IT’S CHRISSSSSSSSSTMAAAAAASSSSSSSS! The day this review goes live is Thanksgiving in the United States, or as the rest of the world calls it: Thursday. That means it’s the beginning of TheRatHole.ca’s Holiday Review Series. I do find it somewhat ironic that on an American holiday our first review of the season is from the United Kingdom, but for lack of a Thanksgiving, Black Friday, or any other November holiday-themed game this year, the farthest away game gets in first.
Christmas Rush is a family weight game from MT Wallet, and it was one of the only games I brought back with me from the UK Games Expo earlier this year. As you might expect for a game suggested for ages 6+ the main mechanic is a roll-and-move, but with a few twists.
The premise here is that the players are Santa’s elves running around trying to make sure the big man has all the presents he needs. But gone are the days where the elves have to build the toys. Now they must brave the shopping malls just like the rest of us average folk. So you, an elf, need to find all the gifts on your list, wrap them, and hit the Holly Highway outta there.
To accomplish this task, each player starts on one of six spaces around the board, and are allowed to move in either direction on their turn. Here’s where things get hinky: you roll two dice but only use one of them for movement. You use the number on the other die to look at that many face-down gift tiles in the shopping area that your pawn is currently in. If you roll a 3 and a 5, for example, you could move three spaces and look at all five face-down gifts OR move five spaces and look at three of them. If any of the tiles match the gift cards in your hand take the tile and put it on top of the matching gift card in front of you. The 6 on each die has been replaced by a tree icon. If you roll a tree, and have an unwrapped gift in front of you, and have a wrapping paper card in your hand, you can yell WRAP and “wrap” one of your gifts by covering the card and tile with the wrapping paper card. Once wrapped, a gift can’t be stolen by another player.
Did I not mention the stealing? In the true Christmas spirit, you can steal the gift tile from another player’s unwrapped gift (sending that card back to its player’s hand) and place it on one of your own gifts, or you can steal an unused wrapping paper card from another player. How do you pilfer said presents? There are six, red “steal” spaces on the board. If you land on one of them you –shock– get to steal something. As well, if you roll doubles on the dice you get an additional steal action on top of your regular move and look.
After wrapping all of their gift cards, players make their way to the Santa’s Grotto space and stop there. From that space, they roll only one die as they move forward along the Holly Highway around the outside of the board. The Holly Highway works a bit like Snakes & Ladders. If you roll a tree, go back a space. If you land on an elf, go back to the last space with an elf. If you land on a swap space, go to the other swap space. If you land on a snowflake, take a snowflake card and move where and how it tells you. At the end of the Highway is a Christmas Tree and you must land on the tree with an exact roll to win.
I like the concepts in Christmas Rush. It gives families something more than a basic kids roll-and-move, has some good player interaction, and switches things up for the final Rush at the end. (see what I did there?) The snowflake cards add a distinctly chaotic element that balanced things out for us on the Holly Highway. Two of us made it onto the Highway several turns before the eventual winner. The simple memory element during the first phase of the game is a nice touch. But the problem we found, and it may have been the flightiness of my niblings, was that the game seemed to drag on more than necessary. We had a nine & four year old playing and both wandered off a few times mid-game. We ultimately just skipped their turns when this happened and it didn’t change much.They both did, however, keep returning and the 9 year old came from behind to win. The wandering away thing could be attributed to any number of factors, but the coming back speaks volumes about the game. I don’t think we really hit the sweet spot with the ages of the kids playing, or maybe they might have just been extra off the wall that night, but I don’t think this was the best game for them. All told, MT Wallet wanted to make a good Christmas game for families with smaller kids that need to be entertained, and that is what they accomplished. I suspect Christmas Rush will hit the table again next year as the four year old gets closer to the actual suggested age of 6.
You can find MT Wallet online at christmasrush.co.uk or on Facebook at facebook.com/100085601302131.
If you’re new here in The Rat Hole, we always end our holiday reviews with a bit of musical Christmas cheer. So please enjoy this upbeat acapella song, The Christmas Rush by Mike Tompkins.