Card and board games have been entertaining man for centuries. Games span from Poker to Gin, Chess to Monopoly. Other games, though, are less prominent. Here are some of them and reasons you should try them out!

     Arimaa is a simple game, which is easy enough to learn. Only two players can play. It is played on a chess board with chess pieces, but the resemblances stop there. For example, there is no fixed starting formation for your pieces, and capturing is limited. The object of the game is to get a pawn to the other side of the board. Stronger pieces, like the king and queen, can push and pull weaker pieces out of their way. Unlike chess, all pieces in Arimaa move the same way, 1 space, forward, backward, left, and right. Pawns cannot move backward and there are no diagonals for anyone. A player gets four steps per move. You can move one piece four steps, or four pieces one step each. Any combination you like. There are four trap squares in the middle of the board. If a piece is on one of these squares, adjacent to an enemy piece with no friends adjacent, the piece is removed from the board. Arimaa is fun to play and easier to learn than chess, making it more a family game and less scholarly.

    Quoridor is an abstract strategy maze game. It’s a two or four player game, and an average game takes fifteen minutes. Like Arimaa, its object is to get your piece to the other side. Quoridor is played on a 9×9 board and you need twenty walls each two squares long. Each player puts their piece in the fifth square of an edge. You can use your turn to either move your piece, or use a wall to block your opponent. First person to the other side wins! This game sounds like a lot of fun, though personally I’ve never played it. Since you have to play it on a specific board with eighty-one squares and slots for the walls, you need to buy  a Quoridor game box. With four players on the same board, it could get pretty hectic and fun. If you are interested, buy it online at bizrate.com .

Egyptian Rat Screw (or Egyptian Rat) is a variation of Slapjack, only with a bit of elaboration. For instance, you do not just slap when a jack is played. The object of the game is to obtain all fifty-two cards, wiping out the rest of the players. Each Player (whether it be 2 or 3 or 13) get an even amount of cards from a standard fifty-two playing card deck. The cards are face down the whole time, so no one knows what cards they have or the order that they are in. The first person lays down a card. If it is a number card (2-10), the next person plays a card. This continues until there is a face card.

    When a face card is played, the person after the face card player has a certain numbers of chances. They must play another face card in the next few cards or the face card player takes all the cards in the pot. The number of chances the unlucky player gets is based on the face card laid down. For instance, if you see an Ace, don’t worry. You can put down four cards until you get a face card. But if you see a Jack, you better start praying, because it only gives you a single chance to lay down a face. Obviously, Queens give you two chances and Kings three. If a face card is laid before your chances are up, the process is repeated only with a different pot winner and a new victim. The pot winner puts the won cards at the bottom of their deck and starts the next hand. If you think you’re low on face cards, there is one other way to win back cards.

    Slapping is a great way to retrieve some cards if you think your running out of face cards to do your dirty work. Slapping works like this: a player can only slap the deck if one of these two circumstances happen. Let’s say that you play an eight (the suit of the card never matters in Rat Screw) and then the very next player also lays an eight. The first person to slap the top card (you can judge by who’s hand is on the bottom) takes all the cards and starts the next hand. The other circumstance is called a sandwich. Say you throw down a 2, the next player, a 4, and then the third, a 2. The first person to slap that last two takes all the cards in the pot. If a person slaps unjustly, even on accident or if they were mistaken for the card put down, must put the card on the top of their deck on the bottom of the pot. That card is a dead card, meaning this: Someone plays a 6, then you play a nine. Anyone who mistakes that 9 for a six (making it a double) slaps and puts a card on the bottom. If the card they dispatch is a nine, it does not form a sandwich with the previous nine and play continues. Slapping could save you when you just lost a hand to a face card. You lay a 3 then Another player, a jack. You have on chance, right? Wrong. if you lay a 3 it makes a sandwich and you stole his jack and take the pot. That’s all you need to know about Egyptian Rat. Enjoy.