience of the two was playing against my friends. Not because of any misogynistic preconceptions about men being "better" at games than women, but because this game is truly designed for more than two players. Many cards have a sequential effect (such as big slap, which applies to multiple players), which is totally lost in a two player game. In both games I got waxed, but had a great time. The rules actually state that the game plays much better when the players adopt phony accents of their favorite stooges, and I'm here to confirm this! (a few beers might help with your vocabulary) Like any new thing, the game started slow, but was going a point-blimfark by the end of the night. I got in two games vs. my wife and two versus my friends. The pace had accelerated to something like this:

FWAP! (sound of card being slapped down) "POKE IN THE EYE!" FWAP! "Not so fast! I'm playing NYUCK, NYUCK, NYUCK!, the only counter to POKE IN THE EYE!" FWAP! "Oh yeah? Well how does a POP GOES THE WEASEL suit ya?" FWAP! "Why I oughta... Here's a HAIR PULL!" (exasperated Curly sounds) "why, I oughta....!"

(distinct sound of bottlecaps being levered off of carbonated beverages) glug glug glug glug

You get the picture...

The Verdict

On a sliding scale of 1 through 5, I'd give THE THREE STOOGES CARD GAME a solid 5. The game isn't going to win any design awards, but it IS a blast! I recommend it highly for those idle moments between something more serious, such as "downtime" at a Con, or maybe you're just having some buddies over for a few hours and want to get a few cheap yucks. The folks at ArchAngel Entertainment are onto a good thing-- publishing high quality, durable and replayable (and best of all NON-COLLECTIBLE) card games with an humorous theme. Their previous multiplayer card effort, GROO:THE GAME, is about on level with the THREE STOOGES CARD GAME, perhaps a notch or two higher in terms of complexity. I'm a big fan of any company that will publish a card game that does not require you to mortgage your paycheck on all sorts of "collectible" expansions. When was the last time you purchased a *complete game* for less than most starter decks for collectible card games? You could do a lot worse for a measly 8.95... give THE STOOGES a try.