REVIEW: "Clacks" board game
Jan. 30th, 2016 10:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wossnameBy Steven D'Aprano
The Clacks board game turns the climax of "Going Postal" completely around. Inspired by the infamous race between the Grand Trunk clacks company and the Royal Ankh-Morpork Post Office, in this game you try to race to Genua. But with a twist: you are working for the villains of the book, the Grand Trunk, and you're trying to beat the Post Office (represented by a cute little figurine of the Postmaster Moist von Lipwig – painted gold, of course).
Presumably the Post Office has magical assistance, as the Postmaster speeds from town to town in the blink of an eye. Meanwhile, the Trunk is plagued by problems including Deep Downers, inconveniently placed golems with bright lights, substandard wick-trimming, Nugganites, roving reporter Miss Sacharissa Cripslock, and the dreaded Killer Poke. Fortunately you only have to transmit two short words. Can you beat the Post Office?
And the race is on!
"Clacks" is fundamentally a game of skill, with just enough element of chance to mix it up a bit. It is certainly a challenging game, but fun, and will especially suit people with good pattern-matching skills. To move forward, you have a limited number of Jacquards available to flip the tower's lamps from On to Off, or vice versa. There are sixteen lamps all up, and you flip some number of them by playing a Jacquard from your hand. If you succeed in making the code for the letter you are trying to transmit, you move your token one step closer to Genua. A system of Stress Points and Faults control how often breakdowns occur and how fast the Post Office moves.
If you're the sort of person who loves coin flipping puzzles, you might love this game. Even if you aren't too fond of them, it can still be very enjoyable once you get how the lamp flipping system works. I feel that the game's recommended age range, seven to adult, is probably over-optimistic. It seems to me that the average seven year old would find the lamp flipping too difficult to be fun. I had a bit of trouble too, admittedly after a long and tiring day, but once I got past that, and could successfully transmit letters, I found the game very enjoyable.
Clacks is a rich and complex game, with three different sets of action cards ("Operator's Log", "Incident Report", and "Maintenance Report"). There are three distinct games possible: a cooperative game where the players work together to beat the Post Office, a competitive game where players play against each other, and a "Junior Race Game" for two players using simplified rules. Don't be put off by the word "Junior", it's quite good for adults too, especially when you're still learning how to recognise letter patterns and play Jacquards to make new patterns. Plus there are a variety of optional rules which can make the game more interesting for those who have mastered the basic rules, so you won't get bored in a hurry.
(Hint: if you're looking to make it even more of a challenge, you can limit yourself to playing only a single Jacquard each turn, as we accidentally did.)
The quality of the physical game pieces is excellent, and BackSpindle Games certainly haven't stinted on the materials used. I especially love that the rule book is printed as a Haynes Operators' Manual. The game pieces are very well made, and the artwork is well-done but not quite to my taste. (A bit too dark, and not quite enough contrast to read the cards easily.) There's an unfortunate discrepancy where the manual refers to the Maintenance Report cards as "Fault Report" cards, and preparing the lamp tiles for the first time is a bit fiddly, but making up for that, there's a lovely secret message in the manual, hidden in plain sight.
I have no hesitation in giving this game a thumbs up, and I certainly will play it again.
The Clacks board game turns the climax of "Going Postal" completely around. Inspired by the infamous race between the Grand Trunk clacks company and the Royal Ankh-Morpork Post Office, in this game you try to race to Genua. But with a twist: you are working for the villains of the book, the Grand Trunk, and you're trying to beat the Post Office (represented by a cute little figurine of the Postmaster Moist von Lipwig – painted gold, of course).
Presumably the Post Office has magical assistance, as the Postmaster speeds from town to town in the blink of an eye. Meanwhile, the Trunk is plagued by problems including Deep Downers, inconveniently placed golems with bright lights, substandard wick-trimming, Nugganites, roving reporter Miss Sacharissa Cripslock, and the dreaded Killer Poke. Fortunately you only have to transmit two short words. Can you beat the Post Office?
And the race is on!
"Clacks" is fundamentally a game of skill, with just enough element of chance to mix it up a bit. It is certainly a challenging game, but fun, and will especially suit people with good pattern-matching skills. To move forward, you have a limited number of Jacquards available to flip the tower's lamps from On to Off, or vice versa. There are sixteen lamps all up, and you flip some number of them by playing a Jacquard from your hand. If you succeed in making the code for the letter you are trying to transmit, you move your token one step closer to Genua. A system of Stress Points and Faults control how often breakdowns occur and how fast the Post Office moves.
If you're the sort of person who loves coin flipping puzzles, you might love this game. Even if you aren't too fond of them, it can still be very enjoyable once you get how the lamp flipping system works. I feel that the game's recommended age range, seven to adult, is probably over-optimistic. It seems to me that the average seven year old would find the lamp flipping too difficult to be fun. I had a bit of trouble too, admittedly after a long and tiring day, but once I got past that, and could successfully transmit letters, I found the game very enjoyable.
Clacks is a rich and complex game, with three different sets of action cards ("Operator's Log", "Incident Report", and "Maintenance Report"). There are three distinct games possible: a cooperative game where the players work together to beat the Post Office, a competitive game where players play against each other, and a "Junior Race Game" for two players using simplified rules. Don't be put off by the word "Junior", it's quite good for adults too, especially when you're still learning how to recognise letter patterns and play Jacquards to make new patterns. Plus there are a variety of optional rules which can make the game more interesting for those who have mastered the basic rules, so you won't get bored in a hurry.
(Hint: if you're looking to make it even more of a challenge, you can limit yourself to playing only a single Jacquard each turn, as we accidentally did.)
The quality of the physical game pieces is excellent, and BackSpindle Games certainly haven't stinted on the materials used. I especially love that the rule book is printed as a Haynes Operators' Manual. The game pieces are very well made, and the artwork is well-done but not quite to my taste. (A bit too dark, and not quite enough contrast to read the cards easily.) There's an unfortunate discrepancy where the manual refers to the Maintenance Report cards as "Fault Report" cards, and preparing the lamp tiles for the first time is a bit fiddly, but making up for that, there's a lovely secret message in the manual, hidden in plain sight.
I have no hesitation in giving this game a thumbs up, and I certainly will play it again.
