FoxmindGames: Racing Hedgehogs, a Family Betting Race Game from Dr. Reiner Knizia, up to 5 Players, Ages 6 and up.

I enjoyed playing FoxMind Game’s Racing Hedgehogs with the grandkids. The players’ ages ranged from 9 to 69, but it wasn’t too challenging for the youngest or too boring for the oldest. The board and card design are cute and colorful. Each player starts with 11 cards. Rather than each player having their own hedgehog piece to move on the board, any player can move any piece depending on what cards they hold. Each card indicates how many spaces to move a particular color hedgehog piece on the board, with some cards being “wildcards” for any color. The spaces on the board have point values from -1 to 3. Points are scored when a hedgehog crosses the finish line. The one who moved the hedgehog across the finish line gets 3 points, then each card of a particular color in a player’s hand is worth the point value of the space that color hedgehog is on with wildcards, or “jokers,” worth 0 (i.e. if the yellow hedgehog is on a space with a 1, each player gets 1 point for each yellow card they hold). If a person’s hand totals a negative number, they receive a score of zero for that hand. The game lasts until each player has a turn to deal. Rather than using a scorepad to tally the scores from each round, there are points tokens in increments of 1, 5, and 10. This way of scoring requires some basic addition and subtraction to “make change”, (i.e. if a player’s score leaves him with 5 1-point pieces, he trades them in for a 5-point piece, so others can use the 1-point pieces for scores ending in less than 5. It was an easy game to learn but has the potential for different strategies for which cards to use based on what you are holding and what other players are doing. There was one question that we couldn’t find an answer for: If a hedgehog is 1 space from finish line, is it okay to use a 2-step card to get him across, or must you use a 1-step card or pass? We made our own decision since we couldn’t find the answer in the booklet. One improvement that could be made is with the hedgehog pieces themselves: they are “back heavy” and when accidentally knocked over (which happened several times), they would roll off their space and you hoped someone knew the correct space to replace them on. I also think it would be easier to shuffle the cards if they were slightly larger, but it was manageable for the adults. Both the kids and adults thought the game was a 4 out of 5 and I see it as one that will be played over and over with different outcomes each time.

The game is simple and the concept is clever. Perhaps a little out of the grasp of the lowest age suggested of 6. My daughter got the mechanics of the game, but the strategy was over her head. She's also annoyed that she doesn't get to be a specific hedgehog.

This game in my opinion is great for ages 5-9. It is based for smaller kids and easy to play.

Reiner Knizia is the closest thing to a celebrity in the board game community. He has developed or co-developed hundreds of board games over a multi-decade career, and is frequently recognized at the annual Spiel des Jahres (Game of the Year) awards.Prior to receiving Racing Hedgehogs I was mostly familiar with Dr. Knizia's games targeted for older players. He's received many, many awards for his children's games as well, but this was the first I had played.And I wasn't disappointed. This is an excellent game for players of any age. The rules are simple - the strategy is anything but. It took longer to shuffle the cards than it did for us to learn the rules, and by the second or third round we were hooked. While the rules may be accessible to players six and up, there's an element of strategy that makes this perhaps better suited to older players.The product description describes this as a "family betting game", but it's not gambling in the traditional sense. 3-5 players are spectators in a race between four hedgehogs. Players can move any of the hedgehogs by playing a card of a corresponding color. Hedgehogs that progress further are worth more points at the end of the round - every card you play works both for and against you. You need to play enough cards to advance your 'favorite' hedgehog, while keeping enough cards in your hand to increase your score.Quality and design are fabulous with adorable illustrations. Pieces are chunky for small hands, and cards are brightly colored and easy to interpret. We found that for a five player game there weren't enough tokens to keep score - we kept score with pen and paper instead.But overall a solid game - easy to explain and a lot of replay value. Highly recommended.

I acquired this game through Amazon Vine. I was interested in the product as a family game for the summer.The only drawback to this game is that it is limited to 3-5 players.But once you get playing, it is pretty fun.It's different in that each player is not given a hedgehog. All four hedgehogs are always in play and any player can move any hedgehog.Basically, you're dealt cards and, in looking at your hand, you take turns playing one card at a time to move one of the hedgehogs either 1 or 2 spaces. You continue taking turns until a player moves a hedgehog across the finish line, ending the race. From there, points are awarded based on the cards remaining in each player's hand and the location of the hedgehogs on the board.It's different for sure. After playing four total races (one practice and then one full three-player game), I haven't figured out much of a strategy. You can't play all of your blue cards and try to have the blue hedgehog win because a) you won't have any blue cards left to earn points and b) the other hedgehogs could be on spaces worth negative points and subtract from your score for the race. You pretty much have to hedge your bets... hence, I guess... hedgehogs!