You are also allocated a secret task. This is yours, and yours alone to complete on the sly during the game, but don’t get caught! Players have the opportunity to guess what other player’s secret tasks were. If undetected the player gets three points, if someone guesses the challenge however, they gain the three points instead.

Greg Davies and Little Alex Horne bring you a Taskmaster Board Game based off of their award-winning show. The aim of the game is to finish with the most points but getting those points may require you to think outside the box and try to be clever with your tasks. The original board gamebrings the very essence of theshow to the comfort of your own home. Compete with your friends and family in a series of ludicrous tasks to be crowned Taskmaster Champion. Judge or be judged. It's time to summon your inner Taskmaster. Contents: Game board, rules sheet, scoreboard playing pieces, wipe-clean pen, Taskmaster trophy and 200 task cards, including video tasks from Alex Horne himself.Taskmaster is styled brilliantly. The rules unfurl like a challenge on the show. The board looks like a bird’s eye view of the house off the telly and the cards are good quality. The cards are also plentiful and it will be an age before you see cards that you have done before. When you do, it might be time to buy the expansion!

The Taskmaster (either a rotating role, or a permanent game-long role) decides how to awards points. A points scheme based on the number of players (for example, if there are 4 players taking part in a task, the winner gets 4 points, 2nd place 3 points, and so on) is sensible. However, the Taskmaster has the final say and can give points however they choose to, and their word is final. The rules of the game are pretty straight forward. Players take it in turns to be the Taskmaster, putting the gilded head of Greg Davies in one of four locations – Garden, Lab, Kitchen and Living Room, and drawing a task to provide to their fellow contestants. You have to read all of the instructions and that’s pretty much it. From there on in, it’s the Taskmaster’s call. Even the points scoring is arbitrary, with the Taskmaster able to dole out points for whatever reason they want. We played this as part of our belated Christmas party and there was a lot of fun to be had. We drew a task from the show (conceal a pea in your mouth or hand), and we had to make a representation of the Taskmaster Trophy with stuff around the house. It’s definitely a different kind of party game, and actually, one which would work well over Zoom if you can’t get out to see people. The box says it is suitable for ages eight and over, younger players will need more help, but they will have rip-roaring fun along the way. When we play as a family our youngest, Max, generally teams up with me or my wife. I have even been the Taskmaster for an entire game, which I really enjoyed. This gave me the opportunity to help all the children, at the detriment of my wife’s score, and make sure all challenges were appropriate.It is based upon the long-running BAFTA award winning TV comedy quiz show starring Greg Davies (stand-up comedian and actor best known as the headmaster from “The Inbetweeners”) and its creator Alex Horne (band-leader of The Horne Section) currently enjoying its 10th series on Channel 4 following the successful move from Dave. And then there’s adorably naff John Kearns, whose bewildered little face gave the impression that every task was genuinely hurting his brain. His did earn an instant series highlight, however, when he successfully sabotaged a team task without either of his teammates noticing. LVG 5. Series Eleven Ever fancied being a towering ex-school teacher turned comic sat in a big gold chair hosting a celebrity panel game show? Well, now is your chance, as there is a Taskmaster party game! Unless you don’t have a gold chair in the house, because sadly, this game does not come with a throne. Paul Thomason spends a creative, fun and competitive afternoon playing Taskmaster which brings all the silliness of the TV show to your front room. On the board are piles of tasks. Four piles each correspond to a different location – the kitchen, living room, lab, and garden. Alongside these, there are secret tasks and final tasks, meaning in all, there are 200 different task cards! Before each game, decide on how many tasks you want to complete, and then, each round, it is up to the Taskmaster to decide from which of the four location piles to choose the task. Each player will have a secret task to carry out during the whole game, and if the game ends without that task being detected, the player will get 3 bonus points.

Anyway, Horne and Davies tormenting five different comics per season is a proven formula. It is possible, of course, to be too formulaic: Taskmaster’s lineup only broke away from its strict “one BAME man, one woman, all the rest white men” setup in season four, when it allowed a second woman in. The game comes with a game board, rules sheet, pen, paper, playing pieces, Taskmaster trophy and a couple of hundred all important task cards. Taskmaster The Board Game But it almost doesn’t even matter who the contestants are. If the cast is a bit underpowered, Taskmaster gets by on silly charm and on knowing the pleasures of simple games. Some of its finest moments have come from only slightly embellishing the office pastime of throwing balled-up pieces of paper into a wastebasket – and here, the best game is an old-fashioned round of hide and seek variant Grandma’s footsteps, albeit one played in a railway museum and featuring Horne, the spotter, standing on a bridge wearing a helmet covered in fairy lights. It is funny when Lou Sanders squeezes into a bin and shuffles forward pretending to be part of the landscape, but it is even better when Joe Thomas just plays wholeheartedly and fully sprints from one hiding place to another, narrowly making it before Horne pops up again to try to catch him.The first thing players will need to do is draw themselves an avatar for the leader board. You have a minute to do this before it is placed in the frame provided. You also have a secret task that you try to do throughout the game. (Mine was pet an inanimate object like it was a pet.) If you manage to get through the game unobserved, you get a bonus three points. If anyone catches you when it’s time to guess and describes your task, they get three points. Finally, you all take part in the “Final Task,” either reading the task or scanning the QR code so Alex Horne reads it for you. Whoever has the most points at the end is the winner! It also could be a bit weird having friends in your house, rummage through your fridge or drawers trying to complete a task. I was okay with it, but imagine some may be self-conscious around that. The players whose house it is do have a bit of an advantage as they will know where some things are, or what might be available.