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How about a quick game of WOOf?

Local park manager and game inventor Ben VanBuskirk is at it again. With partner and college roommate Jeff Pickering the DAO inventor is launching his next game, WOOF.

“It’s dogs playing poker,” VanBuskirk said. “I don’t know where we got the idea but we were working on a fishing game and we got to the point where the mechanics were easier to apply to dogs and poker than fishing.”

The game is simple; a deck of 70 cards and a goal of accumulating a straight or four-of-a-kind meat cards. There are five each bacon, weenies, t-bones, meatballs, and a single rare prime rib. Players are dealt five cards and at each turn they draw and play cards, either hording meat in front of them or striking out at other dogs in the game with cards that bark, growl, bite, sniff, fetch, roll over, scratch at fleas. Of course there are cat, mailman and meter reader cards, and if you don’t have a bark, growl or bite card in response you’ll lose your hard won meat!

“There’s a lot of strategy, even if it is silly,” VanBuskirk said. The dog–catcher card, for example, is best saved for the final stretch so you can corner a dog that tries to bite you and get all his meat. Each hand is designed to be short, ten minutes or less, and the game lives up to VanBuskirk’s intention of being easy but subtle, and especially fun.
VanBuskirk made up how the game would be played while Pickering designed the fun graphics for the cards. “My kids were pretty much the test market,” he said. With the first issue of 100 decks VanBuskirk hopes to market the game online, the way DAO started, and at selected local stores. “I’m going to be kind of fishing to see which stores will be interested,” he said. DAO, which was released in 1999, has moved out of local stores and is being marketed by Reveal Games.

To buy the first run edition of WOOF visit the Blue Heron Gallery on Gulf Road or at www.playwoof.com.