Ages: 6+ 2-6 Players 15+ minutes COMPETITIVE

Like Snow White and Aurora who came before, they slumber forever, until the curse breaks.

Twelve beauties, twelve sleeping ladies rest evermore, Dragons, and knights, wands and potions raise the stakes,

Can the Kings wake them like the stories of lore?

To save them they will do whatever it takes,

For the wonderful, beautiful queens that snore

Will it be you who wakes the Queen of Pancakes?The Sleeping Queens must stir, need I tell you more?

Hurry Up! Or, for someone else, the Rose Queen wakes!

Sleeping Queens is a card game where each player competes to wake four to five of the twelve silly queens “sleeping” on the board. Players may wake a queen by using a king card, with a lucky draw using a jester card, or they can steal someone else’s queen with their own errant knight.

Knights are not invincible, though, if the opposing player you wish to capture a queen from has a dragon, they protect their queen! If you think your opponents are getting too far ahead of you, you can use a sleeping potion to put a queen to sleep…that is ONLY if they don’t have a magic wand to stop you!

On your turn you can take two possible actions, play a picture card (Jester, King, Knight, Sleeping Potion), or discard to draw. You have three discard options, a single card to draw one, a matching pair of cards to draw two, or an addition equation to draw three or more cards. So, If you had a 2, 2, 2, 1, 7 you could discard your entire hand and draw 5 — since 2+2+2+1 = 7. You MUST announce this when it is played in equation form! This can give a really fantastic introduction to pair recognition and simple equations to younger children, and help to enforce the skills in slightly older kids. What’s cool with this setup, is that this could be a VERY easy mechanic to change for other skill development. Subtraction equations, low level multiplication and division – you could even have 5 card sets where both sides have the same value!

Imagine a hand with 2, 3, 6, 1, 5 → 1+5 = 6 = 2 x 3! There are so many possibilities on making modifications to help cement fundamental math skills! Also, this game is very easy for younger children to grasp, though expect the equation piece to be quite lightly used until they have observed you doing it regularly and have picked up on those patterns! You could also disable that mechanic if you feel your child isn’t quite there yet!

Each queen has a point value ranging from 5 – 20 and in order to win you need a reach a certain number of points (40 or 50 depending on players) or a certain number of queens (4 or 5). Which can be tricky when every other player is vying for the same 12 queens! The first player to reach this goal wins!

This game is a fantastic time as it is simple, easy to learn, graphically beautiful and has a large amount of replayability (even with a group of adults). The one issue is that there is no text or indicator for queens with alternate abilities. The Rose Queen awakens another queen with her, the Cat and Dog Queens fight and cannot be held by the same player; however those changes to play are only noted in the instructions and not on the cards themselves.

Rose Queen, Cat Queen, Dragons and wands? Was this game designed by a six-year-old or something? Actually, YES! Sleeping Queens was created by 6-year-old Miranda Everts who enlisted the help of her sister to create this game after she had trouble sleeping one night!

Wondering about other Gamewright games? Check our our reviews here!

By Stephen Duetzmann

Editor in Chief Founder/EiC EngagedFamilyGaming.com Blogger, Podcaster, Video Host RE: games that families can play together. Editor@engagedfamilygaming.com

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