Best Mastermind in 2020 Review
Board games are the perfect way to stay engaged with friends or family indoors. Activities like these are not only for entertainment but have health benefits as well. Whether it’s during the weekends or when you’re on vacation, having everyone together for a board game can increase bonding and definitely takes time away from the phone screens.
For children, it’s even more beneficial as some board games foster the development of logical thinking and critical reasoning. They also improve basic communication skills and teach soft qualities like teamwork and planning which are essential for later stages of life.
Mastermind Board Game is one of those board games, which facilitate early development of comprehension in children. That is perhaps why it became the most popular and largest selling board game in the world today.
Devised as a two-player game, it requires to be played with strong logical deduction abilities. Because it is so strategy demanding, it can teach young players not to play irrationally or rely on luck in order to be a winner. It is the perfect recipe for a board game, and it is also popular among adult players as well.
What The Game Contains
- Board with a shield feature and drawer for pegs
- Color Pegs in many colors (Depending on version)
- Key Pegs in 2 colors
The Gist Of The Game
Setting Up
Setting up the game takes no time at all; it’s essentially codemaker versus codebreaker. Just decide how many rounds you will play, and decide who gets to start with which role.
How To Play
Essentially, the mastermind board game is a player versus player single peg board game that requires you to try to guess a specific color sequence, deriving logically through several trials and errors.
The game comes with a large collection of colored pegs and key pegs, which you set into small spaces on the board. Each of the components of the game is made to be durable, so you never need to worry about breaking any of it.
So, two players are required to play the game – at least above the age of 8. One of the players will volunteer to be a “code breaker”, whilst the other will be the “code maker”. The code maker puts colored pegs in spaces behind a small screen to keep the prying eyes of the codebreaker out. It is the job of the code maker to break the code of the color sequence by taking turns in guessing the colored pegs and their position on the board.
Let’s suppose you are taking the turn of the codebreaker, making guesses as you put the kegs into their spaces, the code maker will give out only two pieces of information once you have filled out one row completely – whether you had the right color, and whether you had the right position.
The colors and positions are not revealed to you, though. This is exactly where your deduction skills come to use. You will continue to make guesses based on the information you receive until all 10 rows of the spaces have been filled with the color kegs without the correct guess.
Skills You Need
The Mastermind board game isn’t something you play relying on luck, and randomly placing the colors will definitely not get you anywhere – you need good memory retention, and, be able to analyze the provided information well. It’s going to teach you how to think, that’s for sure.
That being said, anyone can actually play mastermind. It’s not a complex game, but surely require a fair amount of methodological approach.
Who Is It For?
The mastermind board game is actually aimed at everyone above the age of 8. So, while it’s an ideal extracurricular activity for children, it makes an excellent addition to game night with the family.
Besides being family-friendly, it would not fall short as a camping game either. Challenge your friends to a round of mastermind whether you’re in a scout camp or on a tent-trip in the wild. You’ll be subconsciously improving your deduction capabilities as well through repetitive gameplay.
Adults will especially find this game to be a challenge, especially the ultimate version of Mastermind, which is slightly more difficult than the classic one, having more than 4000 possible combinations of codes.
Other Variations
Since it hit production almost 50 years ago, the mastermind board game has had several editions released. From mastermind kids – focused towards young learners, to ultimate mastermind – a more complex version; there is a mastermind edition out there for everyone.
Things To Consider
With so many small components such as the color kegs and the key kegs, if you have toddlers at home, it’s best to keep them at bay when you have the game set up. They can unintentionally swallow the pieces.
It must also be noted that the pieces are small enough to be easily lost. As they play a pivotal role in keeping up the game challenging, you don’t want to lose too many pieces.
Here’s our final say
Buy it.
This is not only a family-friendly game but since it compels critical thinking, having children play these games with their peers will develop much-needed skills required to be successful in later stages of life.
Best of all, it takes a total of 20 minutes to play each round – in terms of time, that’s not a whole lot of commitment. But trust us when we say this, the game is addictive and you’ll soon see yourself repeatedly challenging your opposition to achieve a better personal best.
Before you know it, as soon as you have played a few rounds, there will be others gathering around calling for a turn to challenge you.
with so many variations of the mastermind board game in the market today, the classic version is the most simple, affordable, and fun. It’s light, compact, portable, and can conveniently be stored and put away to play any time you want. We find it to be such an amusing past time; we recommend it all the way.
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