Matthew BaileyGame 12# of the “Now & Then Summer Marathon 2024” and the third in our “Uno” sub-series is “Uno All Wild!,” Played with Jack(9) and Toby(6).
“Uno All Wild!” is a simple variation on “Uno” where, as you can probably guess, all of the cards in the game are wild. This basically means that any kind of colour or number matching is taken out the equation, and you can lay any single one of the cards in your hand on any turn with absolutely no problem.
Now, on the face of it, this seems like the absolute worst idea for a game ever made, but weirdly, I didn’t actually hate this, which I really thought I was going to. While obviously, it is light, the appeal and strategy come from the fact that, as well as the blank wildcards (which essentially are just normal cards in this game), you can lay all of those at any point. There are also power cards that allow you to do things such as reverse, plus two, skip the turn, and more importantly, a card that I actually wish was in more “Uno” games: the ability to make any player on the table of your choice pick up two cards.
Now, what this essentially turns the game into is trying to manage the cards you’ve got in your hand. You want to get rid of them, but also, you need to ensure that, ideally, you have fewer cards in your hand because as soon as an opponent has fewer cards than you, unless you can force them to pick up or miss a turn, they are going to win.
This creates a really different dynamic, and actually, somewhere where this game is quite useful is as a teaching tool to teach children the concepts of tracking what other players may or may not have in their hand.
The cards are the usual “Uno” fare with a normal shelf life. It’s not the most premium, but it does its job perfectly fine.
This is not a game you are going to play for hours. This is a quirky, almost joke version of “Uno” that oddly does have a few quirky fun bits.
Unless you are the die-hardest of “Uno” fans, you don’t need to rush out and get this, but if it is at a board game cafe or you see it on sale somewhere for a few quid, then there is a surprising amount of enjoyment in its bizarre simplicity.
I cannot explain why I didn’t hate this. I’m not saying I loved it, but I didn’t hate it, and that’s better than I expected.
