Quicksand
At some point over the holidays, Fantasy Flight had their annual blowout sale on their cheaper games. Quicksand was one of the… few… that I ordered. You can’t beat $5.
The game is simple enough. There are six different characters who are in a race to get to the temple at the top of the board.
You move these characters by playing cards from your hand.
You can play as many cards as you want, as long as they are all the same. The only exception is the Mask card, which can stand in for any adventurer. You may move an adventurer one space for each card played.
The catch is, the owner of each character is kept secret, and you can move any character you have cards for. Half of the game is moving characters in order to fake your opponents out. Quite often, the character you are moving as a ruse, belongs to someone else!
Luckily, you have one non-movement option, and that is the quicksand card. You can use this to flip over an adventurer. In order to get the adventurer out of quicksand, you must spend a card of that adventurer’s color to flip them over first.
In the games I have played, it is a slow burn. Everyone moves cautiously in order to keep all of the adventurers tightly packed. It isn’t until halfway up that you have a good handle on who is who. Then, as soon as a single adventurer makes it to the upper left turn, the Quicksand cards begin to fly.
Here you can see the classic Quicksand ending. This was a 3-player game with Pottse, Mrs. G, and I. Green has just won, and I am lamenting how close I was. Note that yellow, blue, and black are all clustered at the end, even though no player controlled them.
And the final reveal:
Overall, this is a great filler. Very simple to learn, quick, and devious for the more devilish players. I have even managed to get the more “Focus-Challenged” ADD Bunkerites to play multiple games.
