Tagline: Very clever? Indeed.

The first question which must be addressed here is: Why is The Very Clever Pipe Game so expensive?

Those of you unfamiliar with Cheapass Games are probably doing a double-take. Expensive? But, Justin, you listed a price of $7.50! Did you leave a couple digits out or something?

Nope. Cheapass Games has earned itself a cult following in this little industry by producing highly intriguing game concepts on cheap materials. Instead of packaging their game in cardboard boxes, with glossy cardstock, and customized playing pieces, they present it in a handsomely decorated white envelope, with playable cardstock, and expect you to provide your own playing pieces (haul out that Monopoly or Sorry box from the closet and use the pieces from that). As a result they can charge a fraction of what other companies would for the same games, while still maintaining a level of professional quality (crisp artwork, clear presentation) which many others in this industry should aspire to.

So $7.50 is a little bit out of their normal price range (which seems to average in the $4-5 range). The reason is simple: The Very Clever Pipe Game features some highly detailed, computer-rendered art. They need a glossier cardstock for the images to be effective. Plus there are 120 cards in the deck (more than normal), so that adds to the cost as well.

But what is this game? I’m glad you asked. Let’s take a peek at the caption text: “Yeah, yeah, yeah. You’ve seen pipe games before. But not like this one.”

What’s different? Again, I’m glad you asked. The Very Clever Pipe Game, at its first level, is like every other pipe game you’ve ever played: Each card is marked with white and black pipes. One player is “white” and the other player is “black”. They play cards in an alternating sequence, with each player attempting to “close off” a pipe sequence of their color (while, obviously, preventing the other player from closing off pipes of their color). They do this by connecting the pictures of pipe on each card end-to-end (by matching color) until they can apply an end-cap or loop the pipe around on itself. In other words, if you imagine water flowing through these two-dimensional pipes, and that water has no place to escape, then the pipe is closed off. Closed off pipes are removed from the game, and the player with the most cards at the end of the game is the winner.

That’s Level One: “Basic Pipes”. But then The Very Clever Pipe Game adds three more levels. (Excited yet?)

Level Two is known as “Basic Fields”. In the background of each card (behind the pipes) is a field – think of it kind of like the floor of the factory through which these pipes are installed. There are “light” fields and “dark” fields, and once again the players take one of each. Playing in alternating turns they attempt to form closed sets of fields by surrounding one of their fields (which can, of course, spread across multiple cards), completely with fields of the other color. A closed field is removed, and like with the Level One game, the player with the most cards at the end of the game wins.

Moving on to Level Three: “Pipes & Fields”. Basically you follow all the old rules, but you mix-and-match players between playing pipes and fields (you can now have up to four players in toto).

(At this point there is also a Level 3.5, which is basically a team variant for Level 3.)

Finally, Level Four: “Deck Tuning.” In the first three versions each player was dealt a hand of 20 cards from the 120 card deck. These are shuffled and hands of five cards are dealt off the top of each individual deck (and its from this hand that you play your cards). At this level, you are dealt a much larger deck at the beginning of the game (depending on how many players are playing). You then strip this deck down into the 20 card version you will finally play from.

(And, actually, there’s a Level 4.5 as well: “Playing for Keeps”. Which is exactly what is sounds like. This version has my favorite line in the entire rulebook: “Players have all the time in the world to assemble their decks. They pick from whichever cards they own, even duplicates, and bring their pre-built decks to the game. If they’re particularly clever, they will pick a single extra-powerful card, use 20 copies of it, and win every time. Particularly clever, in our opinion, because it means someone had to buy 20 copies of this game.”)

And that’s the game. How does it play? Addictively… like so many other Cheapass Games. The first weekend I cracked this game open, my family just kept cycling back to the gaming bar in various pair-ups to play it over and over and over again (my deck is looking a little ragged). Honestly, most of us found the basic pipe game to be the most fun (but the mix of fields and pipes made for some absolutely fascinating diplomatic relations in four player games). It was easy to learn the additional levels, because each tends to add only a single layer of complexity (while adhering to all the rules of the levels before it). Even if you don’t like the advanced options at all, this is probably the finest pipe game you’re going to find. The artwork, computer-generated as I mentioned, is simply wonderful.

