Under The Microscope – The Princess Bride Prepare To Die!

Abstract: Prepare To Die! Is the first The Princess Bride game from Game Salute. In it, players play cards in response to the judge’s ‘Hello, my name is…’ card. The player’s cards complete Inigo Montoya’s byline ‘You ___ my ____. Prepare to die!’. The judge chooses the phrase that they feel is the most imaginative or funny. The judge gives the Hello card to the winner. The player who collects three Hello cards wins the game.

 Materials and Methods

Components

The game will consist of about several hundred cards split between Hello, my name is… cards and You ___ my ____. Prepare to die cards. The full game will play up to 12 players with three game modes. This preview copy had enough cards to support up to 4 players. It has three cards explaining the three different game modes.

Game Play

The game is very easy to pick up. The basic game mode, called the Hello rules, has the players with hands of three Prepare To Die cards and the judge flipping a Hello card from the deck. The players choose their best Prepare card and place it face down in the center of the play area. The judge mixes the cards then chooses which Prepare phrase is the best. The player who played that card gets the Hello card. The player to earn three Hello cards wins.

The other game modes are the You… mode and the Full Montoya mode. In the You… mode the cards are switched around and the players earn the Prepare cards as victory points. In the Full Montoya mode, the judge decides what kind of phrase he would like such as ‘the most imaginative’ or ‘the silliest’. The players pick a Hello card and a Prepare phrase card and place them in the center. Mixing occurs and the judge chooses one Hello card and one Prepare card. The player(s) that played either of those cards receives the card he played as a victory point.

Discussion

The Princess Bride Prepare To Die is an Apples To Apples clone. It plays almost exactly like ATA with a Princess Bride twist. The game plays quickly with games rarely lasting more than 10 minutes. It is easy to learn even if you’ve never played ATA. For those who like ATA this game is a nice diversion from the original. For Princess Bride fans, it is a kind of interesting, quick filler game.

Prepare To Die! Funded on Kickstarter and still has 15 days left to go as of this writing. The base game costs $30. This gets you hundreds of cards and includes a Bonus Pack of fan created cards.

I would like to thank Game Salute for the preview copy of The Princess Bride: Prepare To Die!