I make pancakes every single month. Sometimes, we add berries, sometimes we add sprinkles, sometimes chocolate… In Fat Stacks, you hope to add those yummy toppings while your “friends” add burnt pancakes, bugs, raw meat, and more to your stacks, completely ruining them!
Fat Stacks is a three to six player tabletop game that takes roughly 20 to 60 minutes to play, for players 14 and older. It’s a simple game to play, but it takes a lot of paying attention (and being aware of what is going on) to master. In the middle of the table, you will find a bunch of topper cards — cards used to top off your pancake stack — but you will need to earn them. Some are really easy to earn, such as the one which asks you to have three basic pancakes in a row, while others are more challenging, like dealing a bunch of negative cards all in one go.
These toppers are needed, as they are the only way to lock in points. You will need to know what each of these cards require and be actively grabbing them every single time you earn them, as you never know when you might need to lock in your pancake stack. These topper cards also have instant things that can happen — allowing you to play more cards or to draw more cards, which can be useful.
But, let’s talk about how you play. On your turn, you get to choose if you want to play three cards, draw three cards, or draw two cards and play one card. Playing cards is pretty simple — you can either play a card on your own stack or play a card on another player’s stack. You can form as many stacks as you want, but cannot combine stacks placed out or move cards around within those stacks.
This means that in front of you there will be a stack of pancakes. These pancakes, until a topper is placed on top, will not count towards your score. You’ll want to watch your stacks, as you can earn a lot of money through careful placing. Stacks will benefit from matching pancakes and toppings, comboing for more cash at the end. All of these fat stacks are in play until a topper locks them down, pushing the stack into a pile and placing it to the side.
The game will continue until all of the cards in Fat Stacks are in the hands of the players, then after one final round, you will need to count up your completed pancake stacks and see who wins.
During the game, there are also three trophies — which need to be passed around to whoever currently holds the qualification to have them. These trophies are high price items, so you do need to watch them, and they can be given to the person who has dealt out the most damage in one round or who has the tallest stack. It’s a really interesting concept, as we forgot about these and they really made a big difference at the end.
Fat Stacks is a cute game with a simple concept, and I really enjoyed our time playing it. Despite it being a longer game, it doesn’t take too long to understand and start sabotaging other players!
You can join Fat Stack’s mailing list through their Kickstarter, to hear when they next do a print!
Love board games? Check out our list of the top board games we’ve reviewed.
Comments are closed.