Mattel Minecraft Card Game

We've had this for about a year now, and it's still our son's favorite game. It's convenient to bring along on trips, and fun to play for a family game night. I'd highly recommend to any family that has a child that likes Minecraft.

My son who loves minecraft, love this game! kind of fun to play and isn't too long.

My 6 year old and full grown husband both enjoy playing this game with me. What's not to like!? :)

The Minecraft Card Game is a fast playing resource collection game based on the popular video game for 2 to 4 players. I give it an overall score of 4 out of 5. Now the detailed review.Game Summary:In Minecraft the idea is to do the two things the name states: mine (collect resources) and craft (complete recipes with the necessary resources in order to score points). Depending on the number of players the winner is the first person to reach a particular point threshold. In the case of all three games I have played so far we had three players which means the first to reach 20 points.On each turn a player can take two actions in any combination, including two of the same, from among three choices:1. Mine – select the top resource card from among one of the five resource decks2. Craft – use resources you have previously mined (perhaps on the same turn) to craft one of the patterns3. Reserve – take one of the craft cards from one of the four craft decks and set it aside in your little plastic stand so it’s no longer available to your opponents until you are ready to craft it.The resource cards each show a type of material. The material choices are wood, stone, iron, gold, and diamond. Each card also has a number from 1 to 3 to reflect the quantity that card represents. Additionally the resource deck also has wild cards that can serve as any material, TNT cards and Creepers (Minecraft’s bad guys). More on the latter two in a moment.Each of the craft cards is a grid with a number of boxes some of which include a picture of a particular resource. So a card might have one stone and two wood for example which means in order to craft it (and add it to your score) you need to have previously mined at least one stone and two wood resource cards. You could use two one point wood cards or one two point wood card. If you use a three point wood card the extra point is wasted. You could also say a particular wild card represents wood but you couldn’t use a single three point wild card for both the one stone and two wood you need. The more resources a craft card needs to complete and the rarer the ingredients (less gold cards in deck than wood for example) the more points the card will be worth. I recall the value of the cards being between 1 and 5.Once you have crafted a card then you also have the chance to use the tool on that card once in the future. Different tools are shovels, hoes, pick axes, axes and swords. These let you do different things to help your game, for example using a shovel to take away an action from one of your opponents on their next turn or giving yourself an extra action using the pick axe.The special resource cards do the following. The TNT card blows up all of the five stacks so you get rid of it and then take two of the four other resources on top of the other decks. The Creeper when revealed when you mine a resource takes a resource card away from every player in the game unless they already have a craft card with a sword they haven’t used which defends them and prevents the resource loss.Product Design and Packaging:The game comes in a longer box with a cardboard insert with two slots for the cards for the two decks as well as a groove in the middle to hold the four plastic reservation stands. The cards themselves are square to fit the theme of the video game which makes them a little bulkier and harder to shuffle but since you pretty much only do that at the beginning of the game it’s not a real problem. Card quality is decent but not exceptional. The stands work well holding a card. The outer box is quite sturdy but I think the inner liner would have worked better as a molded plastic insert.Thoughts on the Game:This was a Christmas gift for a 14 year old who is also a player of the video game. I played with her and her eight year old sister who also plays the video game. I’ve never played the video game but have seen it being played. I felt this card game captured the theme very well and both girls immediately grasped the concept behind the game of obtaining resources and crafting. The bigger cards are quite easy to read and other than gold and iron bars looking somewhat similar it was not difficult telling what was out there. Speaking of reading, other than the instructions, there really is no reading as the cards use pictures and symbols for everything.I liked that the game played fast which is good for a game targeting a younger audience like this one does. It has enough depth of strategy however to make it interesting for older players too. Do you spend time mining resources early and then do a lot of crafting or do you try to craft as go? Older players can’t really run away with the game and tension as to who will win remains until the end. I won two of our three games but am an experienced tabletop gamer. The main reason they lost though is probably the fact that they kept forgetting about the tools on the completed craft cards. Remembering to take away an action from your opponent or give yourself an extra one is important. The youngest player also kept thinking she had to reserve a craft card before she could complete it which isn’t the case.The instructions could have used a little work to clarify a few things like can you reserve more than one craft card at a time? It never specifically states that so we didn’t play the first game that way but based on the stand not really holding two or more cards that seems to be the case. Otherwise you could horde the craft cards. Can you craft two things using one pile of resources with two actions? It seems clear after a few games you can’t split the cards and buy a stone/wood and diamond/wood/wood with a 1 point stone, 1 point diamond and three point wood. If you have gotten down to less than five stacks does a TNT card still give you two cards? We assumed so. If you get Creepers as the initial up cards in the resource stacks due to the shuffle, do you just throw them away? Some minor cleanup would have helped. For what it is worth, I believe the instructions were only in English with no French, Spanish or otherwise.In conclusion, this is a fun little strategy game that’s a step up from a typical kids card game. It has both random elements in the shuffling of the card stacks and strategy elements in planning your crafting and trying to prevent your opponents from doing the same. It can play in about 30 minutes. For $13 on Amazon it should find its way onto many game shelves.

My son said the Minecraft Uno card game was so fun because he loves all things Minecraft.

Got this to play with my son. I’ve tried to play the actual game, but must have been born in the wrong generation. Anyway, this allows us to connect without having to be on a screen.

It was missing a player cube.

My son and I play thus game together for a change of pace and quality time together without the time commitment of some other games. He has ADHD so that's a big bonus that this game can hold his attention but doesn't take more than 20 minutes or so to play so he doesn't get distracted or bored and wander off. We've actua)y purchased this game for his friends too over the years. He's 13 now and still enjoys it!