Ages 8+

2-4 Players

20-40 minutes

Overview

I was pretty impressed by this one. Lots of unique mechanics make it stand apart from several other deckbuilding games. Fort really makes you look to see what others are doing and encourages you to build a synergistic deck. Plus the cards are flexible in their uses and often pretty powerful.

The goal of the game is to have the coolest fort on the block! You're going to play cards, usually to gain resources or upgrade your fort. You'll also get to add a card from the center of the table to your discard pile on your turn. Once you've run out of cards from your deck, you shuffle your discard pile into your deck and continue drawing.

You can only play one card on your turn. When you do, you can sometimes discard cards of the same suit to make the card you play more powerful. Your opponents can then discard a card to copy part of what your card does, so everyone has a chance to act on each person's turn. Then, any cards you didn't use get laid out on the table, and other players can choose to add one of those to their deck. Look at all the cool choices that can happen just by playing a single card!

I got a great first impression from Fort and I think it's a great recommendation for gifts or a fresh, unique game for game night.

Description from the Publisher

In Fort, you're a kid! And like many kids, you want to grow your circle of friends, collect pizza and toys, and build the coolest fort.

By doing this cool stuff, you'll score victory points, and at the end of the game, the player with the most victory points wins! Your cards not only let you take actions on your own turn, but also let you follow the other players' actions on their turns. Will you devote yourself to your own posse, or copy what the other kids are doing?

But be careful as your carefully constructed deck might start losing cards if you don't actually use them. After all, if you don't play with your friends, why should they hang out with you anymore?