SMÄK-ing It Together - A Preview of SMÄK - Live on Kickstarter until August 10th

 *This was originally posted on Board Game Geek on 7/17/2024 and has been posted early due to the Kickstarter Campaign currently running*

SMÄK-ed In My Inbox

I've been blogging for about six months now (!) and I think that I've really found my voice and my footing here on BGG. I've sunk into a nice little rhythm here, writing about board games that I'm excited about and things that are coming up as well as several themes and mechanics and whatnot. I've gotten to a point where I have a decent amount of followers, but I'm always looking for ways to improve not only my writing, but also this blog in general, especially since I want to add my own spin on board games.

Imagine my surprise when I opened up my GeekMail Inbox on Monday (July 15th) and I saw that I had a message from Marc Boos over at Team SMÄK who inquired if I would be interested in providing some coverage for SMÄK! The Card Game with my little blog here. I was absolutely flattered and after a few messages back and forth, I agreed to provide a preview for their game. It was something that I had never been asked to do before and it was at this point that I realized that I'm at a point with this blog that I'm going to be able to give some previews and talk about some upcoming games.

This little introductory section is to point out that I have been asked by Marc to provide a preview of their game here on this blog and although I haven't been able to play the game yet, I am planning on connecting with the team over at Team SMÄK to talk about their process to create the game and what steps went into it. I'll be posting my interview here on this blog later and I am really excited about the prospect of being able to not only provide my first coverage of a Kickstarter game, but also to connect with a small team on what looks to be a very fun project.

There is a plan for them to get a pre-production copy of the game out to me to try out, but I haven't been able to do so, so all of this is coming from impressions of their Kickstarter Campaign here. For more information about the campaign and what it offers, click through to check it out!

SMÄK Talk

Sometimes it feels good to SMÄK down a good card combo.

"What is SMÄK! The Card Game?" you might be asking. And that is an excellent question!

An example of some of the basic cards in SMÄK.

Think of it as a mix of UNO with a smattering of Slap Jack and some dice rolls thrown in for good measure. It's a fast-paced card game where players seek to match color or icons of cards with the discard pile, but those pesky unicorns keep getting in the way. Players can even sneak in cards that share the same color and icon when it's not their turn onto the discard pile to really empty out their hand faster, but it's the unicorns that are the wildcards of the game.

Pesky, pesky unicorns.

Like Uno, SMÄK! The Card Game has your basic "Draw 2," "Skip" and "Reverse" unicorn cards that come in the basic colors of the game (it's unicorn colors: pink, blue, yellow and green; did you expect anything else?) that can be played like basic UNO cards, but like UNO, there are some wild unicorn cards too. Cards like "Pia Pickup Three" has the next player take three cards instead of two, and "Leif Loves All" makes ALL players draw two cards. There's even a "Everyone changes hands" and a "can be anything" card thrown in for good measure and even more chaos.

They each have fantastic names to go with the horrid things that they do!

Unlike UNO and other card games like it, these types of cards can be chained together to cause absolute mayhem for whomever ends up at the short end of the stick and cannot continue the chain. This could lead to someone ending up with four, six, or even eight cards being drawn from one chain.

And this is where the titular "SMÄK" cards come in. When someone plays a unicorn card before a player's turn (or stacks one onto an existing unicorn card), that player can then play the "SMÄK" card to force everyone playing the game to roll one of the included special six sided dice contained in the game. There are five blank faces on the dice, with the remaining face having a unicorn on it. The last person to roll a unicorn has to take the consequences of the unicorn cards played (even if it's an entire stack of them).

The dice faces are potentially changing, but this gives a good idea of what you're rolling for.

The first player to get rid of all the cards in their hand wins the round and all players total up points based on the cards in hand. There are specifics with point totals that I won't get into right now, but the unicorn cards and SMÄK cards especially are dangerous to have in your hand at the end of the round as they're worth the most points. The loser of the round has to wear the included unicorn horn for the next round and the winner is the person who has the least points at the end of six rounds.

SMÄK is fast. SMÄK is chaotic. SMÄK looks to be absolutely bonkers and fun.

SMÄK It To Ya!

The brutality of the SMÄK cards is second only to the cuteness.

As a father of two girls, one of whom is currently in her "Unicorns EVERYTHING" phase, this game absolutely stands out to me as something that would be terribly fun to play with her. Not only do I get to live out some of my darker fantasies of brutalizing some unicorns (seriously, they're everywhere now), but I know that she would absolutely love the artwork of the game. Also being a dad of a young girl, the level of violence on the SMÄK cards is also not something that I really would want to show her, despite me sometimes wanting to do so in order to end the unicorn craze. But the team over at Team SMÄK has gotten something else in place for those that don't want to see unicorns brutalized!

This is significantly less disconcerting for younger audiences.

There is a family-friendly version of the game that backers of the Kickstarter can choose. So instead of seeing a poor unicorn being run through with a sword, or having it's head caved in by a spiked mace, kids will see more cartoonish situations, such as a unicorn being SMÄK-ed by a flyswatter, or frozen in a block of ice. It's a nice little change that as a father I appreciate since this absolutely seems like a game that I would love to enjoy with my daughter without traumatizing her for life and needing years of therapy to overcome a unicorn being bisected by a chainsaw.

With the campaign currently live on Kickstarter, there are three tiers of backers available. For $20, backers can choose the original version with all it's brutality, the family-friendly version with the cartoonish SMÄK cards, the Süper Edition with both sets of cards and the expansion for $25, or the Limited Edition Golden Edition for $100 that has one of 100 golden SMÄK cards. With many Kickstarters having such a high price point for the games, it's refreshing to find one that has a lower price point, even with shipping being $7-$10 in the USA (more elsewhere, but I'm writing this from inside the country). The team at Team SMÄK are also doing their best to keep shipping costs down by working with printers in both the US and Europe ensuring that the game won't cost an arm and a leg to get.

SMÄK Attack!

I'm really impressed by the game and how much fun it seems to play with friends and family. As someone who really enjoyed playing Uno as a kid, this seems to be right up my alley. It's a simple enough game to play, but the SMÄK talk is definitely going to get the competition going when you play this quick and fast-paced card game.

As I noted, I'm previewing this game at the behest of the creators and I'll be connecting with them later this summer to have an interview with them that I'll post here. At the time of writing, there are still 24 days left in the campaign and several stretch goals that are being worked towards. The game has been funded already and now the team is looking to get the word out about the game (hence this post!).

If this seems like something you'd enjoy playing, hop over to the Kickstarter Page or check out the team's Instagram and Facebook Page for more info!

Thanks for checking out this preview with me and I hope you enjoyed looking into it as much as I did!

Give your thoughts: What are some of the favorite UNO-like mechanics in games that you've played? What are your favorite card games to play with friends and/or family? Would you (like me) also like to SMÄK some unicorns if able?

As always, thank you so much for checking out this blog. If you liked it, please hit the green thumb  at the top of the page and feel free to leave a comment on the post. I appreciate all interactions and will respond to everything that I can. If you really liked the post and want more ramblings, feel free to subscribe and get new posts every Monday/Wednesday/Friday.

*All Images have been provided directly by Team SMÄK for use for this preview and are subject to copyright wherever applicable.*