Building forts is a universally loved pastime of childhood. This card game, called FORT, encompasses so much nostalgia and classic kid stuff, it’s so fun for both kids and adults to play! The setting is a classic neighborhood, full of kids who love to make new friends, eat pizza, collect toys (junk), and build the ultimate neighborhood fort. Game play is unique and simple, easy to learn and teach your kids and friends, but not so easy to beat them!
Each player takes a player board and plays as one of the 4 kid characters in the game. Take that character’s 2 best friend kid cards (found on the back of the player board).
Set up the play area with the prestigious Macaroni Scultpure card, made-up rule cards, perk cards, and kid cards.
Each player builds their own deck throughout the game, starting with 8 kid cards and 2 best friend cards. Begin the game by drawing 5 of those cards to form your hand.
Each kid card has tons of important information on it including the suit, a public action, and a private action. Best friend cards also have the best friend icon and that friend’s nickname.
The player board has a yard area, a lookout where cards can be held to use repeatedly throughout the game, a stuff area to hold pizza or toy tokens, a pack that also holds resources, and your fort level track. Each player’s fort level can be increased by paying extra resources (listed on the player board). Fort level determines how many cards can be stored in the lookout and how much stuff can be stored in your pack.
On each turn, players play one card and use the private and/or public actions to do stuff and gain more cards and resources. After the active player uses the actions, other players can also use the public action by discarding one of their own cards with a suit matching the active player’s card.
Now it’s time to make new friends! Players can take any card from the park tableau of cards, a card from any other player’s yard, or draw a card from the deck.
All played cards, recruited cards, and best friend cards now get discarded. Any other cards left in your hand into your yard, face up for other player’s to see.
Draw 5 new cards from your own deck and pass the active player baton on to the next player!
In future turns, the first action in a turn is clean up. All the cards in the Yard from your previous turn get discarded. Then continue on with the other phases.
Play continues with everyone trying to earn resources, recruit new friends, build a bigger fort, and earn victory points until a player reaches 25 victory points, reaches fort level 5, or the park deck is empty.
The player with the most victory points wins!
Fort is a great educational card game to practice many math-brain skills like creative problem solving, prioritizing, analyzing, strategy, logic, and reasoning. Players must also quickly learn to interpret the many action symbols and synthesize a variety of information to make strategic decisions. The game, like the best parts of childhood, encourages collaborative turn-taking, flexibility, and multi-tasking.
Fort has a really fun style with bright, appealing colors, and a theme and mechanisms that gamers will love. Thanks to Leder Games for sharing with us!
