Aaron Brooks
United States
Mililani
Hawaii
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Jungle Speed L'extension is everything I expect an expansion to be. It introduces new elements, while keeping the basic feel of the original game. This expansion is meant to be played in conjunction with original Jungle Speed, but if you have a totem, you can play the expansion by itself.
Adding the expansion to the original deck makes finding matches much more tricky. Many of the expansion cards are very similar to cards found in the original game, so you may want to think twice before grabbing the totem. Also featured in this new deck are non-symmetrical cards; now you will see cards with three different shapes in a diagonal line, instead of the old square-circle-square, you may see a square-square-circle or square-circle-octagon. As a side note, after playing with the expansion, experienced players were a bit slower when playing original Jungle Speed, so switch back to the original deck when introducing new players to the game. You can easily sort the decks by looking at the symbols in the corners of the cards. Original cards feature a diamond, whereas the expansion cards have a palm tree.
In my opinion, the only downside to adding these cards to the original deck is that you end up with a deck of 160 cards, which can be a bit much in a game of 4 or less players.
Special Cards
Color Match – this is the same as the card in the original. Play focuses on color matching instead of symbol matching
All Hands – This card looks like the original all grab, but note the hands instead of arrows. When this card comes up, players race to stack their hand on top of the totem, being careful not to make it fall. The player who placed his hand first is the winner, the last one is the loser. The loser takes the winner’s and his own cards and adds them to his stack. If you grab the totem or knock it over, this is counted as a misgrab, and you take all of the face up cards on the table.
Rotate Left – This card looks like the original all flip, but with the arrows around the edges of the card. When this card comes up, all players immediately play using the card to their left. This means that you will grab only when their card matches someone else’s. However, after grabbing the totem, the winner gives his cards to the person who should have grabbed, so the players with the matching cards will generally leave their cards on the table.
Although hard to find, I recommend this expansion to any Jungle Speed lovers, especially if you feel like the old game has fallen into a bit of a rut. This expansion came at the perfect time for my gaming group, as we were just starting to think up our own variants using the original cards.
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