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Rebound Board Game Review and Rules

Rebound Board Game Review and Rules
How to Play | Review | Final Verdict | Comments

How to Play

Objective

Be the first player to reach 500 points.

Setup

Attach the two game board sections together along with the rubber bands and the two score sliders. Each player/team takes four of the same colored pucks. Each player/team slides one of their pucks along the game board. Whichever player’s/team’s puck lands in the most valuable scoring zone gets to go first.

Playing the Game

Players take turns sliding their pucks on the game board. Players must release the puck before it moves past the foul line. If the puck falls off the game board in any way or falls into the pit at the end of the game board the puck is worth no points. All other pucks stay on the game board wherever they land and can be hit by other pucks thrown. If a puck moves through the rebound gate and returns to the starting side of the game board the player who the puck belongs too will get to re-throw it in a future turn.

Return Gate in Rebound

One of the green pucks have been shot through the return gate. The green player will be able to re-shoot this puck on their next turn.

After all of the pucks have been thrown for a particular round, the round is scored. Each player/team scores points for each of their pucks that currently reside in a scoring section on the game board. If a puck is lying in two different scoring zones, the puck is worth the lesser value. For example if a puck is between the 20 and 50 point zone the player would get 20 points for the puck.

Scoring in Rebound

This purple puck is partially on the 200 point section and the 100 point section. This puck would be worth 100 points.

Once all of the pucks have been scored, all of the pucks are removed and a new round begins unless a player has scored more than 500 points when the current round ended.

Scoring Points in Rebound

The current round is finished. The green player scored 270 points in the current round (200+50+20). The purple player scored 80 points (50+20+10).

Winning the Game

The first player to reach 500 points wins the game.

Review

The game/sport of Shuffleboard and Curling have been around for a long time. While I haven’t played either game much, I have enjoyed both games quite a bit. Unfortunately it is hard to play either game since there aren’t a lot of curling and shuffleboard courts around and since they require quite a bit of space it is pretty hard to make your own shuffleboard court. Therefore many game board publishers have tried to create their own take on shuffleboard that people can play in the house. One of these games is Rebound which was made in 1971 by Ideal.

Basically Rebound is indoor shuffleboard/curling. Basically you slide pucks down the game board hoping to get them to land in the zones worth the most amount of points. The only thing that actually distinguishes Rebound from these other two games is the fact that the game has a bouncing/rebounding mechanic that is used instead of using a long track like shuffleboard. Other than figuring out how to bounce the pucks off the rubber bands and get the pucks to land in the most valuable sections of the scoring zone, Rebound plays exactly like shuffleboard.

Rebound mixes a lot of luck with skill. Inherently some players are going to be better at the game than other players. If you only play the game occasionally though luck comes into play a lot as well. Unless you play the game a lot the determining factor in the game is going to be who is able to slide the pucks with the right amount of force while getting lucky with aiming. Aiming is key to the game but you aren’t really going to be able to aim well unless you play the game a lot and know how the pucks move along the game board.

Rebound is the type of game that you can get better at with practice. Aiming in particular is the area where practice will really help you. The aiming at first seems kind of straight forward but it takes some time to figure out how the pucks move on the game board. For example with my copy of the game the pucks liked to curl to the sides of the game board.

The best thing about Rebound is that it is simple to play but also has some strategy. It takes minutes to learn how to play since all you are doing is sliding pucks along the game board. If neither player is that concerned with who wins, the players can just slide the pucks and still have fun playing the game without really caring about the score. Like shuffleboard and curling there is actually some strategy to the game. Once you get better at aiming the pucks there is more to the game’s strategy other than just trying to knock the other player’s pucks off the game board. Once you become good at the game you can actually use pucks to set up blockers as well as using other positioning strategies that are used in curling and shuffleboard.

Another strength of Rebound is the fact that the game is really flexible with regards to length. Since the game just uses an arbitrary number of points (500 points) to determine when the game ends you can easily alter the number of points needed to win the game by either increasing or decreasing the number needed to win. At 500 points the game generally takes 10-20 minutes to complete so if you want the game to last longer just increase the number of points you need to score to win the game.

Overall I had fun with Rebound and it is the type of game that I would come back to every so often. If you like shuffleboard/curling I don’t see any reason why you wouldn’t like Rebound. I just wish you had a little more control over shooting the pucks in the game. With a lot of practice you probably can get quite good with positioning pucks in the game but without a lot of practice it sometimes feels like you have to get lucky to shoot well. It is hard to get the pucks to bounce off the rubber bands at the right speed and angle to land in one of the higher scoring zones. I just wish it was a little easier to aim the pucks so you could do more planning on how you wanted to take your shots.

Being created in 1971 there is a good chance that Rebound was one of if not the first major commercial release of a indoor shuffleboard game. For its’ time Rebound was a good game and it is still fun to this day. The problem is that since 1971 other companies have produced their own indoor shuffleboard games. Two games in particular come to mind that are just better shuffleboard games in my opinion, Caveman Curling and Sorry Sliders. While Rebound is a fun game that I would have no problem playing, I would probably prefer playing Caveman Curling or Sorry Sliders. Generally I prefer Caveman Curling and Sorry Sliders since they don’t rely on the rebounding mechanics which means it is easier to implement different strategies since you don’t have to worry about the pucks bouncing off the rubber bands at the right angle and speed.

Component wise Rebound is pretty solid. Since the game has been re-released quite a few times by different publishers the component quality may vary between the different versions. I played the game with the 1990s Tyco version of the game. The game takes quite a bit of wear from use but it is quite sturdy overall. The components will get scratched but it doesn’t really affect gameplay. If the rubber bands break though you may have some issues since you need to use thick rubber bands or the game doesn’t work well since the pucks won’t bounce off the rubber bands correctly. If you take reasonable card of the game though the game should last for a very long time.

Final Verdict

Basically Rebound is indoor shuffleboard/curling that utilizes a rebound mechanic where players need to use rubber bands in order to bounce their pucks around the corner. I had fun with Rebound since it is easy and quick to play but also has a little strategy. I would only play the game occasionally though. I just wish players had a little more control over where the pucks would slide without extensive practice/playtime. While Rebound is a good game I found Caveman Curling and Sorry Sliders to be better games in the indoor shuffleboard genre of games.

Basically if you have no interest in shuffleboard/curling I think you will tire of Rebound pretty quickly. If you already own Sorry Sliders or Caveman Curling I would probably recommend just sticking with those games since they are better in my opinion. If you can get a good deal on Rebound though it is still a good game that you can have a lot of fun with.

If you would like to purchase Rebound you can purchase it on Amazon here.