A pick-and-pass drafting game for gym rats!

0:00 let's talk about don't Skip Leg Day a pick and pass card game where you're working out welcome to brains on games I'm Dr Brian McDonald and this episode we're going to talk about a game that's coming soon from pandasaurus games uh and it's a it's a game about going to the gym and bodybuilding but you don't actually do any exercise when you play the game the game is called don't Skip Leg Day and it comes it's a card game that comes in a protein shaker cup here so if you want your protein shake well I don't know if this would work for an actual protein shake but I will tell you that it does in fact open up don't drink the cards though don't skip leg day is a quick playing game three to six players can play this one kids age eight and up can figure it out and games only take about 15 minutes to play often we'd finish one and then everybody said let's go again let's take a deeper look though at don't skip leg day by pandasaurus games don't skip leg day is super light this is a game where it's a pick and pass drafting game like I said so each player has a hand of cards you choose one to play and then each player passes their hand to the next player for the next turn in the game the theme here is you know you're trying to get ready for a bodybuilding competition that's coming in only two weeks you've only got two weeks to get your workouts in bro and the rule book uses the word bro again

1:31 and again and again it's sort of written like it's gym rats that are going to be playing the game but you start with a hand of nine cards and you're trying to play cards into the Tableau into your workout in front of you that will uh give you the sets that you need to score the most points at the end of the game so Victory is determined by the player who has the most points based on the sets that they've played that they've collected through the game however before you even count points you count up the number of Leg Day cards that each player has interestingly enough let me see if I can find one here the leg day cards do not give you any points so you don't get any points for playing these into the Tableau they'll say zil or NADA or zero or no points at the bottom so you're not really trying to collect these cards except the player who has the fewest number of Leg Day cards is out of the game they don't even get to count their points at the end of the game so you really got to think about balancing how many of these cards you put in front of you because if you don't have enough you're not going to earn any points at the end of the round everyone starts the game with a hand of nine cards and there are going to be seven cards played so at the very end unlike some other pick and pass games at the very end you still have some options you're not limited oh I'm forced to play this one last card that just got handed to me that's not the case for don't skip leg day there's nine cards you're playing Seven of of those cards the first card that you play is is face up

3:03 first card in the first round face up that's a gym day that means everybody gets to see it but the next time that the cards come around and you play your next one that one goes face down so nobody else knows what that card is if you play A Leg Day card face up it cost you a point so it doesn't earn you any points but if you decide not to hide that you're you're taking some Leg Day cards and that might encourage other players to take some you know it could be strategic to play it face up but you might just get stuck where the only card that's going to help you is a leg Day card sometimes we had hands going around that had a ton of leg days in them so this is worth a negative point if it's face up you don't want anyone to see you at the gym doing leg day you're focusing on upper body so usually you would turn that sideways just so that you don't forget oh that's a a minus one point at the end so play continues until you've got your seven cards in front of you then you discard the leftover cards those go back in the Box you're not going to use those again deal out of hand of nine more cards play your second week the second week starts with the home day so it's it's gym day home day gym day home day Etc the second week starts with a face down card and then you play the next one you play is going to be face up so there's no scoring at the end of the first week everything happens at the end of week two and and your entire tableau low counts Al together so you're just looking at whether well for each two bench press

4:35 cards you're going to get five points for each of the pull-ups and there are three different kinds of pull-ups the underhand pull-up is worth one and then there's one that's worth two and if you can do a one arm pull-up that's worth three points at the end of course the leg day cards face up Leg Day card subtract a point face down cards you're just trying to make sure that you don't get eliminated um cards like preacher curls you're going to get more points the more of those that you collect Pro protein shakes are interesting there are different Shake cards some of them have only one shake on it some have two and this one has three the person who has the most pictures in front of them of protein shakes so this is worth three three pictures so if you've had the most protein shakes you're going to get 10 points if you have the second most you get Five Points really the most powerful card in the game is the selfie card you want to take pictures of yourself after a workout while you still have the pump and that's going to give you extra points for each of the different symbols in your Tableau so even if you don't have enough say bench press cards to you know maybe have an odd number instead of an even number you could still count some points for those useless cards u leg day is included here so those Leg Day cards would be worth one point based on the selfie that you're taking what skills though are you practicing when you play a game like don't skip leg day well uh it it's a game where you do need to plan ahead you're you're thinking about those cards in your hand and how to maximize your points and you're thinking ahead to the

