Board Game Review: Ingenious

A few weeks ago, we started going to Board Game Meet Ups in San Diego. Mostly, people have been playing the games I brought (Robo Rally has been popular, as have Settlers of Cataan and Power Grid). Last week, I got a chance to try out a game I had first seen people playing the second meet up I went to, Ingenious. It's ranked in the top 100 of board games.

It's for 2, 3, or 4 players. The board is made up of 120 hexes, with six differently coloured hexes spaced around the board. Each player gets six tiles. The tiles are sort of like dominoes, they're double hexes with colours on them. So you might get two oranges, or a purple and a yellow. Each player also get a score card with all six colours in rows, up to 18 points.

You play by placing a tile on the board matching at least one colour. You score points by counting how many of a colour you have in a straight line from your tile (not counting your tile). You can score quite a lot with the proper placement. You then draw a new tile to get back up to six.

If you get a colour to 18 points or more, you call "ingenious" and get to immediately play another tile. I got a double ingenious my first time playing.

If you don't have any tiles that match your lowest scoring colour, you can dump your rack and get six new tiles from the bag, too.

The game ends in one of two ways. The first person to get all six colours to 18 wins. If nobody does that, you play until no more tiles can be placed on the board. Then, the person with the highest low score wins. So if I have 5 18's and my orange is at 5, but you have a 6, 9, 10, 11, and two 18's, you win, because your six is higher than my five.

The coloured hexes on the board are two rows in from the outer edge. The outer most row of hexes is dark gray, and the next one in is light gray. We figured out that that was for 2 and 3 player play.

I've only played it once (I won!), but it's a fun little game that calls for strategy, with a healthy dose of randomness that some people seem to like. I'll probably buy it for something to play around the house.

Also, it's a fairly quick game, 20-30 minutes, as opposed to the 2-3 hour games I usually play.

Recommended.