A few years ago my boys’ friends started talking about Minecraft. After a few months of hearing this we installed Minecraft on our computers, and my kids’ addiction to Minecraft started. They starting incorporating it into their schoolwork, and they bought the toys with their allowance, and then a few months ago my boys discovered there’s a Minecraft card game, and they HAD to have it and add it to our board game collection. They managed to sucker their aunt into buying them the game to play together, and it wasn’t all that long before they’d pulled it out and played several rounds.
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Setting up your Minecraft card game*
In the middle of the table set up a four rows of crafting cards cards that you can build with the crafting side up. Besides it are five rows of resource cards (I was just double checking the rules, and my son taught me the game wrong, they’re dealt face down, not face up like we played them, nevermind reread the rules and they taught me right), you know all those little blocks they spend time digging out when playing the game. Actually, I don’t know a thing about it because I get motion sickness watching Minecraft. Minecraft is the only thing that causes it for me. Go figure.
Each player gets a small plastic card holder, you’ll see what you do with it during your turn in just a moment.
How your turn goes during the Minecraft game
On each turn you get two actions. There are three possible actions:
- mine- choose a resource, usually they go into your hands, but there are a few special cards
- craft- build something, trade in the resources you’ve collected and put them in the discard pile in exchange for the item
- reserve- choose a crafting item to build in the future and put it in your plastic card holder, you can only ever reserve one item, and you have to build it before you can get a new one
The special cards are wild card (self explanatory), TNT (clears the board and you get two resources), and creeper (everyone discards a card, boo)
How you win
Remember how you’re crafting stuff, each of those items has a dual purpose. First, they give you points, next they let you perform special actions like being immune to a creeper or get some extra resources.
My tips and tricks for Minecraft Card Game
This is a resource management card game. It’s a great way to start your kids learning how to count cards. Not that I do that or anything…..
Be careful about reserving an item, if the resources to build the item are in the discard pile your reserve spot is going to be tied up for a long time.
It’s better to use the special ability than to save it for “just the right time”.
Honestly that’s it, it’s a fun simple game you can play in just a few minutes. I love that kind of game because I can play with my boys and then go work on dinner.
Some more fun card games
One more quick tip
I’ve been working on our board game storage, and I figured out putting giant rubber bands* around my card games help keep these smaller boxes together. Our My Dwarves Fly boxes are practically falling apart, and this keeps all of the pieces in the boxes.
Your boys would probably also like Magic the Gathering.
We’ve tried a couple of similar games, but none have quite caught on with them.
If you lived nearer I could have given a bag of bits and pieces (books, games, toys…) all Minecraft left over from Thomas. He’s too busy with his scooter now to spend anytime on Minecraft. They grow up so quickly 🙁
I bet we’d have a lot of similar books if we traded titles. My boys started collecting all of the books they could get their hands on.
Minecraft is huge in our house right now – A is playing it daily with her friends (one of them is hosting a server). However, she never showed any interest in any merchandise – I think she enjoys creative/social aspect of it more than anything else.
One of my boys saved up his allowance to buy a stop-motion Minecraft toy. My kids have truly bought into the merchandising.
So far none of my kids care for minecraft. Fingers crossed it stays that way…
It can become all-consuming if you let it. So far it’s mainly been a good thing in our house.
I think Minecraft is the best video game ever invented. My son has it on PC, and all 3 kids have it on their tablets. He has built the coolest stuff I’ve ever seen! I personally loved playing it when he first got it, but unfortunately, like you, it gives me terrible motion sickness. It doesn’t affect the kids–just me. I play 10 minutes and feel sick. If I play longer than that, I have to lie down for a while. It’s really terrible, because it’s such a great game. I always ended up starting a project and then getting my son to finish it for me…now I just don’t play. I’d probably spend too much time playing it if I didn’t get sick…maybe it’s a good thing! I can’t even watch the kids playing it. Ugh. Anyway, I will have to tell my son about this card game!
If he’s as big of a fan as my boys are, he’ll probably love it.
It really is one of the better video games, there are so many ways you can make it deliberately educational if you want, and then there’s the flat out they’re learning just because they’re playing.