GANZ SCHON CLEVER (2018)

PLAYERS	TIME	DESIGNER	PUBLISHER
1-4	30 mins	Wolfgang Warsch	Schmidt Spiele

As I began to get more and more into Roll ‘n’ Writes, fellow Instagram board gamer, @nat20au recommend we try GANZ SCHON CLEVER. I’d heard about it, but it hadn’t grabbed my attention.

And then we tried it.

The game has players rolling dice and deciding which number to choose in order to cross off a field in one of three sections.

Sounds simple enough, right? But there are a few things in play that add a little thinking to it.

You see, when you pick one of the six dice you’ve rolled, you have to remove any showing a number less than the one you chose. So if you only roll a single 6 on your first of three rolls, and you decide to take it, then all five remaining dice are lost to you.

And worse still, they are available to the other players. Because dice not chosen go on the platter, where players choose one on a turn not their own.

It’s these two simple rules that regularly stop you taking what you want most. You have to think about what else you’ll lose, and what you might give to your opponents.

There are also the rewards. Completing certain rows or columns, or passing certain points, will gift you with something useful. A reroll, or a +1, maybe. Or the chance to cross off anything in a specific colour.

So who is this game not for? Well, people who don’t like luck, for starters. You can only plan so much. If the dice don’t want to play ball, then you can watch an opponent do well just because they had the better luck that game. The right numbers at the right time make all the difference, so it can suck to lose when only half the game was in your control.

And higher player counts can leave you waiting a bit for your turn to come back around.

There isn’t much to not like with GANZ SCHON CLEVER. It’s easy to teach, simple on the surface, but lets you work around luck to give you some control.