Not too long before the Covid-19 lock-ins, I came up with a game to use with my son's Disney Tsum Tsum figure collection. I wanted my son to have a way to play with the toys besides just rolling them around on the floor or throwing them around the room. The challenge was coming up with a way for more than 2 people to play the game so I could involve his cousins or his friends if they came over. First I thought about some of the other board games and the designs they used. The first design I figured would work was the "Wagon Wheel" board design, used by several games including Trivial Pursuit.
Once I had the board I began figuring out the rules for the game. I had to account for all the different types of figures and who they represented. Then once I figured out the rules, I had to playtest it. I borrowed a board from my sister and started playing games with my son. He really enjoyed helping me. I then played a few games with my wife and son and then tested it with my nieces and nephews. It turned out to work really well. I had taken into account the different roles and how to include special abilities depending on the character and how "building your team" was a factor for winning in the game.
I was pleasantly surprised by how popular it was with my son, nieces and nephews.
I tried to spread the word by first creating a page on Facebook and then on Pinterest. I posted on several Disney Tsum Tsum pages and groups and it seemed to have a positive response. I even contacted Disney to see if they wanted to adopt it. Disney contacted me back but said they were not interested. I later found out that Disney had discontinued the Tsum Tsum figures and was not producing them anymore.
So I put it aside until the Covid pandemic happened and I pulled it out and played it with my family and even did a Google Meet with my nieces and nephews to play it through video chat. It actually went well.
Recently, I was able to play a board game (Munchkin) with my son during his time at home because of Covid-19, and for fun, we tried playing with his LEGO Minifigures. He really enjoyed it. I shared it on a couple of Lego pages and other builders seemed to jump on this. I was on the Lego Ideas page and saw someone had created the idea for a "Settlers of Catan" board game. This made me think of my Tsum Tsum board game and the idea came to me on how I could adjust it for Lego.
I decided to revamp the idea for my son's LEGO Minifigures. The premise of the game is almost identical. The game can have between 2-6 players. It uses a "wagon wheel" designed board, though if you have something else that has a similar space design, you can use that too. You roll two 6-sided dice for moving around the board. The goal of the game is to move around the board with your figures and collect blocks at each base, once you have collected all the blocks and build a tower and your figures get to the end of the game, you win.
The key to the fun of the game is that the Minifigures you chose to play with will have special abilities and you don't just play with 1 you have 4 Minifigures on your team. The special abilities come into play with the dice roll and interacting with the other players. In addition, with the "wagon wheel" design, is that you move past the starting point for each player.
When you get to that base, you get a lego piece. The idea is that as your figure moves around the board, you collect pieces to a tower that you will build for your 4 figures to stand on at the end of the game. Now you will have to choose which bricks you collect in order to build your tower at the end of the game, so you might want to build the tower first and collect the pieces as you play. You will need a number of Lego blocks for building towers depending on how many players there are in the game. Remember your tower has to support all 4 of your figures and not fall over.
-6 players: 20 blocks per player
-5 players: 16 blocks per player
-4 players: 12 blocks per player
-3 players: 8 blocks per player
-2 players: 4 blocks per player
To add more speed to the game, you can have spaces for "roll again" marks, where if your figure lands on this, you can roll the dice again for an additional move, but without your character's ability move bonus.
This brings us to the 'Special Abilities' part for the Lego minifigures. Because there are so many different characters and types of minifigures that LEGO has produced over the years, with so many thousands of sets, that you can have a massive city of Lego and have hundreds of individual residences. So taking that into account, I came up with a way to give special abilities to each of those thousands of figure types. These are incorporated into the game in both movement and interacting with the other players in the game. This can be both an advantage and disadvantage to each player as the game progresses. Primarily this gives an advantage to a player who doesn’t roll well with the dice as well as to a player who does roll well with the dice.
For the minifigure abilities, I divided up the figures into 5 choices for a player to choose from :
1. City/Animal/Food,
2. Heroes,
3. Ghost/Monster,
4. Villains,
5. Princess/Friends/Artist
Your figure is placed into one of these categories. You will have to reinforce why your figure has this status based on which minifigure it is. Knowledge of your character is key. Don’t forget you only have 4 figures and you can only have 1 of the 5 categories for those four characters. You can’t have 2 Ghosts and 2 Villains. Each figure has to be a different minifigure category. (EX. 1 city, 1 hero, 1 monster, 1 friend, etc) During your turn after you roll your dice, you take the combined number you rolled (2-12), then add on what your character's move bonus is to the dice roll number. The Special Ability move numbers are:
City/Animals/Food: move 2
Heroes: move 3
Ghost/monster: move 4
Villains: move 5
Princess/Friends/Artist: move 6
In Addition, when you interact with another player's character, there is also a player ability called a “bonk”. This works as a hindrance to your opponent's move. When your figure passes another on the board, the passed figure is bonked. Depending on the choice you have designated for your figure, this will tell how far the opponent's figure is pushed back spaces. The Special Ability “Bonk” numbers are:
-Villains bonk: player fall back 2 places
-City/Animal/Food bonk: player fall back 3 places
-Hero bonk: player fall back 4 places
-Princess/Friends/Artist bonk: player fall back 5 places
-Ghost/Monster bonk: player fall back 6 places
In addition, if you happen to be using a character that has a rival that one of your opponents is using, this comes into play as an additional bonus. For example; you have the Hercules minifigure and you bonked your opponent's Hades figure; Hercules adds 2 spaces to your move. Hades is bonked back 2 additional places. Contrariwise, if Hades bonked Hercules; Hades then adds 2 spaces to their move. Hercules is bonked back 2 additional places.
These abilities allow for an even playing field and for players to use a variety of different and opposing minifigures to add fun and difficulty to the game. Because you have to build your 4 figure team to account for your opponent's team, there are hundreds of varying teams you can build, depending on the minifigures you have in your collection. The more players you have, the more fun you will enjoy as you have to create your team of Lego Minifigures, build the tower and Win the Game.
