I'm a lover of board and card games, and in the past decade, board games have become a lot more complex and there's a whole lot of them geared more towards adult players. In July, IDW Games released a new card game that combines two of my favorite things: card games with tiny plastic miniatures and the Image series CHEW by John Layman and Rob Guillory. It's a card game that celebrates everything CHEW, including the adorable chog.
The game takes 30 minutes to play and needs 2-5 players. It's also competitive. Let's take a look at what's inside the box and how to play this game.
What's in the Box?!
First, there's the rulebook and a copy of CHEW #1 by John Layman and Rob Guillory.
There's also a chog bag, some chogs, and some cards for the game. Because I picked up my game from IDW at San Diego Comic Con, I got two extra investiation cards as well. We'll get into game play in just a second. There is a problem with so little being packed into such a large box.
Everything looks nice and put together in here, right? Well, after moving the box around a little, this happened.
All of this could have easily been packed into something the size of "Coup," if you're familiar with that game.
There's four different types of cards in this game. From left to right: Clue cards (which you use to connect cases and culprits), Culprit cards, Investigation cards, and Case cards.
Gameplay Basics:
Here's what a players board set-up looks like. Each player starts with 3 chogs, a case card, on their left, which they have to connect to a culprit card. They also receive a 5 investigation cards as well. In the middle of the board are more chogs, a "crime scene," which contains more clue cards, face up, and the investigation deck.
Just to give you an idea of the objective and a close up look, on the far left, you have your case card, and you see the blue border on the right of the card? That's the color that you need to match on the left of your clue card, as shown above.
As you can see, the goal is to connect the case card to the culprit card using the clues. In addition, there are numbers on those clue cards as well, and they have to add up to at least 20 before you can solve the case. As you can see, there's split colors, which work for either of the colors on the card, in our case, the "Secret Blueprints" card can connect, on the left to either a red or yellow right bordered card. Also, the cards with the colorful mosaic are wild. That's self explanatory.
You get 3 requisitions (actions) per turn and you can take a chog from the bank or draw 1 Investigation card. Investigation cards can strengthen your game and hurt others, including cards that can either help or hurt your investigation, but as always, the color borders have to match, and you have.
Here are some examples of the Investigation card types. Some of these, like "Partner" and "Bad Guy" cards stay in place, and others, like the "Food Fight" card, go into another player's case, which, as you can see, gives the, "-4" to their total point value, and most of the time, are a specific border color and not wild. In the upper-left hand corner is a bite mark and a number. That's how many chogs it costs to play that card. That's why you need chogs. That and they're adorable/delicious.
After you draw cards or take chogs, you get to make connections. You may take one of the face-up clue cards next to the deck, in the middle of the playing field and add it to your investigation, but only if the colors match. As stated before, you win when you connect the case to the culprit AND the numbers in the upper-right hand corner add up to at least 20. That's pretty much the basics.
There's also variants to the game where you eat hot peppers and take shots. They recommend beet juice.
Gameplay notes:
- 2-5 Players
- Competitive Gameplay
- 30 Minutes
- Ages 12+
- Poyo
Final Thoughts:
The game is incredibly simple to learn how to play. Many of the games I play with friends, like Zombicide, Arkham Horror, and Pandemic, have pretty in-depth rules which take a long time to learn, and sometimes, learning the rules is longer than the actual gameplay. Chew is simple and fun but pretty random. Strategy-wise, it's tough to get a leg up on someone using your noggin because so many of the mechanics within Chew: Cases of the FDA are random, like drawing the investigation cards and making connections with clues because some turns, there may not be a connection you can make.
I do love the chogs and the cards, which highlight moments and characters from the comic book, but the one thing this game failed to do was capitalize on people who have weird connections to food. When Tony Chu eats something that isn't beets, he gets a psychic impression. He's a cibopath, but in the comics, it gets weird/awesomer from there, but we don't see this in the game.
What we get is a color matching game that isn't bad by any means, but feels like a tad bit of a let down because the source material has so much to work with. Regardless, anyone who is a fan of CHEW, the comic series, will really enjoy Chew: Cases of the FDA and it does have a great replay ability. If you're a fan of CHEW, this is something you'll want to check out.
We'll see you guys next time when we talk about another awesome game!