Toy Fair 2015—ION

ION was tucked away in a corner of the upper floor of the convention center, far away from where most board/card games could be found. I only happened upon them while exploring, and almost missed them entirely. A small booth, they only had one game which was their namesake.

The ION Card Game – $12 – Ages 7+

Basically a deck of dominoes. Each player has a hand of seven cards their trying to get rid of by matching either set of pips on their cards to the current card on top of the pile on the table. If you don’t have a match then you’ve got to draw from the deck. Some cards have actions on them that force other players to draw cards, allow you to give players your cards, let you take another turn, etc..

I actually had a chance to play this game a new times with my kids today, and it’s a pretty good time! I was a bit skeptical at first, but the game plays very well. Nothing mind blowing, but some solid, quick fun. With the amount of cards in the deck, I figured this might go as long as some extremely tedious UNO games I’ve played in the past. The extra actions on the cards really help move the game along so that you don’t spent too much time going back and forth with the other players (up to 10!) Don’t let that 7+ age limit fool you, but 4-year-old was able to handle himself perfectly well with this one.

Since I’ve already played it, I think it’s OK to pull out the cat and call this a Second Look as well as a Toy Fair 2015 post.

A copy of ION was provided free for review by the publisher.