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I have recently acquired a very nice Crokinole table. I have played enough of it now with family and friends that I can safely say that I like it a lot. My basic description I give when trying to explain it to someone is that it's like a mixture of shuffleboard, cornhole and a little bit of pool but unlike those games it fits on your dining room table. I won't go into all the rules here because that would be boring and it is much easier to understand by just playing a game or watching a video. The basics are you are flicking your disc and trying to knock your opponent's discs off the board and your own discs toward/into the hole in the center. Spaced evenly around the innermost circle are 8 pegs which add another layer of strategy. The scoring is based on which ring your discs end up in at the end of the round. The outer ring being the lowest point value and the hole in the center being the highest.
It is very fun and surprisingly versatile. You can play 1 on 1, 2 on 2, 3-player singles and 4-player singles (if you have enough sets of different colored discs). This is really nice flexibility because you can adapt to however many people you have that want to play. Playing 2 on 2 where you are on a team with a partner is great especially when you have mismatched skill levels. By considering how you pair the teams up you can even out the overall skill level between the two teams.
The other great thing I've found about Crokinole is that there are various ways you can play it and even play it solo. There are a couple different commercial card game addons that you can you use to play a single player game on the board or to change up a multiplayer game. I have not tried these (yet) but what I have tried is a print and play game that was designed for a Crokinole board and generously released for free by Mark Harding called Ready Five.
Ready Five transforms your Crokinole board into a radar and uses different types of cards and rules to dictate enemy discs (planes) being placed on the board and advancing on your base (the center hole) with each round. Your job is to use your disc (fighter planes) flicking skills to shoot down the enemy planes (knock them into the ditch). That is the basics but there are some other wrinkles the game adds to make it even more strategic and challenging.
It is a really well designed game and I'm very impressed with how well it works and how much fun it is. On top of being a great way to play a solo game on a Crokinole board Ready Five also includes a small rules tweak for playing co-op with a partner. You're still playing against the enemy/deck but you are teaming up and splitting your own planes between the two of you. This changes the game because now you can shoot from two sides of the board which makes hitting enemy planes a matter of discussion such as who goes for which plane among other decisions that you have to make together. I got a chance to play the co-op rules the other night and it was very fun! It is a bit easier to win the game playing co-op if you have two relatively good players but would still be pretty hard to win if one of you was a beginner. I have still yet to win a game playing solo :). It is hard but in a fun and satisfying way. If the difficulty ventured into overly frustrating territory there are some included suggestions for tweaking the rules to adjust the difficulty.
Ready Five Print n Play Game Files on boardgamegeek
Crokinole - 10/10
Crokinole by itself is great. It is versatile and fun. You could play it casually or seriously and have a lot of fun either way. It adapts well to varying skill levels and number of players. There are quite a few rules variations that help keep it from getting stale and to match different preferences. I only have two caveats for Crokinole. It is a dexterity game, a game that involves a bit of skill. Not everyone will get along with that type of game in general. Crokinole boards are also fairly expensive compared to your typical board game. A top quality Crokinole board can be nearly $300 USD or more. A good board is likely to set you back around $200. There are less expensive boards that you could have plenty of fun on but even the very low end is around $100 which is significantly more than your average board game. However, when you consider how much staying power a Crokinole board has the higher initial price starts to feel very worth it. Nice Crokinole boards are hefty high quality wood and with minimal care could be in your family for generations. It is a dynamic game that I don't think will ever get old and there are enough different ways to play it that keep things fresh.
Ready Five - 10/10
I can't get over how well designed this free print and play game is. It goes so perfectly with a Crokinole board and is truly a lot of fun to play. Being able to play on the Crokinole board by yourself is priceless and the co-op experience is excellent as well. On boardgamegeek.com I saw someone re-skin the game materials to make it World War II themed. Some day I would love to do the same with a sci-fi theme instead.