Even if The Very Clever Pipe Game is a slightly more expensive Cheapass Game, it is still worth every penny and more.

Style: 5
Substance: 5

Author: James Ernest
Company/Publisher: Cheapass Games
Cost: $7.50
Page Count: n/a
ISBN: n/a

Originally Posted: 1999/10/23

Fifteen years later, this game still periodically cycles into my rotation as a very pleasant diversion. Its primary limitation is that it’s best with only two players, which somewhat limits its utility for me. (I frequently have difficulty getting as much play out of 2-player games as I would like.) If you can find a copy, though, I still recommend it.

For an explanation of where these reviews came from and why you can no longer find them at RPGNet, click here.

RoboRally is 20 years old this year. It remains one of my favorite boardgames of all time: The combination of clever puzzle-solving, long-term strategic thinking, and half-crazed chaos is brilliantly balanced. I wrote a detailed review of the original edition of the game back in 1998.

One of the things I always wanted to do back in the day was pick up the three expansions that were released in the ’90s: Armed & Dangerous, Radioactive, Crash & Burn, and Grand Prix. Unfortunately, I was a poor high school / college student back then and I couldn’t afford to snap them up when they were released. Then, with the release of the second edition of the game, the expansions were taken out of print and immediately skyrocketed in price.

Last year, however, I decided to bite the bullet and track down all of the expansions for the game.

I also picked up a copy of the 3rd Edition published under the Avalon Hill brand in 2005: This edition replaced the metal miniatures with plastic ones and used much cheaper stock for the map boards, but significantly upgraded many of the other components. (I’m particularly enamored of the plastic flags.)

Once I had this mass of material, however, it took a little extra effort to figure out how to combine all of it together for the RoboRally: Utimate Collection. So I’d like to take a moment to share that effort with all of you. (And some of what I’ve done I think you’ll find useful even if you aren’t interested in owning an Ultimate Collection of your own.)

ASSEMBLING THE ULTIMATE COLLECTION

In order to assemble the RoboRally Ultimate Collection, you’ll need to buy:

• RoboRally (1st Edition)
• RoboRally (2nd Edition)
• RoboRally (3rd Edition)
• RoboRally: Armed and Dangerous
• RoboRally: Radioactive
• RoboRally: Crash & Burn
• RoboRally: Grand Prix

You will then collect from these editions:

ROBOTS: You’ll be able to use the robots from all three editions of the game (giving you a total of 24 different robots). Some of the robot models from the 1st Edition are replicated in 2nd Edition (and Twonky appears in all three editions, albeit with different sculpts). Simply paint the duplicates different colors. You’ll also want to take the Archive markers from all three editions.

GAME BOARDS: Take the game boards from the 1st Edition and 3rd Edition of the game. Then take all of the game boards from the expansions (Armed and Dangerous, Radioactive, Crash & Burn, and Grand Prix).

PROGRAM CARDS: I personally prefer the program cards from 3rd Edition.

OPTION CARDS / TOKENS: You’ll want to use the Option cards from the 1st Edition of the game and combine them with the Option cards from Armed and Dangerous. Take the option tokens from Armed and Dangerous.

FLAGS: 1st Edition used red flag chits. 2nd Edition used green flag chits. 3rd Edition uses plastic flags that stand up from the game board. The plastic flags from 3rd Edition are clearly superior, but you can actually pull the flags from all three editions if you want to run some truly insane rallies. (For example, you could run through the plastic flags, then the red flags, and then the green flags for an insane course featuring 24 rally points. Put them all on a single game board for sheer insanity.)

MISC. COMPONENTS: Take the damage tokens, Power Down tokens, and life tokens from the 3rd Edition of the game. (You’ll want to use the 3rd edition components to match the program sheets.) Also take the thirty-second timer from the 3rd Edition.

