I consider this one of my must-have games, but it’s not what I would call a party favorite. It tends to be slow, quiet, and intense, and generally appeals to analytical and technical types, though I’ve found that the best competitions comes from the creative types. Better spacial reasoning, pattern recognition, and maybe intuition, I expect.
Each card in the SET deck contains one of three symbols (squiggles, diamonds, ovals) in varying numbers (up to three), colors (purple, green, red), and degrees of shading. At the same time, players try to create sets of three cards by creating various patterns or anti-patterns. Patterns must share a characteristic, and anti-patterns can’t share any characteristics. Three patterns, three anti-patterns, or a combination of three pattern(s) plus anti-pattern(s) is required to create a set.
First one to recognize the set shouts it, points it out, then collects the points.
It’s actually easier than it sounds, and there are two levels of difficulty. You can remove one of the decks to start with, which leaves fewer set possibilities. One or two quick runs through the deck, and you’ll have it.