6:07 14th card so if if I've chosen you know this bench press card I need to have an even number to get those five points if I play one and I don't get another one later on that's worth zero uh you need to consider oh the leg day cards are worth zero or a negative point if I play it face up but I need to have enough of them and I and so 's a lot of planning ahead in terms of which cards are are you're going to keep from those hands and then there's there's a memory component I think especially at the lower player counts so if there's only a few players you're going to see that hand is going to continually come back around so if you can remember oh the hand that I just passed has a bunch of Leg Day cards in it then you're going to know oh these other players are probably going to get some leg days I better take one too final thoughts though about don't skip leg day well I mean this is a super thematic game you've got the protein shake shaker cup that the game comes in uh which is fantastic by the way for traveling because it's super small all the cards fit in there and you can just throw it in the trunk of the car if you want to because it's it's plastic so it's pretty solid it's not going to get beat up the way that game boxes might especially the the flimsier ones so it's easy to transport and it's small super thi thematic the fact that you've got that shaker cup and the the artwork on the cards I quite like the artwork on the cards the background colors and

7:37 symbols are are you know they're colorful and they stand out but the pictures are kind of stylized but look like those workout pictures that show you how to do each of those exercises so they sort of reminded me of those old um those old magazines or or the workout plans that you would uh that you would get when you were going to the gym so again it's thematic and everybody liked this artwork and overall it was a real hit with the people that I played it with um I I think it's good that you can play it with a big play count right it goes up to six players it's almost a party game at that point when you've got six people around the table but there's not a lot of brain work that you're doing here it's you know it takes minutes to teach minutes to learn uh and it plays in it plays so quickly uh often we would have players saying well let's play that again um and in fact one of the guys that I played it with he's still talking about this game two weeks later he keeps he'll swing by you know to try out a new game but he still sees that one on the shelf and he's like oh you know I quite enjoyed that don't Skip Leg Day game so it's one where you know if you if you're into that gym theme uh or you just want to play something that's kind of silly this is a this is a good game everybody enjoyed the simple mechanics the Simplicity of it and there's only so many games I think that that I've played in my lifetime as a gamer with that pick and pass mechanic and and so this it's the first one in a long time that I've played so it was

9:09 nice to have a chance to try that out again are there downsides though to don't skip leg day well one thing is that might be a bit of a downside you know I think there's a tradeoff here between the Simplicity how easy and quick it is to figure this one out and the number of different ways to get points so it's not really a point salad where there's whole there's a few ways to get points but you're kind of needing to concentrate on certain cards in your Tableau in order to collect enough sets to make it worthwhile um so there's it's not a point solad and for some people that's you know having lots of ways to get points and getting big totals is something that's a lot of fun um but I think that's a trade-off because you do need to it's it's so easy to learn how to play this game and you don't have to like there's not a lot of brain power involved and you're not gonna be sitting and staring at those cards trying to figure out which card am I gonna play next so it's a fun game to kind of play with the group you can sort of talk at the same time as you're playing it there are cards you see I've picked up a card here there are some cards that are more powerful than others so we rarely found that protein shakes were the game changer um you know if you collect a lot of those you're you're you can earn up to 10 points if you have the most rarely did that make the difference at the end of the game but these selfie cards I guess if you're going to the gym and you're working out and preparing for a competition you're going to want to take lots of selfies these were the sought-after cards probably the most powerful cards in the game because they can make your cards that otherwise would

10:39 be worth nothing they can make it worth something and so those points can add up pretty quickly but um like I said I mean we had fun playing this game it's simple it's quick H and we've got at least one guy who's still talking about it having played it you know a few weeks ago so thanks so much to pandasaurus for sending don't skip leg day my way it did remind me of my own days uh several years ago as a gym rat before the pandemic closed all the gyms um thanks so much uh to pandasaurus if you have any questions or comments you can of course leave them in the comment section below the video or you can email me at Brian brainon games.com is the website that's where future episodes will go previous ones are already up there brainson games are the X handle and the Facebook page and the Instagram feed so we're all over the place if you enjoyed this video and you want be notified of future ones you can head on over to YouTube and click that subscribe button thanks for joining me and hopefully I'll see you next time