Colorful Card Chaos
Games heavily centered around “take that” mechanics live in a weird space for me. While I don’t have a problem with them, if I’m playing these games with one or more uber competitive, sore-loser types, the experience can be miserable.
With that understood, I approached Mantis with some hesitation. Luckily, my preconceived worries were unfounded, and the game turned out to be a hit with friends and family… even the ones who are typically sore losers.
Mantis accommodates 2-6 players and clocks in at a lightning-fast 10-15 minutes playtime.
Turns are snappy and consist of players choosing to steal or score before drawing the top card from a shared deck.
When attempting to steal, the active player draws the top card into a chosen opponent’s Tank (personal play area). If the card matches the color of an existing mantis card in the opposing player’s Tank, the steal is successful, and the active player moves all cards of the chosen color from the opponents Tank to their own.
In a two-player game, a successful steal additionally grants the active player another turn.
However—and this is a major point—if a steal isn’t successful, the targeted player gets to keep the card that the active player drew.
The active player then moves the stolen cards into their own Tank without scoring. This ‘take but don’t score’ action is an important one that I’ll touch on again in just a moment.
When choosing to score, the active player draws the card into their Tank trying to match it to an existing mantis color. If a match is made, the player moves all cards of the matched mantis’ color into their scoring pile, locking them from being stolen on future turns.
The first player to score 10 points (15 in a 2-player game) is the winner.
To Steal or Not to Steal
While taking resources from or hindering opponents in other games can sometimes feel mean-spirited, Mantis somehow manages to make it feel fair, fun, and risky. This shift is thanks to its clever use of probability, consequences, and scoring rules.
While the mantis critters (they’re actually Mantis Shrimp) on the cards are colorfully chaotic, the real MVP is what’s on the other side of the card.
Each card back shows three colors, which indicate the three possible colors of the mantis on the reverse side (somewhat similar with how cards work in Point Salad). This information gives the active player a precise probability of successfully stealing or scoring with the given card.
By using probability to help determine whether players go after one another, the act of stealing feels less personal and more data-driven.
Across my 10 or so playthroughs of the game, there was always at least one moment where the active player, after scanning everyone’s Tank, realized that they had a 100% chance of successfully stealing from another player.
In most cases, the targeted player wasn’t upset because the numbers worked against them, and stealing was almost certainly the right move to make. The targeted player was also likely okay with the move because their chance for revenge would come soon.
My 10-year-old daughter (one of the hypercompetitive players I mentioned earlier) even noted after I stole from her in one game, “That’s okay. I’ll get my revenge on you soon.”
Since a player can’t score their cards via stealing, it opens them up to a revenge steal on another player a turn. That’s presuming the steal is successful to begin with, lest the failure helps your opponent!
This probability-based system led to some genuinely tense decisions, which was surprising for a casual, party game.
Even in instances where I could steal with a 100% success chance, doing so would give my opponents a better probability of being able to steal from me on a future turn. Choices, choices, choices…
Altogether, Mantis is a surprisingly fair and balanced “take that” game that will be hitting the table often in my family’s house.
MANTIS details
- Designer: Jeremy Posner, Ken Gruhl
- Artists: Matthew Inman
- Publishers: ADC Blackfire Entertainment, Exploding Kittens, Geekach LLC, Rebel Sp. z o.o.
- Release Date: 2022
- Player count : 2 - 6
- Age range : 7+
- Time range : 10 minutes
- Mechanism(s): Hand Management, Push Your Luck, Set Collection, Take That
- BGG Geek Rating: 6.62517 - converted to Meeple Mountain scale: 3.5.
- More articles about MANTIS.
