Grab This Card Game For Your Next Night at the Pub

!–paging_filter–pSeattle game designer James Ernest, of tabletop game company Cheapass Games (a href=”http://www.cheapass.com” target=”_blank”cheapass.com/a), made a splash this spring with a hugely successful Kickstarter campaign for his totally new card game called Pairs. Portable and easy to play (for two–eight players), the Pairs deck has 55 cards (one 1, two 2s and so on up to ten 10s). A dealer deals cards face up in rounds, as players attempt to avoid being dealt a matching pair and scoring points. The object of the game is to not get points so the first person to reach a target score is the loser. There’s a single loser (as opposed to one winner), which Ernest says is one of the things that makes it a “pub game.” That, and the fact that Pairs goes perfectly with a cold microbrew and Seattle’s thriving gaming scene. The core deck is adorned with wizards and other fantastical personae, and thanks to the $322,226 pledged (well beyond Ernest’s $12K goal), 10 additional decks created by illustrators in the gaming world were each “unlocked” at progressive stages of the campaign—including a goblin-themed deck by Seattle-based Pete Venters, known for his illustrations in Magic: The Gathering. Select decks will be available at retail stores in the fall, but for now you can download the “Fruit Deck” (above), which plays on the homonym “pears” with a colorful array of produce on the cards. Print it out for free, or buy a high-quality copy froma href=”http://www.drivethrucards.com” target=”_blank” DriveThruCards.com/abr(9.99). Then grab as many as seven friends and head to your local pub to try your hand./p