If you are ready for a crazy game that tries to take the RPG style of gaming to a new level, then Gauntlet of Fools is the game for you.
In this card/dice game, 2-6 players can choose from many different characters that randomly dealt out along with many different ability cards that are dealth alongside the characters.
Each player will choose a character while other players will try and boast their way to take that character for the other player; but beware, boasting comes with a price; you can take that monk with the flaming sword but will you do it blindfolded while getting over a hangover? However, these boasts will make you lose dice or life points right from the beginning of the game so be careful what you boast about. The whole point of boasting is not only to get the character with the great ability, but to pretend like nothing can stop you in this gautlet of baddies you are about to face.
The gameplay is simple, once you all have your characters and abilities and so on, you enter the gauntlet searching for many foes. These foes come from a deck of creatures, events and so on; and once a card is played from this deck, all players must face the card as if they were alone in this game (this is not a cooperative game at all); so even if you defeat the card by out-matching it's defense, the other players must do the same. Now, when that creature attacks, it also attacks everyone and you have to be able to defend the attack, otherwise you get wounded and after just 4 wounds, you are DEAD.
However, when you "kill" a creature, you get the gold or sometimes a bonus that is described on the card itself and the player with the most gold at the end of the game wins, so you could die first but be the richest of the bunch.
First off, you see what you are going to encounter (could be a monster, a modifier card - which will possibly affect the next card if it is a monster - or an event card that also affects all players - could be in the form of all getting a wound or all getting gold -).
Then, you attack the creature; you do this rolling dice (equal to what your character's ability card shows) and if you roll greater than or equal to the defense of the creature, you kill it and gain it's treasure, but then you still have to defend against the creature's attack (which to me if you killed it, it should not attack you - I think this is a small flaw in the rules; I would personally change this rule to make it more fun that if you kill the monster it does not attack you, thus making the game last a little longer) and if you fail, you get a wound and if you get 4 wounds you are dead, but you don't lose your gold (on a side note, you do not die right off the bat once you get that 4th wound; if you can heal once the fight is complete, you may remove that 4th wound and continue, if not, then you are dead.)
So this goes on and on until all players are dead and then you count up the gold per player and determine a winner.
My two cents on this game is that I love it but I would rather not use the boasting and just play the simple game and like I mentioned before, change that rule of defense once the creature is dead, it's dead and cannot attack YOU; it can go ahead and attack others unless they also killed the monster.
Because of the simplicity of this game and because it has great replay value it will get a 4 dice out of 5.
Game available at Multizone
