New Game: Gnumies

Rachel was digging through the stack of games, and found "The Gnumies".

I'm pretty sure the name of the game is pronounced "new-mees", or possibly "num-mees". Rachel insists on calling it "The Gummies".

I really enjoy this game. It sounds a little complicated at first, sort of like "Beat the Buzzard" on crack. It took some explaining, but after a few minutes, play was decided.

In The Gnumies, each player has a set of cards used to bid on other cards. There are 11 of them - 10 numbered 10 to 100 in multiples of 10, one with an asterisk. Like Beat the Buzzard, the high card wins. Unlike Beat the Buzzard, only the winner of the bid loses his/her bid card. And unlike Beat The Buzzard, the cards come with little tie-breaker points on the bottom of each card.

The asterisk card can be played if you don't care for the card that was being bid on. If you play the asterisk card, you wait until the card bid upon is claimed, and you look at the next card in the stack. If you like it, keep it and lose your asterisk card. If you don't like it, give the card to someone else, and save your asterisk for another turn.

Single cards won are worth their face value. Pairs of cards, regardless of value, are worth 20. Three of a kind is worth 50, four of a kind: 100, and five of a kind: 150.

SO, once you get a card, you begin trying to hoard cards of the same value.

There is a bad card called the Wullawaki. I just call it "The Zapper", because it "zaps" a card you've already collected for each one you get. Because it's bad to win the card, the winner gets to KEEP the bid card used, all the OTHER PLAYERS have to THROW THEIRS AWAY.

There is one "Wild" card that can be won. It is equal to the value of the lowest card you have. As noted above, any pair is worth 20 points, so that wild card will b worth AT LEAST that... maybe more, I you have a big set of low cards. This one is weird -- the LOWEST card played wins it.

Once everyone has used all bid cards, the round is over, and points are calculated.

Rachel, Heather, Selena, and Chris played a four-player game of The Gnumies.

Here's how the scores came up:

Heather	Chris	Rachel	Selena
150	147	92	83

Heather wins! It's only her second game, and she's already won.