Because November’s the perfect time to talk about that, right? Well, maybe not for an actual summer camp, but this is Summer Camp, the board game! Good for any season, Summer Camp is a competitive deck-building game where you race to be the model camper.
The first step is to choose which three activities you’re playing — the choices are Adventure, Arts & Crafts, Friendship, Games, and, the three recommended for first time players, Cooking, Outdoors, and Water Sports. Each of these is a separate deck within the larger box, so all you have to do is remove the four “Move 1” cards in the deck, shuffle it, and place it next to one of the three paths on the board, then rinse and repeat with the other two. Meanwhile, each player will get one “Move 1” card from each of the decks in play, as well as 7 “Lights Out” cards from the basic deck, and shuffle these into their own personal draw pile.
On your turn, you can play as many cards as you want, either for their actions or to use them as 1 Energy. For instance, Lights Out cards have no action, so they’re most useful as discards. Energy is in turn used to buy cards from the display — the two face up cards next to each activity deck, plus three piles from the basic deck: Smores (Gain 2 Energy), Free Time (Move 1 space on any path) and Scavenger Hunt, which lets you discard 1-3 cards and draw that many from your deck. Each of these has a red circle in the lower left corner with how much energy it costs to purchase. Any cards you buy will go in your discard pile until you next reshuffle.
I’ve already mentioned movement cards. Some of these, like Free Time, let you choose which path to move on, while others, like Washing Dishes (move 1 space on the Cooking path) are predetermined. Each player has 1 piece on each of the three paths, which correspond to activity decks. When a piece moves, there are a few special effects that may occur, should it land on or pass through a marked space. The effect is indicated by the sign next to the space: the card with a plus sign simply means “draw another card from your deck,” the walking sign indicates you can move any of your pieces forward one space, and the snack bar… well, means you get a snack bar. An important currency, snack bars can be used as 1 energy in a purchase; the difference is that excess energy is lost at the end of a turn, whereas snack bars hold over, with a maximum of six at a time.
At the end of your turn, a few things happen. First, you discard all remaining cards in your hand. In practicality, this means you should aim to play all your cards every turn, if at all possible. Then, you draw five cards to form your new hand, reshuffling your discards if your draw pile runs out. Once you have your hand (or, honestly, I skip to this step first and reshuffle/redraw while the next person’s taking their turn) flip up new activity cards to fill any empty spots on the display, and check for merit badges.
There are 3 types of merit badges: Participation badges are awarded once all three of your pawns have made it past the first bridge, Camp All-Star badges are awarded once they’re all past the second bridge, and Activity merit badges are achieved once that piece reaches the third and final bridge, regardless of where the other two are. In each case, badges are first come, first serve, so the sooner you get there, the greater the reward!
Once someone has reached the end of all three paths, play continues until everyone has had an equal amount of turns (there’s a Starting Camper token for exactly this reason), and the game ends. A player’s score is calculated by three factors: merit badges, points on cards you’ve purchased (in an orange star on the lower right corner) and, if any of your pieces were between the second and third bridges, the value assigned to their current space — the closer to the end, the higher the consolation points. Whoever has the highest sum wins!
A couple of notes: 1) the game starts off a little repetitive, and with a lot of reshuffling, because you start with a ten-card deck. As you buy cards, turns will get a lot more action-packed, but this progression can help ease new players into learning the mechanics. Aside from that… I think the theme’s a lot of fun, each deck has a clear emphasis on a particular function (ex: Water Sports is all about movement), and you can mix ‘n match your activities for something new and fresh every time!
