Meat or Veggies? Battle it out in Foodfighters!
Meat or Veggies?
If your kids are anything like our kids, they’re going to side with the meat.
It’s not to say they don’t eat their veggies. But given a choice, they’ll take the meat first every time.
And with bacon in the mix, it’s not even close. Bacon all the way!
Which would win the battle in your home?
Well, it’s time to take that battle from the dinner table to the game table in Foodfighters.
What is Foodfighters?
Foodfighters is a 2-player battle game where each player controls a team of food (meat vs. veggies) with the goal of knocking out three matching foods of the other team.
From the theme and cartoony artwork, you can easily tell this game is meant for family game play.
It’s a game that’s easy to learn and enjoyable to play.
And like most good family games, there’s a bit of both strategy and luck.
How to play Foodfighters
The first thing to do in Foodfighters is which player will be the meat team and which will be the vegetables team. (As you’d guess from the intro, when playing against the kids, parents get to be the veggies.)
Each player takes their 9 team member cards/tiles and randomly places them face up in a 3 x 3 grid facing the opposing team’s grid of fighters. Each team consists of 3 different types of food: Meat (chicken, steak, bacon) & Vegetables (onion, lettuce, broccoli).
Once they’re placed, players will quickly size up which fighters are ready to battle.
In order to battle, a fighter must be able to reach the target enemy fighter and be thinking about it. But we’ll come back to that in a minute.
The next part of set up is for each player to take 3 Crackers, 2 Spoons, 1 Pan and their 3 special action cards into their side of the Kitchen. The stock of Beans and extra bonus dice is placed in the center of the Kitchen (we like to call that the Pantry).
The game play follows the standard formula of each player taking their turn.
There’s 3 steps to a player’s turn:
- Swap or Attack or Roll for Beans
- Spend Beans for one item in the Kitchen
- Opponent fills in gaps in their formation
Phase 1: Swap or Attack or Roll for Beans
To Swap, a player simply swaps the position of two of their fighters in their formation. Or move one fighter into an empty spot in the same horizontal row. When a player swaps, they also get a free Bean from the Pantry.
To Roll for Beans, a player rolls both dice and collects the number of Beans showing. If any of the dice results are Splats, the player rerolls that die.
To Attack, a player identifies which of their fighters is going to attack and which enemy fighter is being attacked. And of course, this is the crux of the game – taking out the opponent’s fighters.
In order to attack, a fighter must be thinking about the target fighter (in the attacker’s thought bubble) and be in range. Normal range is being adjacent – either directly in front of or diagonal to each other. Once those are confirmed, the attacking player rolls the dice.
If there is at least one Splat result (splat symbol), the target has been Hit. The target is then Knocked Out and collected by the attacking player.
If there aren’t any Splat symbols on the dice, the attacker has Missed and the player collects the number of Beans from the Pantry as are showing on the dice.
Extra Stuff:
Of course, just attacking adjacent enemy food isn’t all there is to Foodfighters. No sir. These food teams like to mix it up in different ways.
That’s where the Crackers, Spoons, and Pans come into play.
With a Cracker, a fighter has a defensive shield. When Hit, the Cracker takes the damage instead of the fighter. So an attacker would have to roll 2 Splats in order to Knock Out a target holding a Cracker.
With a Spoon, a fighter extends his Reach. Now instead of just attacking the enemy fighter adjacent to it, the attacker can reach any distance in a straight line. So that fighter could even be on the team’s back row and reach an enemy on the opponent’s back row.
With a Pan, a fighter can clobber (attack) an enemy fighter of any type regardless of what it’s thinking about. It’s like a crazy food whacking willy nilly.
But Crackers, Spoons, and Pans aren’t freely available. Players must acquire them along the way.
And that’s where the next step comes into play…
Phase 2: Spend Beans for one item in the Kitchen
During this part of their turn, a player can purchase one item from their Kitchen. The cost of each item is on the Price card. For 4 Beans, a player can purchase a Cracker. For 3 Beans, a player could purchase a Spoon, a Pan, or the Bonus die. Or, a player could save up even more Beans and purchase the rights to use one of their Special Action cards.
And that’s why Rolling for Beans in the first step may be a beneficial move – because these items can be very valuable in battle.
While the supply each player has in their kitchen is limited, some items will be going back to the Kitchen during the game as well.
When a Cracker takes the brunt of a Hit, it is Smashed and removed from the game. However, the Spoons, Pan, and Bonus die are reusable. When a Spoon is used to reach a target, it is spent and goes back to the Kitchen whether the attack was successful or not. When a Pan is used to attack a target, it is only returned to the Kitchen if it Hits the target. And the Bonus die is returned to the Pantry (central Kitchen) after every use.
The Special cards are unique to each team and grant some cool abilities. For example, the Veggie team has access to a Bean Boost where they’ll collect 2 Beans when one of their attacks hits a target. And the Meat team can buy their Sizzle card which let’s them take a second turn right after their normal turn. Very cool.
Phase 3: Opponent fills in gaps in their formation
The last step in a player’s turn isn’t actually performed by that player. Instead, if the player has Knocked Out and enemy fighter there may be a gap in the enemy’s formation.
A gap exists when a fighter is missing from a row and there are fighters left anywhere in the row or rows behind it. When this happens, the gap must be filled by moving a fighter from the farthest-back row that still has fighters in it and placing it in the gap.
Then it’s the next player’s turn.
The game continues back and forth until one player has collected all 3 enemy fighters of one type. For example, the Veggie player having Knocked Out all 3 Chicken fighters.
And that’s how to play Foodfighters.
Can the whole family enjoy Foodfighters?
As you can tell, Foodfighters is a very light and silly game. It’s also one that young kids are very likely to enjoy. They’ll love having their meat fighters attack the enemy veggies (or vice versa).
It’s also a game that parents can enjoy playing with their kids.
But we don’t imagine parents choosing it to play against each other. It really falls into the “play with your kids” category.
And those are great games!
It’s fun to have a game that you can sit down with a child and go head-to-head in a silly way. And it adds to the fun when the kids can beat their parents. Which is what mostly happens in our case. Caleb has beat me more than I’ve beat him.
Even though I try my best with moving my fighters into the right positions, I’ve come out unlucky on my dice rolls while Caleb grabs the Bonus die frequently and rolls fabulously. But that doesn’t lead to frustration at all. It’s a light, silly game where you bounce back from bad die rolls to battle again.
Another thing we really like about the game is how easy it is to play anywhere. As you can see from our photos, we’ve enjoyed playing Foodfighters on a blanket on our lawn.
How does Foodfighters score on our “Let’s Play Again” game meter?
Foodfighters is such a light and easy game to play that it scores high on our “let’s play again” game meter. The set up time is so minimal that putting your fighters back in their random starting 3 x 3 grid seems like a foregone conclusion when one game ends.
Foodfighters isn’t yet available in stores. If you’d like to grab a copy, we’d highly recommend you jump over the Foodfighters Kickstarter page and pledge your support.
The campaign just got underway last week and will run through the end of July.
