|
Schotten Totten
Players 2 Playings 10+
This one is at the other end of the scale from his more complex efforts. Schotten Totten is a two player card game which takes about two minutes to explain, is over extremely quickly but which still has enough going on to keep it feeling fresh after repeated plays. Just as Knizia has designed games that seem to fall into a thematic group – tile laying and auctions come to mind – so Schotten Totten joins his simple card game stable. While Schotten Totten is unmistakably a member of the same family as Lost Cities, however, it most definitely has its own personality. The players represent bands of Scottish clans, competing with each other to extend their pastures for the coming year… Oh, forget it, it doesn’t matter. The Scottish bit simply gives the publishers something to put on the cards – in this case a series of cartoons of joke Scotsmen in the style of Asterix the Gaul. Potentially making the game a target for the League Against Simplistic Sterotyping Of What Is A Mature And Cosmopolitan Society (or Braveheart, for short). The game could just as easily be about buying houses or putting the dinner on (I think it is already being repackaged in another theme – ancient warfare – for another publisher). The card play is simple. The two players play nine simultaneous three card Brag-type hands against each other. The object being to win a majority of the nine boundary stone cards laid out in a line in the middle of the table. To win, you need either to beat the other player in a majority of the hands (i.e. win at least five) or claim three adjacent markers. The pack is divided into six coloured suits, each suit containing cards numbered from 1-9. From a hand of six cards a player plays one, face up, on his side of a boundary stone of his choice. He then replenishes his hand from the draw deck and play passes over. Once three cards have been played against a stone, that player can play no more. When both players have played three cards against a stone (or one player can prove that his three cards cannot be beaten) the hands are compared, with the best card winning the stone. Competing hands are ranked from the highest – a straight flush – down through three of a kind, flush and run to absolutely sod all. Similar category hands will win according to which player was forced to play last in that particular battle – the last player to play will lose.
That’s it, simple. Well, it is certainly simple to understand, but there is some real skill in the play. I think the game’s greatest flavour comes from the way in which information becomes gradually more transparent as the game progresses. With all cards being laid face up, as the game goes on it becomes easier to calculate exact chances for drawing a certain card, for winning a certain stone and for generally annoying your opponent. Choosing whether to go for a quick kill or the long game (or a mixture of both) can be crucial. Timing the revelation of your strong hands can be disastrous if you get it wrong, allowing your opponent to either beat you to it or simply use that stone as a dumping ground for crap cards. Choosing which stones to go for can also be a headache. Do you put your strength in the centre, where you can go left and/or right to get a three stone series, or put in a flank attack where your opponent has not put much effort in? I would say this is close to what I would term a ‘pure’ game. It has a simple mechanic which works well; the scoring is straightforward but still requires choices to be made and there are no frilly bits added purely to bulk out the game. I think it is a little cracker, and a perfect way to get a session going or for the last two left to claim stamina brownie points for outlasting everyone else. You can play a series of three games before your coffee goes cold but still feel it has lasted longer due to actually having been forced to think a bit about things. Rating 8
|
Yet
another Knizia game – He doth bestride this narrow earth… What can I
say, it is difficult to ignore him when he produces about five new games a
month.