Stats:
No. of players: 2-6
Amount of time to play: 15-30 min
Age requirements: 12+
Set-up time: minimal

Maximum Throwdown is a card-throwing party game. Your cards have icons that give you abilities or score points but they have to be totally uncovered to matter.

Maximum Throwdown Rules Description:

First you must place the location cards in the middle of the table in close proximity to each other. Next you grab a faction deck of fifteen cards and get ready to throw. Simply shuffle your deck, draw the top card and throw it on the table. Each card you throw must touch a previously thrown card or a location.

At the beginning of your turn you check to see if you have any active icons. Active icons are totally uncovered and give you special abilities or points. There are six icons draw, throw, break, steal, attack and points. Draw lets draw another card and choose which you’d like to throw. Throw lets you either throw an extra card (if you have one in your hand) or immediately re-throw a card that did not land touching a card. Break lets you keep a card that missed a card. Steal gets you an opponent’s card to throw. You can (and should) throw it facedown. Attack lets you force an opponent to discard their top card. Points are represented by pips. For every six pips showing you score a point.

If you run out of card you still take your turn. You can use your abilities and score points. Once the final card is thrown you score points one more time and the player with the most points wins.

Quick Review of Maximum Throwdown:

Maximum Throwdown is a fun, light, party game. It is full of gang on the leader with a lot of take that. If you play this with the right group you will have a blast.

The components for this game are top notch. The cards are good quality and the art is good. The rules are well written and easy to follow too. The only letdown here is the lack of a scoring mechanism. You can download the free scoring app, but including some tokens would have been nice.

This is simple game that anyone can play, but not everyone will be good at it. It is light and fun and should be played in that vein.

I first played this game at Unpub 3 and had a great time. Like I said above your enjoyment might depend on your group. If your group likes to laugh, trash talk and throw cards (or at least try to), you will like this game. You do need a decent sized table to get the full experience and a round table is best. But if you are looking for a great game to start or finish your game night you should pick this up.

Score and synopsis: (Click here for an explanation of these review categories.)
Strategy 1 out of 6
Luck 4 out of 6
Player Interaction 5 out of 6
Replay Value 4 out of 6
Complexity 1 out of 6
Fun 5 out of 6
Overall 5 out of 6