The Bell Ringer of Notre Dame

Notre Dame is a fun board game of card drafting, hand management, and more. You get to play with tiny wooden cubes which is fun more often than not, and you get to fight off rats which is fun much less often.

How Do You Score Points in Notre Dame?

There are lots of ways to score points in Notre Dame. Let’s take a look at some of them.

You can gather points outright by going to the cathedral. You might have to share these points if someone else decides to grab some there too. You can ride in your carriage and collect points, if any are left, at an end point on your journey.

What Is Card Play Like?

Each round of the game, you start with a hand of 3 cards. You select one that you really want to keep and pass the other 2 to the player on your left.

When you get 2 cards from the player on your right, you keep 1 and pass remaining card. As you might expect, you’ll get a third card from the player on your right. The trick now is that you only get to play 2 of the 3 you’re not holding.

Each of these cards gives you an action you can take on your turn.

What about the Rats? I Hate Rats.

Yes, Notre Dame has rats.

Each round, a random number of rats invades your section of the city. Taking care of the rats is the damage control portion of this game. You can probably stand to be overrun by the rats once during a game, but don’t let it happen twice. You’ll be doomed. There are various mechanisms that allow you to combat the rats, but I won’t go into the gory details here.

What’s Up with the Strangely Shaped Boards?

The individual player boards are irregularly shaped so they can still all fit together, forming carriage routes, whether there are 3, 4, or 5 players. There is a central, Cathedral piece that all the player boards touch. It’s shaped like a triangle, a square, or a pentagon (see above) depending on the number of players.

If you appreciate hand management games like Notre Dame, you might want to try out a print-and-play game called micropul.

Check the price of Notre Dame on Amazon.