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Do you love monsters? Do you love diamonds? Then you’re in luck! Diamonsters is a simple, but devious, little quick-fire bidding card game for 2-6 players about collecting monsters and diamonds.
How to play Diamonsters
The aim of this game, published by IDW Games and Pandasaurus Games, is to win five rounds. Each round consists of betting and winning monsters, to either gain three of a kind or a collection of monsters with a collective total of five diamonds.
Each player starts the game with five monsters in their hand and each monster has a power rating: 1-2-3-4-5.
In the middle of the table, the deck is shuffled and the top card is played face-up. Each player must then try to win that monster. To do so, you choose a monster from your own hand, play it face down and whoever has the highest power rating wins, only there is a twist: two beats one, three beats two and so on - except one beats five, so each card can actually be beaten.
Play the same monster as another player and you both lose, so only the highest rated unique monster can win. Win the monster and you take it into your collection (not your hand) and you also put the winning monster into the collection with it. Thus leaving you four cards. The losers, however, all recover their losing monster.
Play continues until someone either gains three monsters of the same kind, or a collection worth at least five diamonds – at which point the winner get’s a physical ‘diamond’. Each monster has either one, two or no diamonds except the four-rated (Shi) monster who actually eats diamonds.
So win a hand with Shi in it and he’ll cancel out two from your total. Once someone wins the physical diamond – the round ends, the collection is discarded and each player draws cards from the deck to make up five cards in their hand, only this time they could have any power value.
Final Thoughts
Diamonsters is a fast-paced, fun game to warm up for a night ahead as each game lasts about 15-20 minutes, depending on the amount of players and that’s where the game really shines: It’s fun with two and becomes quite tactical but starts to shine with more players. It works really well as a party game and becomes faster the further into the game you get.
Components wise, the art is very cute though it’s essentially just a pack of cards with some blue-ish plastic ‘diamonds’ but they serve their purpose well. The game is packaged in an oversized but quirky box, however because of the simplicity, it’s also extremely portable and everything can be taken out and put in your pocket to take to a friends.
Diamonsters is a lot of fun for everybody!
