That board game where you describe the words in six categories (Drummond Park Articulate!)

Member Name: Benjiboo

Product:	Drummond Park Articulate!
Date:	23/08/09 (34 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Easy to play

Disadvantages: None

In the box:
Rules
Game board
Spinner for the centre of the board
4 coloured playing pieces
Timer
500 game cards

Age and number of players:
To play properly you need a minimum of 4 players and 2 teams (although this can be played with 3 or even 2 people). Technically there is no maximum on the number of people or teams you can have although you will need to improvise on playing pieces if you want more than four teams. Although I would recommend having no more than 4 teams just increase the number of people on each team.

The game says for 12yrs+. I would say that children in their early teens may not know a lot of the people, world or nature category (depending on how well educated the children are). Although playing as a family you could use this as an educational tool as well. So I'd say this is best played as a group of adults.

How it works:
The board is circular and divided into different colour segments each with a different category: people, world, object, action, nature, random and spade. You place the pieces on the same starting space which is object. The category your piece is on is the category your team describe on the cards. One person is the describer and the rest of the team guess - the describer rotates each turn. The opposition start the timer (30 seconds) and you describe as many cards in that category, within the time, as possible. You cannot say any part of the word and you cannot do rhymes with, other than that you can say what you want. You are only allowed to pass 1 card each turn. The number of cards that the team get right are the number of moves the counter then takes. The spade space allows one player from that team to read a card to everyone and if their teammates get it first then the team gets a bonus go. This is also how the game is won once a team gets over the finish line.

What I think:
This is game is really fun and suitable for people of all intellects. The rules are simple, it takes little time to set up and a game takes about half an hour to finish (not to quick and not too long). From personal experience this has provided may hours of entertainment at house parties and everyone we've introduced to this has enjoyed it (I would give a warning about noise with this: people really get into it and the volume levels will go through the roof). Also good to play sober or drunk. This is suitable for family as well as friends - I started playing this because it was one of my girlfriend's family's traditions. As well as playing as intended, for geeks like us, you can also have fun playing this as a twosome: me, my girlfriend and best mate have whiled away plenty of time playing this.

One downside can be if you play it a lot you will inevitably end up getting repeat cards (you do have to play a lot to reach this point). Although to help compensate for this problem Drummond Park released an add pack of cards - this was simply an additional box of 500 playing cards to help keep this game fresh. Although, be warned, the person category in this additional pack is a lot tougher as the obvious choices were used in the main game so the people here are generally a lot less well known. The only other very minor downside is that this game is a few years old now so the person category does not include contemporary names.

The best board game I have ever played and for the fun factor this beats most modern electronic forms of entertainment.

Summary: This is funtastic!