And that’s it! The tricky part these days is actually finding all of the original 1st Edition expansion sets.

ULTIMATE COLLECTION RULEBOOK

In order to wed the disparate components from across multiple editions together, I’ve also prepared the RoboRally Ultimate Collection Rulebook and the RoboRally Ultimate Collection Factory Guide. The latter pulls together the information from all of the different board element guides into a handy reference guide that you can print on a single sheet of paper. The former provides the most authoritative version of the complete RoboRally rules ever produced.

In fact, whether you can (or want) to assemble a full Ultimate Collection, I think you’ll still want to check out the Ultimate Collection Rulebook: It reorganizes and streamlines the rules while simultaneously clarifying them in order to resolve a number of vague corner-cases that none of the official rulebooks can handle properly.

Ultimate Collection Rulebook 
(PDF)

Ultimate Collection Factory Guide
(PDF)

I’ve been a big fan of Level 7: Escape since I first played it at GenCon a couple years back. The basic concept of the game is simple: You’ve been kidnapped by aliens based out of an Area 51 look-a-like named Subterra Bravo. Now something has gone wrong in the facility, the stasis pods you were being held in have cracked open, and you need to figure out how to escape from the complex as everything goes to hell.

It’s a co-op ‘crawler, but with gameplay that’s based primarily around escape instead of combat. The scenarios are clever, varied, and tell a nice little story over the course of a full campaign.

I wish that the game supported more than 4 players, but the only real problem I have with the game is the rulebook, which has proven to be very difficult and convoluted to use during play. As a result, rules are frequently missed and mistakes are often made. This has hampered my enjoyment of the game, particularly because it provides a hurdle that needs to be cleared whenever I come back to the game after a long break (and all those niggling little rules go scurrying off again).

So I’ve ended up compiling a completely revised rulebook.

DESIGN NOTES FOR THE REVISED RULEBOOK

The key problem with the published rulebook is that it features both procedural and indexed organization.

Procedurally-organized rules are listed when you use them. (For example, you might say: “When you make an attack, first you do X, then you do Y, and that will tell you if Z happens.”) Index-organized rules, on the other hand, are grouped together into broad categories suitable for quick reference. (For example, you might say: “Z is something that will happen during A, B, or C.”)

Either of these approaches can work well. And, in fact, you can use both of them at the same time as long as both sets of information are fully functional. Unfortunately, this isn’t the case with the Level 7: Escape rulebook. Instead, half of the rules are indexed under general headings and half the rules are listed procedurally.

This is a really huge problem.

For example, there’s a section of the rulebook titled “Raising Fear” and it includes a list of things that raise your fear. One of the items on the list is, “When you leave a tile with a darkness marker, raise your fear by 1.” That rule is not listed in the procedures for moving off a tile. Later in the rulebook, however, there are other effects that raise fear which aren’t listed in the “Raising Fear” section.

You can see the problem: If you’re wondering if something raises fear or not, you can’t reliably check the “Raising Fear” index. Simultaneously, if you’re wondering what to do when moving off a darkness title, you’ll likely check the procedure for moving off a tile and end up forgetting to raise your fear.

In practice, it’s even more confusing because there isn’t a single section of “indexed rules”. Instead, these little index sections are scattered haphazardly around the rulebook. So if you’re following a procedure detailed in the rulebook, you can never be sure that there isn’t some crucial step that’s buried somewhere else.

For this revised rulebook, the rules are reorganized to be entirely procedural: If you need to move off a tile, look at the rules for movement and you’ll see everything you’re supposed to do (including raising your fear level if the tile has a darkness marker on it).

In practice, this has resolved a lot of the confusion surrounding the rules of the game and drastically reduced the number of errors being made during play. Hopefully you’ll find this to be true at your table, too!

