SQUIRMISH™

Meet the Squirmish™ Cards | Card #9: Baby Head

Squirmish is now on Kickstarter here. This is a series of posts designed to help you learn a bit about some of the cards before you play the game.

Squirmish card #9 is Baby Head. Baby Head is soooooo sweet and cute and full of love. He really just wants to snuggle with you.

Unfortunately, Baby Head’s snuggles cause damage. He just doesn’t know his own strength. If you roll a six on his basic attack, he gets your card in a full snookle, which is a snuggle combined with him using opponents’ heads as a binky… did I mention Baby Head is enormous?

Baby Head is extremely difficult to knock out. Besides the fact that he has 13 hitpoints (which is a lot), he also is covered in the wonderful armor known as baby fat. This makes it so Baby Head takes -2 damage from all attacks.

As a result of his resistance to damage, when opponents attack Baby Head, he is not scared… he just thinks they want to play with him, and maybe snuggle and let him teethe on them for a while.

Although you would not think it looking at him, Baby Head is actually very old… ancient,even… or at least his body is. Nobody knows his age. His head is young, though. He sheds his head and grows a new one every nine months (new heads grow out of the flower-like appendage in his forehead). This insures that Baby Head will stay a baby no matter how old he gets. Each head has a whole new brain, too… needless to say, Baby Head is not very smart. He is very curious, though.

Meet the Squirmish™ Cards | Card #8: Mouth-Hatcher

Squirmish is now on Kickstarter here. This is a series of posts designed to help you learn a bit about some of the cards before you play the game.

Mouth-Hatcher, one a rare species of pelican, does not have a nest, nor does she want one. Why bother to build a nest, she reasons, when one can simply hatch chicks in your mouth? Hard to argue with that line of reasoning.

Mouth-Hatcher tries to be a good momma. To her credit, it is really fairly rare that she swallows one of her numerous chicks, and when she does, she quickly vomits them up. Her chicks have built up natural immunity to her digestive enzymes, since they live their young lives in what is essentially a pool of her saliva. Someday, with a lot of luck and perseverance, some may grow up to swallow her grandchildren.

When (after a 6 is rolled) she spits slobbery chicks at high speeds towards all of her adjacent enemies as an attack (doing 2 damage to each enemy), it is not because she doesn’t love her chicks. It’s because her chicks make excellent weapons (her saliva is highly corrosive non-mouth-hatchers).

Mouth-Hatcher’s “Pelican’t” special ability only activates when you roll a six when one of your opponents draws a card… but if it is rolled successfully, your opponent must discard the card they just drew. They pelican try again next turn.

10 hitpoints is pretty average. With no defensive powers, Mouth-Hatcher isn’t all that hard to take out with a little time.

Mouth-Hatcher’s battle cry is “QKKK,” which is pretty much all she can say with a mouth full of her chicks. If she could speak more, I wonder what she might say? Perhaps she would be a great orator. Perhaps she would give great and powerful speeches that would inspire the world. Perhaps she would continue to say “QKKK.” Eggs are cheap and plentiful (and she finds her chicks delicious to suck on), so I doubt we’ll be finding out any time soon.

Meet the Squirmish™ Cards | Card #7: Paddypaws

Squirmish is now on Kickstarter here. This is a series of posts designed to help you learn a bit about some of the cards before you play the game.

An enormous catnip enthusiast, Paddypaws has catnip with every meal. She delights in the different effects and flavors of the wondrous cat-herb, and is quite the connoisseur of the stuff. A sniff from her sensitive nose over a bit of nip can tell her the strain of the plant, the vintage… sometimes even the yard it was grown in!

While this hobby has its pleasures and advantages for her, it also makes her extremely skitterish… it does not take much to send Paddypaws running for cover.

Paddypaws is full of fluff and fatty stuff. She would make an excellent pillow if she would stay still and stop worrying so much. This fluff and fat, along with her nougaty center, provides her with a reasonable amount of hitpoints (11 of them).

