Dance Card: How to Play
We’ve all been there. At a school dance, awkwardly staring across the room hoping your crush notices you but then the music starts and the mood takes you over! Dancing is all you can think about but you still have certain people you want to dance with! Dance card is a game designed by Michael Melkonian and published by Cardboard Console, and in this game your goal is to be the first to dance with all three of the partners listed on your card!
To set up the game, put the game board out, shuffle up the smooth moves cards and place the deck onto its space, then do the same for mix it up deck. Then place the music Rules card face up on its designated space.
The game comes with 32 unique and diverse students to play as. Randomly distribute the 32 student standees to the various 8 locations on the board!
The Refreshments and Bleachers areas will each get 8 students. The green, blue, yellow and pink dance floor spaces each get 3 students. The Janitors Office and the Restrooms each get 2 students. Then put out the dance die, chat tokens, and status tokens near the board.
Each player is then given 1 dance card face up in their play area and should read their personal ability so they know what their characters can do! The player with the lowest student ID is the first player!
The game takes place over a series of turns, starting with the first player. There are two phases in each turn: the Spin Phase and the action phase.
During the Spin Phase, the active player takes the spin dial from the previous player and rotates it to the next icon, and resolve the effect shown! On the first turn of the game, the player rotates the dial to the start position!
There are 5 total icons on this spin dial.
(Roll Die Icon) On this icon, roll the Song Die and place it on the music Rules! Card. This changes the type of song playing!
(Smooth moves icon) This icon tells the player to draw the number of indicated smooth moves cards and add them to their hand! Smooth Moves give the player special abilities they can play for free!
(Mix it up icon) This icon tells the player to reveal the top card of the Mix It Up! Deck, follow the instructions and then place the card in the mix it up! Ditch pile.
(Spark icon) This icon tells the player to resolve the Spark effect shown on any and all cards with this icon which happen to be face up on the board or in the play area. The Music Rules! Card is one example of the icon and the other cards in the game might also have this icon.
(Move Icon) Finally, this icon allows the player to take a number of additional move actions any time during that player’s turn.
There is also one icon that states “Skip if 3P,” which of course you should skip if you are playing with just 3 players.
Next we enter into the Action Phase! On the players turn they may perform up to two actions! They can do two of the same actions or two different actions. The actions available are move, Dance, Chat and Nerve.
The move action allows the player to move to any one student to an adjacent location, with one exception: they can not move one of their partners into the same dance floor location as their student. YOU have to approach your dance partner, not the other way around!
The dance action allows the player to attempt to dance with one of their partners if they are in the same dance floor location. The player must take Dance Die, including any bonus dice based on the locations of their friends and chat tokens, and roll them! Then they'll need to see if their attempts were successful!
If the dice results are greater than or equal to the dance difficulty of their partner they place a success token on the partner and draw smooth move cards! If the result was less than the dance difficulty of the partner then a failure token is placed on the partner. Once a partner has a failure token on their portrait, that partner can not be selected for a dance action again until the failure token is removed!
The Chat action allows a play to gain a permanent bonus to dance rolls with a specific partner. If the player’s student and a contact are together in either the refreshments or the bleachers, then you can take a chat action to place a chat token of the right color on that contact’s portrait. That will add a die to the dice pool of future dance rolls with that partner!
The nerve action allows a player, if in the restroom or the janitors office, to ditch all failure tokens on their dance card and draw one smooth moves! Card for each card that is ditched.
There are also two free actions that can be taken any number of times per turn: The player may play smooth move cards to gain their printed effect, or the player may ditch a smooth moves card to take a free move action.
Now lets go over some of the details of the game! At the start of each game, each player takes a dance card that represents a student. Their student will have friends who will be encouraging them and improving their chances of success however, they also have a Rival who will do their best to get in their way! Each student has 3 partners they are attempting to dance with in order to win the game but each of those partners has their own agenda and a crush which will make it most difficult to dance with their aspiring dance partner!
The first player to successfully dance with all 3 of their partners is the winner of the game. Dance Card is a fantastic board game, and it was designed with input from the game’s very active online community every step of the way! It’s really refreshing to see a game that goes beyond diversity and fully steps into including the community it represents in the development of its game. This game is available on Kickstarter now!
Thanks so much for watching and tell us in the comments below who your favorite character is! Be Bold, Play Games, Be You! Happy Gaming!