Africa 2019: Geography Card Games

AFRICA 2019

GEOGRAPHY SKILLS
Country names, spatial relationships, capitals, languages, nationalities, and physical, demographic and economic data for 54 nations.

LEVEL: beginner to advanced; mixed levels OK
AGES: 8 and up
PLAYERS: 2-5
GAME TIME: WAR 5-10 minutes, HOLIDAY 10-20 minutes, LINK 20-30 minutes

For players with low geographic knowledge, it is suggested that the games be learned in the following order.

GAME 1: HOLIDAY (2-5 players)
Players start at Western Sahara (gray space on the map), draw a card, roll the dice, and move their piece that many spaces naming all the countries passed through. When the destination is reached, a new card is drawn. If a mistake is made the player returns to the last correctly named country. The other players can look at a map key to ensure countries are named correctly. The game ends after a fixed number of turns (for example 10).
When a player reaches their destination, the remainder of their movement is forfeited and they must wait until their next turn to start the journey home. A player may not pass through an occupied country. A player may not visit the same country twice on the same turn. A player can move fewer spaces than the number on the die.

GAME 2: WAR (2 players)
Both players draw a card and declare their country’s name. Player 1 asks a question from the question cards. If player 2 answers correctly, or has the better rank or larger number, player 2 wins and keeps both cards. Play alternates until a fixed number of rounds is completed. Questions can be chosen by the players based on their existing geographical knowledge, or in a fixed order, or randomly. A subset of the questions to be used may be decided before play begins.

GAME 3: LINK (2-5 players)
Each round consists of 2 players drawing 1 card each and declaring their countries. Player 1 asks a question as in Game 2 WAR. The winner can either keep the card they are holding or change cards with the losing player. Then both players place a piece on their acquired country on the map board. Play now continues with player 2 and player 3. The game ends when all the country cards have been used. Points are scored for linked countries: 1 point for each contiguous country, minimum 3. Any 3 island nations (Madagascar, Mauritius, Seychelles, Comoros, Sao Tome and Principe, Cape Verde) scores 5 points.

Currently available (2019 editions): Europe, Asia, Africa, U.S.A, Japan.
Africa is available as a free download so you can get a sense of the quality of the product.
Also available are free downloads of all game boards (PDF and png files), and flag cards (PDF).

You can order factory-quality game cards (plastic or linen), game pieces, and game boards at CompellingGames.com.