Pyramid Review
UWO: Unidentified Walking Objects
Published by Elven Ear Games
Created & illustrated by Thomas Jansen
Designed by Bjorn Scholten
English translation by Jaklien Jansen
92 full-color cards & three rules sheets in three languages (English, Dutch, & German); $10
The idea is a painfully basic one: The Gnorfs of Znorf find the Pnorfs purple and ugly, and gleefully attack them for their differences. The Pnorfs, for their part, hold the same beliefs about the green Gnorfs. The UWO: Unidentified Walking Objects, using this rather thin but ancient justification, are ready to deliver a beat-down.
The object of the game is to eliminate all your opponent's forces.
Each player gets a deck of cards in his color. One player lays his six energy cards in a horizontal line in front of him, while the other lines his up adjacent to the end of that line going up the table vertically. This forms an L-shape, and the playing field is the 5 × 6 grid in the crook of that L. The two teams of 10 set up on either side, draw a hand of three cards, and march to engage each other. Movement depends on what kind of unit it is, though they all use more or less the same rules -- you can travel up and down, or side to side, though the cards have to stick to the invisible grid. (It's not a bad idea to get some sort of playing mat just to make sure you have an actual grid upon which to play -- the erasable one with squares you might see in a Dungeons & Dragons game works fine.)
Everyone starts . . .
This article originally appeared in the second volume of Pyramid. See the current Pyramid website for more information.
Article publication date: November 4, 2005
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