UNOFFICIAL ERRATA

The rulebook also includes the errata and clarifications from the official FAQ. However, in addition to those changes I also discovered a number of other discrepancies or unclear rules in the course of my revising. In order to make the revised rulebook as clear as possible, I needed to include some “unofficial” errata.

All of those changes, however, are listed on the final page of the unofficial rulebook (along with an explanation of my rationale for making a particular ruling in each case). So if you want to make a different choice than I did, it should be easy enough!

It should be noted, however, that I’ve made no effort to resolve some of the difficulties found in the Scenario book for the game. I’m afraid that’s beyond the scope of this project. The official FAQ will resolve several of the most problematic mechanics (including the game-breaking errors in the final scenario), but when it comes to the remaining issues I recommend just taking your best guess. (When in doubt, go with the option which makes the game more difficult for you!)

Revised Rulebook (PDF)

(If you have a printer that can do booklet printing, I recommend it.)

I’m a big fan of co-op games in general and, as I’ve mentioned in the past, I think they’re a great way to introduce new players to theme-rich boardgames.

One potential drawback to co-op games, however, is the “alpha-quarterback”: A single player that dominates the game by effectively making all of the strategic gameplay decisions. The alpha-quarterback might be the person most familiar with the game, a person with generally deeper strategic insight, or just a forceful personality. Whatever the case may be, however, the result is that only one person is really playing the game and everybody else at the table is reduced to being their pawn. (A related problem can also occur if four or five more experienced players are all collaborating as a collective “alpha-quarterback”, while one or two new players are effectively turned into spectators.)

In most cases, quarterbacking can be avoided through the simple expedience of the more experienced players simply choosing not to do it: Instead of making decisions for new players (“you should go fight that monster”), they can use their expertise to discuss the general strategic situation and then offer the new player a few options of actions that they might want to consider.

Because it’s generally possible for people to choose not to be jerks, a lot of people think that quarterbacking in co-op games is only a “people problem” that isn’t really relevant to game design itself. This, however, is an over-simplification: The problem with co-op games that are trivially quarterbacked is that they’re really solo problem-solving games that are masquerading as games for multiple players. (Pandemic is an excellent example of this type of game.) It’s like adding a rule to Solitaire saying that two players should alternate turns and then claiming that it’s a two-player game.

There’s nothing wrong with alternating-play Solitaire if everybody’s having fun, of course. But it’s not an ideal way to design a game even if an individual group doesn’t default to quarterbacking while playing it.

DESIGN SOLUTIONS FOR QUARTERBACKING

The solutions for quarterbacking are:

HIDDEN INFORMATION. (Which often doesn’t work because there’s no motivation not to share the information, but can at least create the impression that individuals are contributing by discussing the information they have access to. However, games like Hanabi make hidden information co-op work by making the hidden nature of the information integral to the game design.)

TACTICAL DEPTH. (In these games, groups may coordinate on a large-scale strategy but there’s enough tactical depth in each player’s execution of that strategy that individual players are still allowed to play the game even with aggressive quarterbacking happening in the same room. Arkham Horror, for example, does this with a fair amount of success: Quarterback all you want, but the individual players are still responsible for playing through their encounters.)

INCOMPLETE INFORMATION. (By hiding information from all of the players, decision points are turned into a gamble. A simple version would be a draw deck containing white and black cards: If a white card is drawn, certain actions will be advantageous. If a black card is drawn, a different set of actions will be advantageous. Players can offer input about which card they think it’s going to be, but nobody really knows and so it’s ultimately up to the current player to make the guess and determine which set of actions they should be attempting. Knizia’s Lord of the Rings, for example, does this with a stack of tiles that determine the pace and sequence of various horrible things. The shortcoming of this solution is that if the system is actually completely random, then the decisions are meaningless. And if it’s not completely random, then there’s a viable strategy and that stategy is still open to quarterbacking.)

TRAITOR MECHANICS. (These enforce the hidden information solution by providing a motivation for concealing information. Battlestar Galactica does this, for example.)

