Last week I had the distinct and unnerving pleasure of partaking in a game of The Terrifying Girl Disorder at a board game evening in York. I was in excellent company with Tom and Bryony, and they very kindly beat me at the game quite soundly. That said, I had a terrific time playing it and I think you will too, so let's talk about those afflicted frightening females!
The game itself is based on the premise that, some time ago, young women started to develop eerie powers. At first this was considered a blessing, and the affected girls were called Blossoms. However, as suspicion grew and the public became more fearful, such young ladies were diagnosed with Terrifying Girl Disorder - as such they were either hunted down and killed, or captured and trained to serve the state.
On one such mission, things go awry and one of the targets unwittingly uses her powers to wipe the memories of all present, and subsequently it is now your task to discover the true identities of the girls in the game.
The deck provided, which comes in a lovely little box, contains multiples of each character, a shard card which acts as a marker, and a little spinny token which changes the direction of the gameplay. This caused some confusion and I got a bit irritated by it, but once settled into the flow of the game you could see the point of it. Just like bees. Annoying but serves a purpose!
Each player is also given a score card to reference - during each round, the player must stake a claim on the circle of cards in the middle of the table by placing their shard on one. Other players must leave a space of at least 1 card before laying their down, and once it is time to collect, you collect the cards up to the next shard. The idea is to collect and then play a certain number of each card, with each girl scoring different points for the number played. This is where it gets tactical. Once you have collected your cards, you play a character from your hand, and you must play all the cards of that character you possess. So if you have 4 Nadeshiko cards, you must play all 4 and activate her special ability. Abilities include swapping out cards with opponents, being able to play a character twice (you can only play each character once per game) and many others. This is how you control your hand and try to build a winning strategy.
At the end of the game you will take on the identity of the girl you played the most cards of, so if 4 Nadeshiko's was the highest number of cards you laid down in one go, you become that character and score accordingly. Some cards score more highly if you only play 2 or 3, but this becomes very difficult. Trying to keep your hand small so you can play as few cards as possible is a real skill, but to be fair Tom managed it and thrashed me. Bugger.
Once the game is over, your character will score based on who they are, but they also have post game points due to their special abilities. One such power may be additional points if no other player has any of that character in their hand and so on, so you don't just have to be mindful of which character scores the most points at the end, but also how that character's power might get a boost by the remaining cards in players hands.
It sounds complex, but once you've mastered it, the game really flies by quite nicely.
As one of the smaller, cheaper and very much more anime style card games out there, I can highly recommend The Terrifying Girl Disorder. It's easy to carry, quick to explain and perfect for taking to a game cafe like Geek's Retreat in Leeds.
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