Panik

You lead a team of highly trained ghost hunters, and your task is to clear troublesome ectoplasms out of some big old houses. Of course, yours is not the only team with this aim. Beware that your opponents will try to set traps for you. Only the most efficient and shrewd team will win the game. Panik consists of a deck of 19 manor cards (ghost manors, shared manors, and booby-trapped manors) and 36 hunter cards (nine per team, each including Basic, Tandem, Detector, Over-equipped and Call for Help hunters). Each player randomly draws four manor cards, looks at them and places them face down in front of him in the order he chooses. Then, each player turns one manor card face up and places a hunter in front of one of his manors. On his turn, a player places one of his hunters in front of any manor card that does not already have four hunters next to it. After placing, the player may expel one of the hunters already present in that manor. The owner of the expelled hunter must immediately place it in another manor. Some of the hunters have special skills: a Detector allows an opponent’s manor card to be turned face up before the hunter is placed, a Call for Help allows any previously placed hunter to be moved to the manor where the Call for Help has just been placed. An Over-equipped hunter can neither be expelled nor be called. A Tandem doubles the number of points but can never be called for help. The game ends when all the hunter cards have been placed. The manor cards are all turned over and the players now know which will bring the most points! The ghost manors yield one to five points per hunter present, while the booby-trapped manors yield points only to the owner of the Manor. The fewer hunters there are in a shared manor, the more points it yields.

Players: 2–4 best 4
Playing time: 30 min
Age: 8+
Complexity: 1.3 / 5