Jigsaws, Monopoly, Scrabble and pub quizzes have gotten my family and I through lockdown, but when I spotted Canine Chaos in the Boots Christmas sale, I knew we’d be adding it of the list of things to do when we’ve got cabin fever.
The fast and frantic game takes a match or two to get your head around, and once you’ve mastered how to play, it gets even better if you attempt the game after an alcoholic drink or two.
Inside the box is 100 cards, which is 25 sets of four cards. These dog suits have punny celebrity names, like Flea-yonce Knowles, Clint Eastwoof and Notorious P.U.G.
The aim of the game is to swap out your cards from the centre and be the first player to have three matching sets of four ‘celebri-packs’.
How to set up Canine Chaos:
Sort the deck of cards into dog-suits, and decide how many you want to play with. You will need an equal number of suits per player and an extra one for the centre. For example, when I played with mum and dad, we decided to use three suits each, so needed 10 suits out of the deck total.
Shuffle the cards you’ve selected to ply with, and leave the rest in the box. Deal four cards face up in the centre, and the rest face down to the players.
Each player (up to eight) can then divide their cards into piles of four, face down, without looking.
How to play Canine Chaos:
Here is where the chaos begins. The youngest player shouts ‘woof’. Players are allowed to that a quick look at each of their piles and make a snap decision on which suits to collect. For example, if you’ve got two ‘Will Sniff’s in pile one, then he’d be a good one to collect. That said, you can change your mind on what to collect as the game goes on.
Players can build their suits by swapping cards from their piles with cards in the centre – always putting down a card before picking one up. You can swap more than one card from the same pile at a time, but each pile must always contain four cards, and the piles should always remain separate.
You also can’t swap between your own piles! If you have two Kim Kardachshund’s in pile two and one in pile three, you’ll have to put pile three Kim Kardachshund into the centre and swap a card before you can pick her back up and put her in pile two! You’ve just got to hope no-one else was thinking of collecting her.
This game may seem civilised if everyone took it in turns to swap out their cards, but the chaos comes from each player scrabbling over central cards to be the first to complete their piles.
When you complete a dog-suit, the player must shout out the name of the celebri-dog – like ‘Jennifer Pawrence’ and turn the pile face up, before continuing to match their remaining piles.
Whoever is the fastest to complete their piles shouts ‘Who’s The Doggy?’ and wins the game!
Once you get the hang of it, it’s a really entertaining game, and you can alter the difficulty by adding in more dog-suits per player.
The game has a RRP of £8, but has recently been on sale in Oliver Bonas and Boots. It’s absolutely worth picking up and saving for rainy lockdown days when you need a giggle.