REAL-TIME PLAY. (These enforce the tactical depth solution by making it impossible for a single player to make all the decisions that need to be made within the time allowed. Space Alert and Escape: The Curse of the Temple are examples of this.)

Of these solutions, real-time play seems to be the only surefire solution to the quarterbacking problem. (Hidden information can be shared, tactical depth can still be micro-managed, incomplete information still lends itself to strategic quarterbacking, and a game with a traitor isn’t actually co-op). Other co-op games generally need to rely on a mixture of techniques to mitigate the quarterbacking problem (although exceptions like Hanabi do exist).

(It should also be noted that the “this is really just Solitaire, but you alternate turns” problem isn’t limited to co-op games. For example Dungeon Roller pretends to be a competitive game, but is really just two people playing solitaire and then comparing their scores.)

Tagline: A strong card game, reinforcing this line of family-oriented card games which made a name for itself with Twitch.

Last year Wizards of the Coast released a series of four family-oriented card games (in the tradition of Uno and Skip-Bo): Twitch, Pivot, Alpha Blitz, and Go Wild!. After reading about it in an RPGNet review I picked up Twitch and quickly became completely addicted to its fast-pace play style. On the strength of Twitch I ended up buying the other three games in this abbreviated line and have been slowly playing my way through them (in addition to Twitch I have also reviewed Pivot here on RPGNet – a review of Alpha Blitz will pop up whenever I get around to playing it).

So far I have been heartily impressed, and the games have readily taken their place alongside other family favorites, such as the aforementioned Uno and Skip-Bo.

Go Wild! is a trick-based game (like Hearts or Spades) designed for 2-6 players. There are six suits of cards – five colors and the wild cards. Each player is dealt twelve cards, which forms their hand. The game is played in a series of rounds, each of which is made up of three tricks. You win a trick by more cards of a particular color — which is determined by whoever leads the trick — than anybody else.

At this point it sounds like a pretty tame, typical game. You might as well pick up a copy of Hoyle’s. But this is where the designers throw you a curveball: You score a variable number of points depending on which trick in the round you win, plus, if you win the first trick of the round, you become the Wild One. Here’s how it works:

If you win the first trick of the round, you score 1 point. In addition, you become the Wild One (there’s a card included that identifies the Wild One). On the second trick you score 2 points, and on the third you score 3.

Here’s the cool bit: Only the Wild One can use wild cards.

In other words, the strategy of the game is not just to win the most tricks – but to choose a specific strategy which allows you to win. Do you toss out as many cards as possible on the first trick of the round in order to secure the Wild One? Or do you gamble a little bit and hope to pick up more points by winning the later tricks?

The most important question to be asked of games like this, however, is: Does the concept actually work in execution? The answer here is: Yes. Absolutely. Go Wild! is an excellent game, exploring a new and interesting variation upon the old trick-based card game concepts. In that sense, Go Wild! continues the strong tradition I found in Twitch and Pivot. Not only are these fun games, but they are extremely innovative.

The only serious problem I had with Go Wild! was the rule for who got to lead the first trick of the game: The youngest player. Okay, fine. Works all right the first time. But when you play two or three games in a row, it becomes a little frustrating for the same guy to always have that advantage.

I was most impressed by the fact that the game proved itself to actually by playable by two players. Most games listing 2-X players are “playable by two players” only in the sense that the rules work – the entire dynamic of playing is skewed by the presence of only two players. Because of the complex tactical consideration of Go Wild!, however, two players can easily challenge one another.

Of the games in this line, Twitch is undoubtedly the best (it’s guaranteed to consume hours and hours of your free time). That being said, Go Wild! will definitely be placed on my To Be Played shelf, and not my Been There, Done That shelf.

Style: 4
Substance: 4

Author: Grezegorz Rejchtman
Company/Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
Cost: $6.95
Page Count: n/a
ISBN: 1-57530-601-8

Originally Posted: 1999/10/23

For an explanation of where these reviews came from and why you can no longer find them at RPGNet, click here.