Oh My Brain

Oh My Brain is a two to five player card shedding game from legendary designer Bruno Cathala, Théo Rivière and published by 25th Century Games.

It is an ordinary summer night. You and your friends are sitting around a campfire toasting some marshmallows. All is quiet, all is peaceful, until a horde of brain eating zombies come crashing through the woods.

Oh My Brain is a card game in which you will be laying down cards (representing zombies) quicker than your opponents. As part of set up players will have three cards placed in their cemetery and six cards in their hand. The cards are numbered 0-19 and on a player’s turn they must place a card face up in the central discard area with a number higher than the one previously played. Multiple cards of the same number can be played at once if you choose to do so

The 0 cards can always be played and restarts the numbering in the pile. Certain cards have special abilities/effects. If you cannot play a card you lose a brain token, remove the discard pile, draw two cards and add one to your cemetery. The pile is started again with a card from your hand. After your turn and if you have less than three cards in your hand you select a card from your cemetery.

The end of the round is triggered as soon as a player gets rid of all their cards from their hand and their cemetery. Every other player loses one brain for each card in hand and the cemetery. A new round starts and keeps going until one player has lost all of their brains. The player with the most brains is the winner

The above explanation is a brief outline of the rules and is not intended as a full rules breakdown.

Final Thoughts

Oh My Brain is a fun, light hearted, quick playing game. Turns are pretty snappy as you will mostly just be laying a card down (assuming you have one available). I love the speed at which the turns pass. Some of the cards have special abilities/bonuses which are easy to understand and add a nice wrinkle into the gameplay. They are nothing revolutionary, but they add some twists into the game to keep people on their toes. The eight spider card forces your opponent to play lower than the eight card rather than higher. There are also cards with the marshmallow symbol which involves rolling a die and applying the bonus. They are all fun little additions to the game.

The addition of the cemetery aspect of the game is great. I enjoy picking the cards to add to this at the beginning of the game and the drawing of the cards during the game. It adds a touch of strategy into the game which is very welcome. The player count states two to five, I personally think works better with the higher player counts. At two it works fine but there is a greater degree of change in the discard pile at the higher player counts which adds a bit more chaos into the game. For a light, quick playing game the interaction between the players at the higher player counts is where the game shines.

As card shedding games go, Oh My Brain is a fun addition to the genre. It is quick playing, light on the rules and is a blast to play.