If you’re at a family BBQ will you ever pass up reaching for the bag of chips?

When you’re standing in line at Subway, do you feel compelled to grab a bag of chips with your order?

Bag Of Chips might look like a tasty treat, but don’t be fooled. It’s one of the newest games, premiered at Origins Game Fair, by Blue Orange Games.

 

How to play Bag Of Chips

Bag of Chips is a party game in which you will face crucial choices to score as many points as possible at the end of each round. Be careful, though, because if you’re too greedy, you will lose a lot!

Setup:

To set up the game, place the #1 through #4 Board cards in the center of play. Players then shuffle the Objective deck and place it face down near the Board cards. The 25 Chip tokens are placed in the bag and shuffled. And finally, the Reward tokens are placed to the side for later use.

 

Game Play:

Bag Of Chips is played over several games which are broken up into rounds. The game ends when a player earns 4 Reward tokens.

At the start of each game, players are dealt 6 Objective cards from the Objective deck. The remaining cards are set aside and not used the rest of this single game, but are used in the following game.

In the first round, the Dealer draws 5 Chip tokens from the bag and places them on the #1 Board card. Players then discard 2 Objective cards from their hand. Discarded cards stay in front of the player facedown.

In the second round, the Dealer draws 4 Chip tokens and places them on the #2 Board card and players then discard 1 Objective card to their discard pile.

In the third round, the Dealer draws 3 Chip tokens and places them on the #3 Board card. Players have 3 Objective cards remaining in their hand and must choose 2 of those cards to go on the right of their discard pile and 1 to go on the left. Cards on the right score points for the player if completed while the card on the left loses points for the player if completed.

In the fourth round, the dealer draws 2 more Chip tokens (one at a time) and places them on the #4 Board card. The reason it needs to be one at a time is so the last chip drawn can be identified for scoring purposes.

Players now count points. The player with the most points wins and receives 2 Reward tokens and the next highest player receives 1 Reward token. When one player earns 4 or more Reward tokens the game ends and that player is the victor.

But to know how to count their points, players must understand how scoring works…

 

Scoring:

For each completed Objective on the right side of a player’s discard pile, they earn points equal to the values indicated on the cards. Players then subtract the point value on a completed objective card on the left side. Note: uncompleted Objective cards score 0 points no matter which side they’re on.

For example, Player 4 (below) completed two Objective cards on the right side of her discard pile and the Objective card on the left side was not completed and therefore will not score negative points. There were 2 chicken and 3 regular chips for a total of  44+15=59. Since the number of onion chips (4) didn’t equal the number of regular chips (3), Player 4 does not need to subtract any points. Their final total is 59-0=59.

Note: It’s a good idea in the third round to make sure and put an Objective card you don’t think you’ll complete on the left side of your discard pile. Then hope you don’t complete it based on the final chip drawn.

 

The Breakdown of Bag of Chips

Bag Of Chips comes in what looks like a snack size bag of chips you would buy at the store. But don’t let the playful packaging fool you, there’s a solid press-your-luck style game inside!

Theme and Mechanics:

The main gaming mechanic is press-your-luck. Similar to getting more and more tickets in Ticket to Ride, players discard Objective cards throughout the round in hopes of keeping the Objective cards that will score them the most points.

There’s a theme here, which is potato chips. Most objective cards include creating sets or majorities of certain types of chips that get pulled from the bag. The theme really could have been anything from bugs to random shapes. However, the chips theme allows for the fun packaging.

 

Flow and accessibility:

Bag Of Chips plays really quickly. The “bag” says 15 to 20 minutes which feels right for a 3 to 4 player game but can be played much quicker in a 2 player game. Rounds go by fast as the dealer pulls the chips from the bag and players discard cards from their hands. This creates little to no down time throughout the course of the game.

Once the symbology on the Objective cards is figured out, Bag Of Chips is super easy to get into. Ages 8 and up can easily play as can new board gamers.

 

Production Value:

It’s a bag of chips!

No, really my kids thought it was a snack for them.

The components for Bag of Chips are great. The cards and tokens are both hearty. My one concern would be how the bag holds up over time with continued play – since it works both as game storage and the blind pull bag.

 

 

How does Bag of Chips score on our “Let’s Play Again” game meter?

Bag of Chips comes in at about a 6 on our Let’s Play Again meter.

It’s a really easy game to play and one that plays very quickly. Both of which are high scoring on the meter.

The replayability on this one is where it gets subpar marks. It will be great to pull off the shelf every few months, but not something that will be hitting the table super frequently.

 

About the Author

Dane is an Advertising and Layout Manager for a national magazine by day and a husband, father of four, and board gamer by night. He has a passion for board games and believes board games help bring families closer together while providing kids a unique way to learn many diverse skills. And he thinks they’re downright fun!!!

The Board Game Family would like to thank Blue Orange Games for a review copy of Bag of Chips.