Nelly
BGG rank
BGG #25,797
BGG rating
5.6

Nelly

2009

Rules assistance for Nelly

Plain-language explanations of turns, card effects and disputed situations, with official source references and saved question history.

  • 2–4 players
  • 25 min
  • 6+
  • Complexity 1.3/5

For 2 players

Rules assistant for Nelly

What would you like to know?

Answers come from the official rulebook, with the page to check.

Nelly is a board game released in 2009 for 2–4 players, 25 minutes per game, and ages 6 and up. It was designed by Andreas Frei, Ueli Frei, and Lukas Frei.

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About the game

Description translated from Queen website: "Nelly the hippopotamus (German: Nilpferd) lives in a small lake in Afrika, together with her friends the little turtles and a heron. Here she has everything she needs, and her firends like to sit on her back, however there are also little crabs in the lake that like to pinch her in the nose ... The turtle climbing competition with a big hippo body made of wood and an extra-large game board." In Nelly Nilpferd, the players try to place their wooden turtles on the (hemisphere shaped) back of Nelly, which can become quite crowded as the heron lives also there. Players have three different actions: placing a turtle on Nelly, feeding Nelly with a water plant or moving the heron. Whenever Nelly accidentally eats a plant with a crab underneath, she is pinched in the nose and goes diving. Now at least some of the placed turtles will fall down and have to restart. The player who places all of his turtles first wins the game.

Questions and answers

Nelly supports 2–4 players according to the catalogue. This range comes from the publisher’s listed player count, so the game can be set up for any group size within it. Some setups, rules and scoring details may still vary by player count, so check your edition’s rulebook for the exact configuration.