Games: Jurassic Wars

I don’t know what it is about little boys and dinosaurs. Noey is no exception. He just loves them.

Why I mention this is because I was recently given the opportunity to try out some boardgames by Pamela, a mum of 3 lovely kids and owner of My First Games. The first box we took home was Jurassic Wars, a card game about – you guessed it – dinosaurs. The objective of the game is to fight and kill your opponents dinosaurs by scoring “hits” against them, determined by throwing some special dice. Wow, fighting dinosaurs! What is there not to love?

I brought Noey along with me to collect the game and he was completely absorbed when Pamela ran through the game with us. And when we got home, he’d barely changed out of his clothes before he grabbed the box and insisted that we play.

As I said earlier, the game revolves around fighting other players’ dinosaurs and defeating them, such that you remain the last one standing. There is a deck of 20 dinosaur cards which are distributed equally among the players. In the deck are 10 meat-eaters (represented by the red cards and dice) and 10 plant-eaters (represented by the green cards and dice), each of varying strengths. During each turn, a player selects a dinosaur from his hand to play against another player with the objective of defeating them. He does this by rolling more hits on the dice than his opponent. The stronger the dinosaur, the more dice you are allowed to roll during a turn. The players take turns in one-on-one combat, and during each roll, the losing party gets his number of dice reduced by the difference in the number of hits till one party has no more dice left and the other party is declared the winner of the turn. To spice things up, there are also Combat cards which each player can use to change the equation in a bid to get an upper hand. The relevant time period in play also has a bearing on the outcome.

There is much to like about this game. Noey is very taken by the artwork on the cards, which has well-rendered dinosuars which are familiar to him. I think the premise of the game is also easy enough to understand, and combat is just the sort of thing that appeals to boys! I also don’t know any child who does not enjoy rolling dice.

I like the fact that while this game is intended for players aged 7 years and above, the basic concept is easy enough for my 3.5 year old to understand. I started off on the game with Noey leaving out the Combat cards and time periods to get him into the game first. I introduced the Combat cards later to try to teach Noey about strategy. My husband even came up with an easy speed round where each player has to draw a card off the top of his deck at every turn and upon throwing the dice, the dinosaur with the most hits wins.

The only thing I don’t like about the game is that Noey liked it too much and kept wanting to play this! I’m not such a fan of dinosaurs, and definitely not as much a fan as he is. So my solution has been to ask Papa to play with him instead. Hah.

Since my son is such a fan, I bought a copy of Jurassic Wars from My First Games for him, and also another set for a dino-loving son of a friend of mine. My First Games also offers a laminating service for an additional $5 per set, which I decided to get for our cards since my kids are such destroyers. (Naomi more than Noey, really.)

Jurassic Wars retails at $29.90 and you can get this, and more fun and exciting games, at My First Games. Check it out!

*I was loaned a copy of Jurassic Wars by My First Games for the purposes of this review and received a discount for my purchase. All opinions expressed herein are strictly my own.