Alien Presidents: The Card Game

Sorry to disappoint my many fans of high-altitude adventure and/or everyday life-threatening illness, but this post has nothing to do with mountain climbing and nothing to do with childhood cancer. But it does have something to do with the charm of eight-year-old minds.

Today Fergus decided to create a card game called "Alien Presidents". Not only did he make up the rules (such as they are) but he created each card from scratch and did all the scoring (thus earning us a modicum of homeschooling points).

I won't go into all the details, but basically each player picks two cards at a time, each of which has a certain number of points associated with it: add up the points on your two cards, compare your points to those of the other players, and the person with the most points wins that round. Then everyone discards (or "disgorges," as Fergus sometimes says) one card, and picks a new card for the next round.

Each card features an "alien" version of current US political figures, and discards go either into a "Graveyard" stack or an "Evolution" stack. When we played it, we always discarded to the Graveyard. It's worth noting, however, that when all players ran out of new cards to pick, we were free to pick them from the Graveyard--a process that seemed eerily familiar when I pulled the Dick Cheney card out of the stack.

I have no idea how the "Evolution" stack might work.

Here are the "stats" from some of the cards, if you want to create your own deck (each one features a drawing of the "alien" in question, but you'll have to imagine those):

Name: BARACK OBAMA
Points: 54
Spaceship: SITH RIDE
Planet: SITH
Species: SQAKE

Name: DICK CHAINIE
Points: 105
Spaceship: ZARTRON
Planet: WEIRDO
Species: INSECTOPUS

Name: GEORGE BUSH
Points: 93
Spaceship: ZOK DEATH SLOOP
Planet: DIGPLOOM
Species: ROBOID

Name: KARL ROVE
Points: 82
Spaceship: SNAIL STRIKER
Planet: QUORG2
Species: SNY ("Snee")

Name: JOHN MCANE
Points: 71
Spaceship: QUORGETIC BOUNDER
Planet: QUORG
Species: FLYCTOPUS

Name: CONDELISA RICE
Points: 69
Spaceship: FANTASY SHOOTER
Planet: ZOKK
Species: FRIZARD

Name: HILARY CLITON
Points: 15
Spaceship: SIXSIX ENSOCKER
Planet: SIXSIX
Species: ROBONITE

At one point during our game, Fergus eyed the Graveyard and said, "I'll discharge George Bush as waste." And look, I'm not one to launch into political commentary in forums like this one, but....

Oh, it hardly seems necessary, does it?

Alien Presidents (C)
Age: 8 and Up
Teaches: Second-grade addition (with "regrouping"), not to mention contempt for U.S. politics.