COGZ

Gary Hirschhornstar9,0

Terrific game that I am surprised doesn't get more love. Our family of gamers enjoys it very much as a fun puzzle that plays relatively quickly. (Don't expect the deep strategic level of chess or Go -- the decision space here is smaller. But for the accessibility of this game and its length, I think the decision space is still quite large.) Why we like it so much: First, on the surface, it seems like your choice for each turn may be obvious -- points scored for each possible play are easily calculated so why not just do the move that gets you the most points? But there are several factors here that make this decision harder (and this obvious strategy not so great). 1) The scoring mechanism (Knizia scoring -- see https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgamemechanic/2889/highest-lowest-scoring) means you need to focus on all colors, especially your lowest scoring color. This makes the other 4 factors below relevant. 2) Your highest-scoring play will often help others (especially the person following you) score even more points than you did. (But because of the aforementioned scoring, this may or may not hurt you.) 3) Acquiring new colors in your hand is NOT independent of your move -- you may need to make a lower-scoring move now to even be able to score a different color at all later. 4) Because of locking, opportunities for some colors become more scarce (again making a lower-scoring move more valuable) 5) There are a limited number of rounds (especially at high player counts) -- you quickly need to be worried about your lowest color. Second, this game plays well as several player counts (if people don't get AP). It is hard to find non-party games that play this quickly at player counts of more than 4. Third, it is easy to pick up for non-gamers (while gamers are still engaged). We have delighted several friends with this. As for weaknesses, it does seem that locking gears on the side of the board is too overpowered -- it seems to remove some of the challenges of the decision-making mentioned above. I can see the game getting too samey and the decision space less interesting over time. But I think some of the variants in the rule book are really good at addressing this. I especially like the one where each player gets a hidden tile whose colors double their score at the end. This makes it harder to pre-calculate your opponents' scores near the end of the game (which makes your decision space wider).

MCMitchell Cstar4,6

This game is more elegant and interesting than I was expecting - worth a try!