Uno is one of the best selling games in the world and for a very good reason. It can be played by just about anybody, the rules are very simple and you can carry on with other things while you are playing.
But there is a dark side to the game, too. All over, people are in fear of the dreaded Uno curse.
“When does the game end?”
“When someone gets to 500, then the lowest score wins. So, what did you score this hand?”
“I had 7.”
“I had 2.”
“I had 14.”
“Oh, dear god. How long does this game go?“
Yes, Uno can last almost as long as Monopoly and do it with very, very few meaningful decisions.
Still, we play the game because our kids like it, our older relatives like it and our non-gaming acquaintances like it.”
Well, I’m here to tell you friends, there are alternatives. You no longer need to be mind numbingly bored until someone reaches 500.
Three years ago (2019), Amigo released a little card game by Dr. Reiner Knizia called L.L.A.M.A.. It kind of flew under the radar until it was named one of the three nominees for the Spiel des Jahres along with Just One (the eventual winner) and Werewords.
After seeing it on the list, I looked into it a bit and saw that it was basically playing numbers sequentially from 1 through 6 with the seventh card in the sequence being the Llama. It then circulated back to 1.
To me, this was a step down from Uno. There was no color matching alternative. Just 1-2-3-4-5-6-Llama-1-2-3-4-5-6-Llama-1…
Then, about a year later, it showed up on BGA, I tried it and I won’t say I fell in love, but did find it an enjoyable diversion when I didn’t want to think that hard. I also realized that this was NOT your everyday Uno clone.
You see, while the game was, indeed, just sequential playing there were some definite decision points. For starters, the scoring for each card you were holding at the end of your hand was the face value but ONLY for one of each value. If you had three 3’s, you only scored three. If you had eight 6’s, you still only scored 6. You also didn’t have to play straight sequential. You could play the same value or one higher on the last card played. This led to decisions on which of the two possible cards (if you held both) you would play. Say a 3 was on the table and you held three 3’s and one 4. Well, it’s pretty sure you are probably going to be stuck with at least one of those 3’s, so it’s better to get rid of the solo 4.
Then there is the fact that you can actually fold out of a hand. Say that the card in the middle of the table is a 5 and you have just 2’s and 3’s. The play could go around the table two, three or more times before you had a chance to get rid of either of those cards, and you are going to be picking up a new card each time you can’t play. You could consider yourself better off folding out and taking the five points rather than drawing a new, unplayable, card each time around and ending up with much more.
Finally, there is the Llama dilemma. The game is played to 40 points with the person with the lowest total winning (a bit more reasonable goal than Uno). Your points are kept by receiving white chips (one point) or black chips (10 points). Now, here is where you know this is a Knizia game. If you actually play your hand out, you get to give back ONE CHIP. Obviously, if you are over 10 points, you are giving one of the black ones back.
Take that to another layer of strategy, especially in the early game. Normally, I wouldn’t fold unless I was at 5 points or lower in my hand but, if I’m sitting with just a llama, I might fold because it would give me a black chip. Next turn, if I can totally play out, I’m in a lot better shape giving back that black chip then one of the white 1 point chips I received by folding out with 5 points of cards.
When we played this with my brother-in-law, he was very skeptical at the start but, after a number of rounds, stated “There are a lot of nuances in this game. It’s almost like it was designed by a mathematician.”
It was then that I introduced him to the career of mathematician Dr. Reiner Knizia.
Look, this game is not going to amaze anyone with it’s deep strategy. It’s not going to wow them with it’s glorious components. What it will do is give you a solid alternative that can be understood by gamers and non-gamers.
Karen and I also tried another game in this genre called Tem-Purr-A by Kuraki Mura (2011).
In this Uno variant, you are dealt a hand of cards and you have to play the EXACT number as is on the table. If you can’t play that number, you can put down a few game changer cards (+1, reverse direction, make another player play next) or a pair of a different number which removes all the cards already showing on the table and starts a new run of the played target.
If you have nothing to play, you have to draw the number of cards equal to the value of the cards on the table. If there are five 2’s, you draw ten cards. If there are four 6’s, you draw twenty four cards.
Here is the one and only twist to the game. Randomly shuffled in the deck is an “Indigestion Card” (the premise of the game is a bunch of cats eating sushi until they get indigestion). If you get that card in your draw, you put an indigestion counter in front of you, keep all the other cards and keep playing; however, the remaining part of the deck is reshuffled with TWO indigestion cards included.
This is repeated until you get up to six indigestion cards in the deck. The game ends when someone has three indigestion counters with the winner being the one with the least counters and, if there is a tie, it’s broken by the one with the most cards in hand.
Yup, there’s no comparison between the two games. One at least attempts at giving you some meaningful decision points while the other is mostly “Hahaha. Tom has more indigestion than me.”
The only place where I could say Tem-purr-a is better than L.L.A.M.A. is in the card art which has nicely painted illustrations of cats and sushi.
Other than that, there might be a bit of fun with a group of friends at a party playing Tem-purr-a once or twice but that’s it. It could very easily overstay its welcome.
