The actual event happened several years ago, but my family won’t let this incident go and uses this as a reason why they don’t want to play games with me still today, and it’s been really bugging me.
So anyway, I (f26 now, probably about 17 or 18 at the time) had bought this game called "Unstable Unicorns," and it quickly became a popular game for my family to play. The basic idea of the game is to get a certain number of "unicorns" from your hand to your "stable" before the other players, by playing unicorn cards and/or using special power ups or upgrade and downgrade cards to add unicorns to your stable or remove unicorns from other players’ stables (i.e. your active cards on the table) until someone achieves the magic number of unicorns to win the game. There were a lot of unique cards that kept the game unpredictable and challenging, but it also meant the rules couldn’t clarify every scenario.
My family (mom, dad, 2 brothers and a sister, all younger) is really into game nights, and it’s also worth mentioning that we’re all pretty competitive. On the night in question, all 6 of us were playing, and as per usual, my siblings were ganging up against me. One of them played the "Pandamonium" downgrade card on me relatively early on, which meant that until I could get rid of the downgrade card (which wasn’t necessarily an easy task), it was impossible for me to win the game, because the win condition required a certain number of *unicorn* cards, and I didn’t have unicorns, I had pandas. My siblings also argued that most of my cards’ abilities were invalid, because they required unicorns, and I had pandas. I was frustrated, but didn’t have a way to remove the card, so I just kept playing with it there until I could get rid of it. The rest of my family basically considered me knocked out of the game, so they focused on each other, while I collected enough unicorns (pandas) to win.
Then, someone played a card that required every player to sacrifice a unicorn card (take a unicorn from your stable and discard it), and I argued that I didn’t have to, because as I had been told before, I didn’t *have* unicorns, I had pandas. My family didn’t like it, but I was using their same logic. On my next turn, I finally was able to get rid of the Pandamonium card, and once it was gone, I claimed victory, because I now had unicorns again, and had the winning number.
My family was angry, claiming that I "twisted the rules to win," and they still call me a cheater and refuse to play most games with me because of this incident. It really hurts, because I love playing games with my family and I hate that they consider me a cheater because of how I found a way to use a handicap card to my advantage, but no matter how many times I’ve pled my case, they’re unwilling to let it go. So AITA?
NTA, you used the same rule/logic they did and loopholes are meant for exploiting in games.
If anything you taught them how to get out of the situation next time they get the pandamonium card.
NTA. Man, I wouldn’t hold a grudge that long even if a 17 year old DID cheat at a pointless family game night. Icing you out for almost a decade because they can’t deal with you following their own rules is ridiculous.
That’s why I’ve started to question whether I really was the asshole… their criticism and refusal to see me as anything other than a cheater is relentless, and really hurts my feelings when I just want to do something fun with my family and they respond by dragging this back out. The other thing that bugs me is that my brother who is closest to me in age (2.5 years younger) has also bent the rules in games and has even been caught cheating before, and yet he has not been given this same treatment. It really makes me question why I’m so ostracized
Probably because he’s the golden child and you’re possibly the scapegoat?
Alas that double edged sword – it’s “logic” when the so-called rules benefit them, yet “cheating” when someone turns that same logic around on them.
I am a strong proponent of making family members eat their words. NTA
As someone who plays board games a lot, that seems like pretty sound logic to me. (I’ve only played Unstable Unicorns once, but this sounds like it fits the game correctly)
Putting a card on someone to basically take them out of the game, even though they still have to play, and then getting mad when they figure out how to get around it, seems like pretty poor sportsmanship to me. That’s kind of twist is exactly in the spirit of a game like Unstable Unicorns.
However, maybe you need to suggest playing some games that have more clear rules where cheating is harder, and work your way back in to their unreliable graces. Like…Mantis or Fluxx! (I’m kidding those games would be terrible for this purpose, but there are lots of fun games that are more straightforward and less chaotic than games like Unstable Unicorns).
NTA but if your family have held a grudge against you for 8 years because of this one game, you have bigger problems going in in your family.
I mean, probably. To be fair, my family does claim that I cheat and bend the rules “all the time,” but whenever I ask for examples of when and how I’ve cheated, the only specific one produced is this scenario with the Pandamonium card. Everything else is vague non-specifics about how I supposedly always try to argue with the rules or twist them to get my way, but no specifics that I could detail in a post here to get judgement on. And yeah, it’s not uncommon for my family to debate the interpretation of rules, but we all do that—in fact, my brother that’s a few years younger than me is notorious for exploiting loopholes in the rules of other games, and I’m pretty sure that if he’d pulled off the Pandamonium come-from-behind win, it would have been celebrated as a genius strategy. He’s even been caught *actually cheating* (he would always try to be the banker when we played Life or Monopoly, and he’d casually slip himself extra money when no one was paying attention) and yet that was laughed off as funny and clever trickery. I genuinely don’t know what I did to be so vilified
NTA – This isn’t even twisting the rules – this is the rules. Your family is correct that you can’t win with Pandamonium and you are correct that you can’t be forced to give up a unicorn if you only have pandas. Your strategy of getting 7+ pandas and then playing glitter bomb (I assume) is a great one.
The Unstable Unicorns wiki says about Pandamonium:
> 1. No player can do anything to a unicorn card that’s in that stable. (Nothing at all!).
> Ask yourself “would this card or effect do something, anything to a unicorn card in that stable?” If the answer is yes, you can’t do it.
So there.
Never play Munchkin with your family, because if you don’t make incredibly sketchy plays and piss everyone off, you are doing it wrong.
I mean the Pandemonium card text does say
“All of your Unicorns are considered Pandas. Cards that affect Unicorn cards do not affect your Pandas.”
Right? So if the text describing what the card did specified unicorns as the target yours wouldn’t technically count. Sounds like your family is a group of rather sore losers if years later they still won’t play with you. NTA
Im very competitive and immediately felt OP was right but after people have explained the game and the rules she didn’t use a loophole! Her dummy siblings counted her out and stopped paying attention and made a bad move that apparently the cards make very clear benefitted OP. I always tell people I play to win and they won’t play monopoly with me because I’m “not fun” but the point is to make everyone bankrupt to win. If you wanna play a friendly game play something that is very much luck based, like candyland. Anytime they bring it up, in a lighthearted way, I tell them that if they want to play a more random game monopoly has several ways to play that allow for everyone to have a bunch of properties or even some “house” rules allow up to X number of houses if you have 1 of the properties and Y houses if you have 2.
I guess I’m weird I wanna win or lose based off my abilities. We can’t play trivia games either because apparently it’s my fault that i love to learn and remember a lot of random info. Siblings can be the “worst” but usually in a lovable way, OP has actual crappy siblings that are sore losers
Your comment made me remember another thing that they accuse me of: supposedly, when we play trivia games (my mom loves trivia) I go through the questions ahead of time and memorize the answers. This is evidently the only possible explanation for how I’m able to answer so many of the questions correctly when we play, so any time I’m doing well, my siblings claim I must’ve peeked ahead of time at the questions. (When I express frustration at the accusations, they claim they’re just teasing me and say I need to learn to take a joke. When I say that jokes are not supposed to be hurtful, I’m told I’m the problem.)
NTA! That’s how the game works, you won fair and square
I’ve known people who played panda-monium on themselves for immunity from certain magic cards and effects!
That’s literally how that card works. That’s the counter play.