Cross Breeds
WBG Score: 7
Player Count: 2-8
You’ll like this if you like: Light tableau building card games with a bit of adult humour.
Published by: Midnight Mayhem Creations
Designed by: Joe Forszt
This is a review copy. See our review policy here
When I was talking to designer Joe Forszt about reviewing this game, he asked me if I was offended easily; I replied, nervously, "not really, why!?" He said "basically the animals are crossbred to be super dangerous so some of the language is graphic [in the] ways an animal can kill you. Everyone has loved it but ya never know!" I was intrigued and slightly nervous about trying this game. Now I have played it, I can kind of see where he is coming from. But more on that later! Let's get it to the table and see how it plays first.
How To Set Up Cross Breeds
The main thing you need to do in setup is get the right amount of each of the different cards to form your Forest. There is a page in the rulebook that will take you through this, but in short, based on your player count, take the right amount of Positive Crossbreed cards, Failed Experiment cards, Decoy cards, and Danger cards. Shuffle them all together and form six to nine separate even draw piles, depending on player count. Place these all face down in the centre of the table. This is your Forest for the game. Shuffle the Event deck and place this next to it face down. Now take the Disaster, Pacher, Stalker, Firestarter and Booby Trap cards and place them to the side of the Forest along with the two dice.
Each player then chooses a player colour and takes their seven starter tokens. Each player also has one Unswap token to begin with, as well as a Reference card. Each player now randomly takes a Hunter card and reads it out loud. Anyone who needs to claim additional tokens or cards based on their Hunter card now takes them.
All players now roll both action dice, the highest roll will be the first player and round tracker. Give that player the first player token and round tracker tokens. They are the "North" player. You are now ready to begin.
How To Play Cross Breeds
Players will now take it in turns to play tokens if they wish, and draw one card from the "forest". You have multiple tokens, some players have more than others based on their chosen Hunter card. But you can only play five tokens in total per game. You could play all five on your first turn, but then have none left for the rest of the game. You could play none, or one, or whatever you want. Just note, there are nine rounds, and once you have played five tokens, that's it for this game.
When you draw a card, take any top card from any pile and place it into your own play area. This is called your Woods. The rules suggest you create a three-by-three grid in front of you over the course of the game, but this is not mandatory. It's just a handy and clean system. But note, wherever you place a card, you must now leave it there for the rest of the game. You can look at it whenever you like, but you must always place it back, face down, into the spot you initially placed it. When you take a card, this immediately ends your turn. So, a turn could be as simple as drawing a card, looking at it, then placing it face down in front of you. If you draw an Event card then you must read this out and carry out its actions. This card will not go into your Forest.
The first player will need to take note of the rounds. When the play comes back to them, they will start round two. Mark this by moving the token for round two to the top of the pile, or however you want to mark this. There are nine round tokens, just be sure to do something with them all, move one from the right to the left, flip one over, whatever it is, each time you start a new round. This way, you will all know which round you are in, and when the game ends.
These are the actions available to you from the main tokens. Remember, you can only use five of these in any one game.
Trap: You can place this in front of another Hunter, and then when any card is lured out in that direction, that card will now go to the player that placed the Trap token down, instead of the original player. Essentially, this is a way for the player who placed the token to draw an additional card, not on their turn. But of course, not all cards are good.
Swap: Here, you can Trade one card from your Woods with any card in any other players Woods. Place the Swap token on top of the card you take. This card can now no longer be Swapped again by any other player.
Meat: Place this in front of you or any other player, and a card is immediately lured towards that player. If a Trap is present in the same area as the Meat, the player who played the Trap takes the card instead.
Lock: You an place a Lock token on top of any of your own cards in your Wood. This card is now protected from any event.
Snipe: You can pick any card from any other players face down Wood pile in front of them and remove it from the game. You may look at the card as it is removed if you wish.
Drone: This allows you to look at any four cards in any pile. You must keep this secret from the other players. Not just what the cards are, but also what piles you looked at.
Binoculars: This allows you to look at one face-down card in front of any other player. In a five to eight player game, you can then also look at one card in two other players' Woods too. So, three cards in three separate players in total.
There are then additional tokens you can get through various Hunter powers or Event cards. I wont go through them all here, but these are the main ones.
UnSwap: When a Swap is initiated on you, you can place this UnSwap token on top of the card you were forced to take so that it then cannot be taken by any other player in a Swap action.
Keep Out: This works with the Event card, No Trespassing. Here, the player to the right of whom ever drew this Event card is able to place a Keep Out token on any card in the Woods of the player who drew the card. This card now cannot be looked at by the player who owns it until the end of the game.
Tent: This card works with the Event card, Camper. This card stop the player who drew the card having another turn to draw a card until they roll a seven or higher on their turn. They can still use tokens, but they cannot draw cards until the Campers go! The card also has some interesting text about why the campers are there.
When the last player finishes their ninth turn, the game ends. All players now reveal the cards they managed to gather and keep during the game, and total their score. Each card has a monetary value on it, some positive, some negative. Cards that have the same symbol as others will give you a multiple bonus. The highest total monetary worth of their cards is declared the winner.
Is It Fun? Cross Breeds Board Game Review
This game has me in two camps. I love the theme. Cross Bred animals roaming wild in some island, and I'm the guy who has to go in and capture them? Yes please! And the game plays so fast. I have experienced two-player games of this that finished in under 15 minutes! Once you become familiar with the different tokens abilities, and how the scoring works, this is very simple game. But this is the other camp I sit in. Is this too simple?
Well, yes. Simply put, there is not enough strategy here in how you get your cards. You can look at some, once. You can steal specific ones from your opponent, once. But most of the cards in your collection will be there because of random chance. And that makes the final scoring seem inconsequential and unrelated to your own decisions. It feels too random and lacking in agency. It's fun to play, and fun to watch the chaos, but it just all feels to luck based for me.
But this chaotic and random nature starts to make sense and even flourish with more players. With two or three players, four even, not enough happens. Players do not mess with each other enough, and you will simply all form a tableau of cards, some of which are there out of choice, others simply through sheer luck, but without too much interference from other players. And in some games, without too much interference from the event cards if things go your way.
However, with more players, there seems to be more opportunity to mess with other players, see more cards, and have a little more control over your decisions. I am not sure if this is actually the case, it just feels like that. I think, because the rounds are slower, as more players need to have a turn to get through a round. And more things happen. It just feels like more is going on. And it is, in total. But I don't think more is happening to each individual player. But it does create a better feeling of chaos, action, and significance. And ultimately fun.
As such, I feel this game is definitely better suited to higher player counts. I would only recommend it if you are going to play in groups of five or more, where the chaos can really start to flourish. It can still be fun with a lower player count and incredibly quick too. It just feels a little too lucky for me to go back to it over and over. Although I have played it a lot with two players, as I have enjoyed exploring all the cards, and this is my most regularly played player count, so it was just easier for me to get more games in this way.
It is worth noting the game uses some pretty course language. It warns you on this on the front of the box and rule book. The odd reference and swear word hear and there. Worth noting, as the cards do all tell a story. It is quite amusing, but obviously not suitable for every player.
The animal cards have a fair bit of additional detail on them, irrelevant to the rules and strategy. Just a fun bit of flavour text. And they are the star if the show by far. This sums up the game for me. There is a lot of thought and detail in these cards. A lot of humour and originality. Not everything on these goes towards the actual strategy of the game. But if you can go into this knowing what to expect—a very light, luck-based, chaotic tableau builder—then you may well just have an absolute blast with it!
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