A Task By Any Other Name ...
Many games have piles of cards from which players periodically draw. For lack of a better term, I call these "task cards." Task cards come in four flavors: 1) You get something; 2) you lose something; 3) you move your figure; and 4) you have to meet a challenge. Of course, these can be combined: In "Monopoly," a card like "Move past 'Go' and collect $200" incorporates categories 1 and 3, while "Go directly to jail without passing 'Go'" combines 2 (you lose a turn) and 3. A good example of the fourth kind of task card can be found in "Trivial Pursuit," where players have to draw cards and answer questions found on them in order to advance.
Task Cards in Math Games
All four types of task cards can be used in math games. Movement cards are most easily incorporated into race games ("move ahead/back x spaces"), but they will work with any game where you move pieces around a board. Cards where you gain or lose something are best in games where players are trying to reach a certain goal, such as a set number of victory points or the most money.
Since they pose a problem that must be solved, "challenge" task cards are great for math
games. For example, "Race to Altair" uses task cards for the subtraction facts. If asked to do a subtraction problem, players draw a card from a pile marked with a large "-" on one side, and a subtraction problem on the other. If the player answers the problem correctly, he or she is allowed to move their figure ahead.
"King Richard's Ransom" relies heavily on such cards. Two cards from this game are pictured to the right. The first reads, "Battle! To flank King John's forces in battle, you should send 120 knights. Your flanking force currently numbers d100 and d12. How many more knights does it need?" (For an explanation of "d100" and "d12," see the section on dice.) For correctly answering this question, the player will receive 85 guilders. The second card reads, "The Scriptorium. A quire of quarto leaves often holds 8 pages. If d10 quires are bound into a book, how many pages does it have?" (50 guilders).
Task Cards vs. Dice
Task cards have two advantages over dice. First, they give you greater control over the types and frequencies of problems that must be solved. For example, if your child hasn't mastered the "plus 6" facts, adding together two die rolls can be awkward, since the number 6 will turn up occasionally. Also, for more advanced students, the problems will often be too easy, since lots of 1s will be rolled. The "too easy / too hard" problem is easily avoided with task cards. Second, task cards can contain much more intricate problems than dice. The task cards pictured above illustrate this. This is not only important for the level of difficulty, but also for giving a game a certain "feel."
On the other hand, dice also have major advantages over task cards. All of those nice, intricate problems take time to think up and to write (or type) out. Task cards also consume materials (like paper or poster board) and have to be cut out. Every time you want a new problem, you have to create a new card (the "one card, one problem" principle). Dice are much simpler in this respect.
To get around the "one card, one problem" limitation, the cards I've described above also incorporate die-rolling. This adds an element of randomness, ensuring that the same card yields somewhat different problems each time it is drawn.
Making the Cards
Cards can be either written by hand or printed out using a computer. I use both techniques. The task cards in "Race to Altair" are hand-written on 1.5"x2" squares of poster-board. For "King Richard's Ransom," I created a five-by-two table with a word processor, then put the text of each card in one table element. Fancy fonts reinforce the game's medieval theme. Since there are seven different kinds of cards, I printed out each kind on a different color of paper. Going overboard a little, I then used the double-sided printing function to also put an identifying graphic on the back of every card category, but it took me quite a while to figure out how to make this work correctly. Unless you already know how to do this, or like playing around with your word processor, I would recommend skipping this step. =)