Dave Reviews: German German Clever!

Ganz Schon Clever

Did you know the word for "clever" in German is klug? Google Translate told me, so it must be true. Would we be looking at this game if it was called "Ganz Schon Klug"?

...probably. It has an English translation right underneath. Hell, we'd probably have fun shouting it at each other, with both arms firmly at our sides.

Ganz Schon Clever is the version of Yahtzee you would make if you were twelve, bored, and not challenged enough in school. It's a game of efficiency in the name of randomness, of synergy and cascading points with a pool of resources unknown until they're rolled, that is likely to let you feel very smart and die a little inside when you don't get that last roll you need in the same game.

Each turn has one person as the active player. That person rolls the dice and picks one to fill a square of the matching slot on their scoresheet. (White has no spot; it's wild and can be used as any color.) Any dice lower in number than the chosen die goes on the Silver Platter (a picture of a dish inside the box they included because organization is EVERYTHING) and can't be used by the active player again that turn. All remaining dice are rerolled, a second die is picked, then the dice left over after that are rolled again so a third can be picked. After that, the remaining dice (usually three of them) are open for the other, passive players to choose from and put on their own scoresheets. All passive players choose at the same time, and can pick the same die. A round consists of each person getting a turn as the active player, and the game length is in number of rounds, determined by player count.

The first round is generally straightforward. You're just getting started filling in the sections, and each section requires at least a few entries before they start offering bonuses. This goes on for part of the second round, but soon enough you fill in a box that lets you fill in a different box. Later, you fill in a box that lets you fill in a box that lets you get an extra reroll that you use later to make sure you get just the right die to fill in another box that lets you fill in yet another box. In addition, some of the bonuses let you use an extra die at the end of someone's turn, which lets you fill in a box which can let you fill in a box that lets you fill in a box which lets you fill in yet another box.

It gets a little bonkers.

For as much as we might look at the title and say, "Yeah, good job Hans, call yourself clever, you arrogant prick," it... really is clever. Here's why: the game is based around understanding the odds of various outcomes, but none of it is complicated. If you realize it's harder to get high numbers than low ones (because of the dice choosing rules), and that for the blue section (which adds two dice) it's harder to get 2, 3, 11, and 12 than the ones in the middle, you can form a basic strategy for choosing dice and picking which boxes to fill in with your bonuses. From there, everything depends on how efficiently you can get from bonus to bonus, and how much you can limit your reliance on very specific die rolls in order to make your strategy pan out. You can easily play without wasting dice or feeling like you've horribly screwed up, but you will also never fill out the whole sheet, so it always seems as though you might be capable of just a little... bit... more.

I think I have a German chip in my brain, because I adore these types of efficiency-based games. Even taking that bias into account as best I can, I think this is really well done. Basic gameplay that keeps people from getting too frustrated, and the sense that there's always a better way to proceed, both matter in the replayability of a game like this. Just like with 13 Clues, I can see the scorepad running out of paper at some point (albeit probably with a different group of players).

The only question mark is, why is there room on the back of the scoresheet to score all four players? It's probably to make overall scoring easier, keep it on one sheet, etc., and it doesn't affect gameplay, but everyone who's played looks at it funny. The fact you have to flip it from vertical for play to horizontal for scoring is awkward. But as problems go, that's a small one. Get this game.

Score: 243 out of 280 points needed to be a "genius" (fuck you, Hans).