Paddypaws is not an easy card to knock out.

In addition to being the seventh Squirmish card, Paddypaws is the second member of the Kitty Kat Club in the deck. Since no member of the KKC can attack another member of the KKC, she can’t attack Kittyclops, and Kittyclops can’t attack her.

It is not just other KKC members who have trouble hitting the skitterish Paddypaws… she has most sensitive whiskers. Her whisker radar ability alerts her to coming attacks 50% of the time, and instead of getting a wollop, she dives under a nearby sofa or bush and avoids the conflict.

She’s really a lover, not a fighter, though. A 1-5 on her basic roll does little or no damage. However, if you roll a 6 with her, her big fluffy paws go into full Muhammad Ali-mode, and she does 2 damage and another attack on a different card in play.

Meet the Squirmish™ Cards | Card 6: Mummyfrog

Squirmish is now on Kickstarter here. This is a series of posts designed to help you learn a bit about some of the cards before you play the game.

Mummyfrog is card #6. Born over 2000 years ago in the river Nile, this ancient amphibian is in awfully good shape for his age. Buried with a forgotten pharoah, he was released from his tomb when some explorers rediscovered it back in the thirties.

Back before he was a mummy, Mummyfrog romped about playfully in the water… but water no longer agrees with his sensitive mummy-skin. He now swims about in the sand, often hiding underneath it for days at a time. He still eats flies, but only flies that are dead and dried out… you can often find him lurking around windowsills and light fixtures looking for a dried fly lunch.

Woe unto those afflicted with his Curse of the Nile… it does 3 damage to ALL active opponent cards! Opponents are going to want to be awfully careful attacking this little fella, though… he does 2x damage when attacking a card that attacked him on the previous round.

For a little guy, Mummyfrog has a lot of hitpoints… 12 of them. Happily, all those years of baking in the sun has made him more solid than brittle… he feels more like a raisin than a matchstick when touched.

Meet the Squirmish™ Cards | Card 5: Cheek Pockets

Squirmish is now on Kickstarter here. This is a series of posts designed to help you learn a bit about some of the cards before you play the game.

Card #5, Cheek Pockets, may not be a rodent of many words, but is a trickier challenger than you may at first think. “My muv muts,” he says, and indeed he does… his cheeks are always filled acorns, pecans and walmuts. Sometimes he even “cheeks away” some filberts on a particularly lucky day of nut scavenging. He is rarely without something to eat.

If he gets a 6 on his basic attack, he unleashes his Rapid-Fire Nut Spit, unloading his cheeks full of saliva-covered nuts all over his victim. His gooey goobers can do considerable damage… to determine the damage, the controlling player rolls again, and the amount rolled is the damage done.

After doing this, his face looks rather like a deflated balloon… his formerly taut cheeks are left dragging upon the ground. However, he is extremely quick at gathering up a new supply… and when left defenseless in an area where he can find no nuts, he simply regurgitates up his last meal into his cheeks to prepare for further combat.

He’s just a little guy, so you would think he would be easy to knock out, but it isn’t that easy. When attacked he often scurries away quickly while mumbling unintelligible expletives… he gets away successfully if the controlling player rolls a 6. Even if you hit him, 11 hitpoints are a good amount… he’s a pretty tough little fella.

Meet the Squirmish™ Cards | Card 4: Excitopup

Squirmish is now on Kickstarter here. This is a series of posts designed to help you learn a bit about some of the cards before you play the game.

Card #4 in the Squirmish deck is Excitopup.

Excitopup is always excited… dangerously so. If anyone near Excitopup ever utters the words “walkie” or “dinnertime” or “get off of my leg” they soon regret it.

Excitopup’s basic attack always does damage… and if a six is rolled on it, Excitopup’s salivary glands go all Pavlovian, and he does a second attack doing 2x damage.

