Play a card, take a chip, watch everyone else react

Flinke Pinke or Quandary or Loco or Thor or Botswana or Wildlife Safari might hold the record for most names for one Reiner Knizia game. And other than Thor, I'm pretty sure they have practically  identical rules.

I had been going to say it was also in the running for his simplest game but the super tiny dice game Katego holds that title pretty tightly. Maybe the Flinke Pinke family is his simplest game that still has solid replay value and interesting decisions :P

The game consist of five suits of cards, ranked zero through five, and sense of chips which match each suit. Most versions of the game have colors for the suits. You play by dealing out the cards. On your turn, you play a card and you take a chip which doesn't have to match the suit of the card. The game or around ends when the sixth card of a suit is played. 

At that point, each chip is worth as many points as the last card played in its suit. So, for instance, a blue chip could be worth as much as five points or as little as zero. Whoever has the most points, that would be the winner.

Finke Pinke et al has hand management, bluffing and timing. You aren't just playing your hand, you're playing the other players. Both the cards you play and the chips you take can speak volumes. Sometimes you're working with another player. Sometimes you are working to fold them.

Don't get me wrong. This is not a super deep game, hiding intricate decisions beneath it simple components. But, at the same time, it offers some interesting and even tough choices during its short playing time. I have even heard some people call it the simplest stock market game ever, although I cannot consider it the stock market game by any stretch of my imagination. (No buying and selling as part of the value adjustment)

I own both ends of the spectrum of this game. Loco with flimsy cards and plain chips (that don't even fit properly the box :D) and Quandary  that has a board and all the other pieces are Bakelite. (Really, its over the top) Oh, and I have Thor, which ends action cards. My copies is in German :P 

Finke Pinke et al is a tried and true example of how simple rules and short playing time can still lead to a full and satisfying game experience. Don't give me wrong, there's plenty of examples of that. But this game has been doing it since 1994.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/398/wildlife-safari

The expanding meaning of family games

I don't like the terms filler or gateway game but I use them anyway. Mostly because everyone knows what they mean. (I feel the same way about Ameritrash but that seems to going nowhere and seems to becoming more of a term of endearment)

While filler doesn't seem to be going anywhere, I do feel like family game or casual game seems to be used as an alternative to gateway game. I don't think gateway game is going away but it doesn't seem to be as prominent as it used to be.

I think this is because there's been a shift in the board game audience, at least here in the US. (Meanwhile, over on the other side of the Atlantic, all this board game love is old hat)

Ten years ago in this country, I think there was more of a sense that games like Carcassonne or Catan or Ticket to Ride were steps towards getting into the hobby. A rite of passage, almost. However, as games like that have gotten more and more mainstream acceptance, games like those have become their own endpoint.

Mind you, this is clearly an evolution and expansion of the hobby, not the industry or culture on a whole. After all, there have been companies that have been targeting this market for a long time, like Out of the Box or Gamewright or, you know Hasbro or Mattel :P

I honestly think that part of what has happened is that the folks who discovered this broader world of boardgames ten, fifteen, twenty years ago are starting to have families of their own, kids are old enough to play these games. The hobby is creating this increasingly broader part of itself.

Heck, I just think about who was attending the first GenCon I ever went to and how many more kids and families I saw at the last one. The hobby is definitely changing, which is good. Extinction is what happens if you don't evolve. Unless you're a beetle. Beetles got it worked out millennia ago.

Now, if only there was another word for filler.

A Kickstarter that should play well with children

Another Kickstarter which interests me has relaunched, Dice Bazaar. While it is a game, which is what I generally look at when I look at, Dice Bazaar is for a completely different audience than my usual fare.

Dice Bazaar is a very simple, family game with very intuitive rules. There's nothing hard to understand or particularly deep about it. It definitely isn't the kind of game that I would introduce to my old gaming group, who love games like Terra Mystica and La Havre.

However, I think it will be perfect as a stepping stone in between games like Candy Land and Catan while still being fun for adults, even those of us who are a little crazy about the hobby.

Dice Bazaar takes place at a middle eastern bazaar where the players are trying to buy various items, ranging from low value spices to expensive diamonds, all of which will be worth points at the end.

Each item has a stack of cards which are placed on the main board. Below each item are spots for the merchants dice, ranging from two dice for spices to five dice for diamonds. Dice get rolled for each spot, setting the price of each good.

Everyone gets six dice of their own and a player board that has spaces for each type of good. You buy goods by matching the dice with the merchant. If the tea kettle stack has a two, four and five under it, you need to lock a two, four and five on your tea kettle space to get a tea kettle card.

And you don't have to do it all at once. You work up to the price of a good. However, when someone buys a good, the merchant dice get rerolled and any of your locked dice that doesn't match the new rolls get wiped.

On top of all that, you can trade in good cards to place a die on the next highest good without rolling. (Except for the diamond, since it's the highest) There is a cobra card in each deck worth a random number of points at the end. And there is what I consider an essential expansion that awards bonus points at the end of the game for collecting sets of goods.

It's not a complex game by far. But it includes push-your-luck elements with set collection and simple special powers. Its a cute little trading game where you trade with the game.

It's not going to replace Sid Sackson's Bazaar in my collection for my gaming. But I think it will be a good choice for my son and family gatherings in a few years.

This is the second time Dice Bazaar has been on Kickstarter. It didn't make it last time but I hope it does this time.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/183976/dice-bazaar

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/fsosnin/dice-bazaar-dice-rolling-card-trading-family-fun