Board Games Retro: Can’t Stop Playing ‘Can’t Stop’
Sometimes it’s important to know when to call it quits, but sometimes you just Can’t Stop.
Press your luck games are awful strange. At first glance, they seem as random and uncontrollable as Candyland, but upon closer inspection, it’s more like Ana from Overwatch firing a NanoBoost into a group of allies: you have control over when you make your move, but more often than not, the specific outcome is unexpected.
haha, the thing Lucio says is like the title of the game. haha. so funny. Not forced at all.
Can’t Stop is a press your luck, dice-rolling game initially published in 1980, although the concept of the game goes back to the ’50s. The goal of each player is to reach have 3 tokens reach the end of their respective columns.
The columns have different lengths, making 2 and 12 much shorter routes, for being harder to roll.
On each player’s turn, they roll four 6-sided dice and make 2 pairs from those rolls. For example, a roll of 1, 2, 4, 6 could be made into 3 (1+2) and 10 (4+6), or instead as 5 (1+4) and 8 (2+6), and so on.
From these two results, the player will either place a white token on the board on the bottom of the column matching that number or move a token that is in a column up one space if it matches one of the results. If the player can do neither of these things, they bust and their turn is over.
The game has been reprinted many times over the years.
Alternatively, they can choose to stop at any time and replace the white tokens they’d been moving with tokens of their color. During their next turn, they will be able to start from any of their tokens already on the board. Once a player reaches the top of the column, that column is locked and can’t be used anymore. The first player to climb up 3 columns wins!
The best part is Can’t Stop is a simple and fun party game that can be easily replicated with other game pieces lying around the house.
Kharg-hark, Gruumsh
Thanks for reading!
