NO- dont take my DOUGH! (Drummond Park Rapidough)

Member Name: Meggysmum

Product:	Drummond Park Rapidough
Date:	22/06/09 (57 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Quick,easy to learn and everyone can play.

Disadvantages: Dough may get messy.

Buying new board games for the family can sometimes be a challenge. My children are 12 and 15 so don't want to play anything too childish but also the younger one cannot quite compete alongside adults in the more grown up versions. At christmas we do try and purchase a new family game so this time we opted for Rapidough. The suggested age range was 8yrs to adult. We purchased it at a local toystore for £16 and I have seen it on the internet between £15 to £24.

"Guess too slow and you lose some dough!"

Upon opening the box you find the essentials for the game:
3 pots of coloured modelling dough (red, blue and yellow)
3 mats and 3 modelling tools
3 rapidough plungers
Box of 500 word cards.

Players have to be in teams of at least 2 people and you can play with two or three teams.

Each team selects a colour and has the dough, mat, tool and plunger to match the colour. One person on each team has to be the modeller. A card is selected from the box and all the modellers look at it. When everyone is ready the each modeller has to use the dough to enable their teammates to guess the word on the card. The first team to guess correctly wins the round and has the pleasure of stealing a lump of dough using the plunger from each of the opponents coloured dough and putting it back in their pot. The sculptor changes each round. As the game progresses the lumps of dough get smaller, I have been known to try and produce a Starship Enterprise from a piece about the size of a kidneybean! Regardless to say I wasn't successful! The game is usually quite quick, about 30 minutes a time.

The cards are blue or white with the blue ones being much easier so they are particularly suitable for using with children. There are three types of cards:
One Word- every team will try to model the same word.
Choose a Word- The sculptor can choose any of the three words on the card.
Coloured Words- The sculptor has to make the word printed in the correct team colour.
The guessing team members do not know which type of card has been selected so it is no good looking at what another team is doing!

Before the game starts everybody has to agree on what is allowed when modelling. Are you able to "animate" your model e.g. jumping your dough model up and down if it is a kangaroo or use parts of the body e.g. putting it around your neck for a necklace. All these are personal preferences. We find it is more fun if we just have to make it with the dough without using any props.

This is a great family game that encourages a bit of creativity and lots of interaction. It has also even taught the children new vocabulary. We have also found it is an enjoyable adult game, after a few glasses of wine we have had hysterics trying to model an appendix or a captain from a lump of yellow dough--it can get very competitive! (we really should get out more!)

We have been using this game now for 6 months and the dough is still very soft but it could be easily replaced with play-doh when necessary. The only adjustment we have made to the game is to add a timer. We found sometimes if a word was particularly difficult we seemed to be modelling for ages so now we use an eggtimer which we have found adds to the fun. You do need to use the mats as little bits of the dough will fall off.

Overall I am very pleased with this game and we have had good fun with it. The price does seem to vary a lot so it is worth shopping around as I certainly wouldn't want to spend over about £16 on it.

If you had pictionary and playdoh at home you could make a rough approximation of it yourself!

Summary: Great fun.