Fluxx is a game that Jess and I often play. In fact, it is pretty much our default game when we just want to play something. It was the first non-standard game that Jess learned and it is still one of her favorites. She and I have played often enough that we can get through a game of Fluxx pretty quickly as we try to achieve specific goals and plow through the deck to get the right cards.

Jess has been steadily acquiring all of the promo cards and had recently added the seven cards that were released over the summer, which included the first official Creeper card.

Creepers are undesirable keepers that do bad things. They were developed for Zombie Fluxx, where they will be a big part of what gives Zombie Fluxx its own special flavor. If you draw one, you cannot put it in your hand. No, it gets played automatically.

The promo Creeper is the Radioactive Potato. It is not a nice potato. It is not a cuddly potato. It is not a potato that you would want to introduce to your parents or waltz up and down the produce aisle with. No, if you have the Radioactive Potato in front of you, you cannot win the game, regardless of whatever else you have and whatever the goal is.

There is a promo action card that will allow you to discard a Creeper but, for the most part, the only thing you can do to get rid of the dreaded Radioactive Potato is to change the goal. When the goal gets changed, the potato goes to the next person in the opposite direction of play. That’s right, it’s a hot potato and when you are playing with only two players, you end up tossing it back and forth a lot.

Jess and I played three games of Fluxx the other night. She won two of the games with Ten Cards in Hand and with Peace, No War. I won one game with Five Keepers (actually, it was more like Eight Keepers)

However, that Radioactive Potato kept coming up. Now, I admit that Jess and I both aim to be able to draw as many cards as well can and if you draw the potato, you have to play the potato. However in none of those games did we ever get even halfway through the deck. I shuffled the deck several times before each game but that Radioactive Potato was unstoppable. Again and again, it rose up to rampage across our game.

Well, okay, in the second game, I drew the Kill a Creeper card and put that sucker in the discard pile.

It definitely changed how we played. We not only needed to get the right keepers and the right goal, we needed to make sure we played them when we HAD the potato so we could toss it back the other person.

If you play under the shadow of the Radioactive Potato, remember to be careful and to respect its power.