How to play the Grinch Grow Your Heart Card Game

We love the Grinch around here so when we saw the Grinch Grow Your Heart Card game we knew we’d have to give it a try. You can see how much we love the Grinch by visiting our Grinch Party games and our Grinch dice game.

Let’s get to this grinchy card game.

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Object of Grow Your Heart Game

First, you will need your own copy of the game. You can get yours here; Canadians, here.

The game has a scoring element that is similar to Yahtzee, but with cards. The overall object is to be the player with the most points after a certain amount of rounds.

Setting Up Grow Your Heart Card Game

First, let’s go over the cards. The cards all have a point value and a type. There are wreaths, noise makers, ornaments and presents. They are numbered 1 to 6. There are some cards that have bonus points on them depending on what is in your hand.

Every player will get to play the Grinch an even amount of times. The first player to be the Grinch is the oldest player.

The Grinch now deals two card to everyone, including himself. He also sets out the Grinch tile with the number three showing. The Grinch’s heart grow heart tokens that have number on them for each round.

How many players you have will decide how many rounds you will play. For a 2 player or 3 player game, you play 6 rounds. There are 4 rounds for a 4 player game and 5 rounds for 5 players and 6 rounds for 6 players.

Now it’s time to play.

Playing Grow Your Heart

All players except for the Grinch play at the same time. Each of them will draw two cards from the deck. Now they decide what card in their hand to discard. When they have made their decision, they place the card in their personal discard pile face up on the table in front of them.

Now it’s the Grinch’s turn. He takes two cards to add to his hand. The card can come from either the deck or another player’s discard pile. He may only take the top card of a discard pile. He can also choose to take one card from a player and one from the deck.  He now choses a card to discard to his personal discard pile. No one else can take this card. Before his turn is over, he places the next largest heart token on top of the Grinch tile.

Now, all the other players draw two more cards into their hands, Again, they choose one to discard.

When all the players have made their discard, the Grinch again can take any two cards from the top of the discard piles or the deck. When his turn over, he placed the last heart token on the Grinch tile, showing 5 cards and signalling the last turn.

As before, players take two cards in and discard one. The Grinch takes his turn and then it’s time to score.

Scoring

There are 7 possible spots to score. First there are the card spots. These have you adding up the sum of all cards with that picture on them. For example if you have the 1, 5, 6 of presents in your hand you could score 12 points in your presents column.

Next, there are three other spots for scoring. First there is your rainbow. This spot is taken by adding up the highest card of each kind as your score. Second is the match number spot. In this one, you will need to have at least three cards that have the same number on them. The more cards you have of that number, the higher your score. Last is the run. For this one you need to have the numbers in a row. You get more points for having more cards in a row.

The last way to score points is for the bonus cards. Any card in your hand that has a bonus goal on them can count. Look at the symbols and if you have cards in your hand that complete the goal, you add the score amount to your score for that round. For example, if you have a card that has a bonus for a yellow card and you have at least one yellow card in your hand, you score that amount of points to that rounds value.

Second Round

Once you have scored, the Grinch tile is passed to the next player, the cards are shuffled and a new round is started. The play is the same with a new Grinch.

Winning Grow Your Heart Card Game

When all the rounds have been played, you add up all of your scores. The player with the most points wins.

What We Like

First, the Grinch theme is well done. We love the illustrations and colours. The quality of the game is also great.

What We Don’t Like

First, the strategy of the game is a little hard to get used to. We find that we’re always looking at the score sheet to figure out what we should be aiming for. We find that the first turn takes quite a bit of time as you try to figure out what to do. I’d like to say that we’ve gotten fast as we’ve played, but I’m not sure that’s true.

Next, although it feels like a strategy game, it’s really more like a luck based game. Now, I love a good luck based game, but this one has a lot of thinking in it for a luck game. If you are not lucky enough to get bonus cards, then you’re out of luck and usually don’t win.

Last, the age on the box is 6 and up. I’m not sure a younger child would like playing with the complicated scoring. On the other hand, adults tend to over think everything so many the kids would have an advantage.

Show you Add Grow Your Heart Card Game to your Family Game Shelf?

Overall, the Grow Your Heart card game is a fun Christmas-themed game. I’m not sure it’s a the top of my Christmas games list, but it is very on theme. It also feels like a different game depending on how many players you have. It’s easier to make decisions when you don’t have as many rounds to play. However, a four player game goes by pretty quickly.

So, should you make room for this game on your game shelf? Well, if you love the Grinch, I’d say that yes you should.

If you’d like to give it a try, get your copy here; Canadians, here. If you love the Grinch the way we do, check out our Grinch party and our Grinch dice game. Be sure to check out our Big List of Holiday games here.

And why not check out our Family Game Shelf shop where there’s tons of holiday fun to be had with game like Christmas Whacky Putt (our dice mini golf game) and our escape rooms for kids with tons of holiday themes! And you can get our Grinch Activity Book for free with any purchase in our Family Game Shelf Shop. Just choose your products, check out and then email me at familygameshelfblog @ gmail.com the the subject line: “Grinch Free” and I’ll send it to you!

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