Animal Planet’s “Monster Week” is in full swing, and AiPT! Science has decided to join in on the fun, with a slightly more skeptical viewpoint. Click the “MW2018” tag down below for more, all week!
Lest you think the stodgy skeptics of AiPT! Science are no-fun sticks in the mud, here are a few ways to get your cryptozoology on without taking off your thinking cap or plodding around the woods with night vision goggles. These are our favorite Bigfoot-themed card and board games.
Hard to believe there wasn’t a game simply named Bigfoot before 2014, but here it is!
Bigfoot is, fittingly enough, a deduction game, but not like Werewolf. Werewolves aren’t real, duh. Designed by Brett Brooks, Bigfoot pits cryptozoologist vs. creature, as the former tries to find the latter before he’s shamed by wrong guesses. The cryptozoologist player lays out two different “paths” made up of action cards and sensing equipment, and the Bigfoot player gets to choose which to take, with the cryptozoologist taking the other.
When Bigfoot trips a sensor, that player has to reveal how many of his five hiding spots (“lair” cards) match the symbols shown. The cryptozoologist can then guess which cards Bigfoot has. Two wrong guesses in a row make for a shameful loss, but if our intrepid hunter can figure out all five in six rounds, Bigfoot is found!
The action is expanded in Bigfootses, in which up to six players (each with their own identity and special abilities) try to capture more Bigfootses (well, have YOU got a better plural?) than the others, on the way to 10 victory points.
There’s a “Woods” deck where Bigfootses and other nasty things hide, and a “Thingies” deck with equipment and other stuff that might help. If that sounds like Munchkin, you’re not wrong — the campy card names and “take that” mechanics are very reminiscent of the mega-popular gateway game.
But a more easily attained goal and some interesting artwork set Bigfootses apart. In perhaps an homage to a very early episode, the Bigfoot in this game looks a lot like Homer Simpson. It just fits, don’t you think?
Now forget about the puny humans — Bigfoot meets his match in Bigfoot vs. Yeti, from Shoot Again Games. It’s a 2-4 player, rummy-style game in which the “suits” are cryptids like the chupacabra and the Jersey Devil, and each has a special power that activates when you lay down a set.
You do technically play as an investigator, using “Proof” cards to bolster your trick. But in each round, only Bigfoot or Yeti can win! If the Bigfoot cards have the most points at the end, the Yeti cards do not score!
Sadly for our large-pawed Northwesterner, it would seem yetis have the savageness needed to win. After all, they were instrumental in turning the tide at the Civil War battle of … Yetisburg.
You ever think a TV episode or game was created just to make a certain pun or joke? Welcome to Yetisburg, from Paizo Publishing, the alternate history card game in which monstrous yetis (along with mammoths — sure, why the **** not?!) battle alongside both Union and Confederate troops. Line your forces up and decide which type of card gets to go that round, pulling a chit at random to see in which direction they attack and how much damage they inflict.
But use your secret yeti weapons judiciously! As they barrel in from the back lines, they can take out your own troops, and if you accidentally fire on them, they’ll turn around and retaliate! Northern aggression, indeed!
A game of Yetisburg in progress, from BoardGameGeek user Martianfrommars
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