Overview
At a glance
Is this game right for my group?
ABG editorial scores on a 1–5 scale.
Harder to teach
High replayability
Highly interactive
Scales well
Deep strategy
How it plays
How does it play?
In Frantic, you start with seven cards and try to get rid of your cards as quickly as possible. If a player has discarded all their cards, the remaining players count the points in their hand.
Core mechanisms
Key systems that shape the decisions players make.
Read the full game description
In Frantic, you start with seven cards and try to get rid of your cards as quickly as possible. If a player has discarded all their cards, the remaining players count the points in their hand. When a player reaches the agreed maximum score, the player with the lowest score wins. If you can't or don't want to play a card, you draw one from the deck. There are four colors with numbers from 1 to 9. You can either play color on color or number on number. Sounds boring so far, doesn't it? Well, that's why we have the special cards. For example, have someone draw four cards from the deck, or give a fellow player two cards out of your hand. And the fun part: You always get to choose who gets these cards! But wait, there's more: We come to the black cards, also numbered from 1 to 9. You can play these only on a number, not on the same color, and every time a black card is played, it activates an event card. These event cards go from Friday, the Thirteenth — where nothing happens – to Tornado, where all hand cards get shuffled together and handed out again.