Aquarius (game)

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Aquarius

Aquarius is a colourful tabletop card game.
Players 2–5
Age range 5 and up
Setup time 2 minutes
Playing time 20–30 minutes
Random chance Some
Skills required Strategy

BoardGameGeek entry

Aquarius is a card game created by Andrew Looney and published by Looney Labs. The game play has some similarity to the game of dominoes. The card design and feel of the game is influenced by the Hippie movement and the art of Peter Max. The deck contains 5 Goal cards, 15 Action cards and 40 Element cards.

Contents

[edit] Rules and Gameplay

Each player is dealt a hand of three cards, plus one of five Goal cards, depicting one of the five elements; Earth, Air, Fire, Water or Ether. Then one card is placed face up on the table to start the layout. The player with the longest hair goes first. The objective is to connect seven cards with your goal element. The goal cards are kept secret during the game play, so you must bluff and block the other players in order to win.

On your turn, you draw a card, then play a card next to one of the other cards in the layout. You can only play a card if it one or more elements on the new card touches the matching element on adjacent cards. The cards will either have one, two or four of the five elements displayed on them. Other cards in the deck allow you to swap Goals, or alter the layout in some way these cards are known as "Action Cards". There are 5 different types of Action Cards:

  • Trade Goals: This card allows you to switch Goal cars with the player of your choice.
  • Shuffle Goals: This card allows you to gather up all of the goal cards, including those not in play, and deal a new one to each player.
  • Trade Hands: This card allows you to swap hands with the player of your choice.
  • Zap a card: Select a card in play on the table, pick it up and place it in your hand. (When you use this card you are allowed to have 4 cards in your hand rather than the customary 3)
  • Move a card: Select a card in play on the table and move it to a new legal location.

[edit] Expansions

Looney Labs has produced only one promo card for Aquarius, the wild card. It behaves like a single panel card of all five elements at once. The wild card can be found in the Nanoblanks expansion for Nanofictionary.

Click here to see the wild card.

[edit] Links to Game Play Variations

[edit] Sources