Excitopup is so darn excited all the time, that special abilities don’t even have an effect on him… he doesn’t even notice they are happening as he jumps up and down with completely focused obsession on the one single thing that can occupy his wee little brain at any time.

Excitopup is a member of the group Crew K-9 (the mortal enemies of the Kitty Kat Club). All members of Crew K-9 do 2x damage to other members of Crew K-9 when attacking them, as they all love a good tussle.

Meet the Squirmish™ Cards | Card 3: Kittyclops

Squirmish is now on Kickstarter here. This is a series of posts designed to help you learn a bit about some of the cards before you play the game.

Squirmish card number 3 is Kittyclops.

She plays it cute and innocent with that darling, big orb in her head… but if she gets a six on her basic attack, her opponent gets cat scratch fever, and the player controlling her can peek at an opponent’s hand and discard one of their cards.

Any time Kittyclops is attacked, the player controlling her gets to draw a card. What are opponents thinking attacking this cute widdul kitty kat, anyhow? They are sick, I tell you.

Notice, the yellow border around the card… the alternate color indicates this is group card. Group cards have a different color border around them than most cards, which is the color of all the cards in that group. Her group is the Kitty Cat Club, the biggest group in the game. All members of the Kitty Cat Club have the same special ability (which is not true of all groups). A Kitty Kat Club member can never, ever attack another member of the Kitty Kat Club. It has always been in their club charter, which reads in section 26, line 8:

“It is hereby declared that no member of the Kitty Kat Club, be they big and fluffy, or short in hair and stature, shall ever attack any other member of the Kitty Kat Club, even if they really deserve it. For we cats must always and forever stick apart. Meow Meow Meow Mew-Meow! Kibbles and Catnip for all!”

Meet the Squirmish™ Cards | Card 2: Opossrat

Squirmish is now on Kickstarter here. This is a series of posts designed to help you learn a bit about some of the cards before you play the game.

Opossrat is the second card in the Squirmish™ deck. Part opossum, part rat, all warrior. She is tougher than she looks… her prehostile tail works like a whip with spiky hairs on the end.

Her basic attack always does damage, regardless of the roll, which is a big plus. She also has a really nice defense… attackers can only attack her if they roll a 5 or a 6… otherwise she fools them by playing dead.

She’s very convincing at playing dead. She will stagger around clutching her chest melodramatically before she is even hit saying something like “OH! MY TICKER! IT’S A GIVIN’ OUT!” or “MAYBE I SHOULDNTA EATEN THAT MOLDY MUFFIN I FOUND BY THE LATRINE!” or “YOU BROKE MY HEART, BOBBY JOE, YOU SCOUNDREL!”

She then falls to the ground with a thud and gurgles out a “death rattle.” This is followed by her using some special glands to emit a horrific “rotting meat and pickles” stench as she somehow does an uncanny imitation of a bugle playing the song “taps.”

Actually, the stench may have more to do with her defense being effective than her performance, come to think of it.

Meet the Squirmish™ Cards | Card 1: Puffo

Squirmish is now on Kickstarter here. This is the first in a series of posts designed to help you learn a bit about some of the cards before you play the game.

Puffo is the first card in the Squirmish deck.

Puffo is a squishy-looking dragon… she is actually part cow, which explains why she says “MOOGA” as her battle cry. She jiggles a lot when she walks… she kind of looks like she is made of gelatin.

Puffo is a pretty powerful card. Her basic attack never fails to inflict damage, regardless of the roll. This is in spite of the fact that she does not have fire-breath… she can actually only produce smoke with her roar. Second-hand smoke can do a lot of damage, though.

On top of that, her defense is good… she takes -1 damage from all attacks. Her 11 hitpoints is a good amount… the most any Squirmish card has to date is 16.

She is pretty good-natured and mellow overall. She’d really rather be off hoarding popsicles somewhere (as is her wont), but the field of battle has presented itself, so battle she will.