PUSH is a push-your-luck card game.
They went route one with the name there…
Push your luck…But not too far! Rack up points by playing cards to the stacks – but watch out! You can’t repeat a colour or number. Choose when to stop and score the best stack or push your luck and go for more!
PUSH Game Play
You shuffle the cards and choose a start player. That player will flip over a card from the deck that consists of cards numbered 1-6 in 5 different colours.
They then put that card on the table. They then can continue drawing one card at a time putting them into separate piles of cards on the table, with a few rules.
You can’t…
- create more than 3 piles of cards
- put the same number twice in a pile
- put the same colour twice in a pile
- add more than 1 ‘Roll’ (dice) card in a pile
There is another special card not played onto piles, ‘Switch’ cards are put to one side. More on what they do in a bit.
So that player keeps playing cards one at a time until they choose not to or they can’t play a card they drew because of the colour/number/pile restrictions.
Taking Cards
If you choose to stop you pick any pile of cards and put them face up in front of you in on your ‘Bench, sorted by colour.
Players in turn order MUST take a pile of cards. But, the turn order will switch from clockwise to anti-clockwise and back depending on how many ‘Switch’ cards were drawn that round.
If you don’t stop in time and you can’t play a card, you must roll the die. You don’t collect a stack of cards but other players will as normal.
Players will also roll the dice for each Roll card they took this round, so what does it do?
Well, whichever colour you roll you discard ALL the cards of that colour from your Bench. If you roll the Star you’re safe, or you lose ALL of the cards from your bench if playing with the variant.
On your turn instead of drawing cards, you can ‘Bank’ by turning all of your Bench cards of one colour face down.
When the last card is drawn that is the last round. Players add up the totals of cards from their Bank and Bench, and most points will win.
Theme
Nah, doesn’t need one.
Setup
Shuffle a deck of cards it couldn’t be easier. Well, you have to shuffle REALLY well as piles of similar cards are grouped together during play.
Components & Artwork
Just cards, nice cards. The design is good enough to see the colours and numbers across the table.
The red on the die was a little pink which confused me a bit until I checked the back of the cards and realised pink wasn’t in the game 🙂
Ease of Teaching & Accessibility
Very simple to teach with very few rules.
As the game is all open information, you can help new players. You can talk them through their options with cards they draw as they draw them should they need help.
PUSH Summary
Push your luck games are good fun with Port Royal the leader for me.
I like that PUSH adds an ‘I Split, You Choose‘ element to a push-your-luck game. You’re looking to build these piles with a profitable one for yourself and rubbish ones for your opponent.
But push too hard and not only do you lose out on gaining any cards but that ‘good’ pile you made will be drafted by an opponent AND you roll the die and probably lose cards from your Bench.
It’s a simple game that works really well.
Jesta ThaRogue