Jumpin Review

At GenCon 2011, I purchased a box of 3M titles at the auction. Honestly, I knew nothing about them and only bought them because I was interested in Feudal. Knowing that I might as well try them out, one of the other titles made me Jump (hehe)! Jumpin was a spatial reasoning game! Excellent.

In Jumpin, each player controls a set of 12 pawns (lined up in two rows of six) that they are trying to move across the board into their opponent's starting zone. The twist to the game is that pieces may only move by jumping. They are allowed to jump over any number of pieces, can jump horizontally or vertically, can jump over any player's pieces, and they can "multi-jump" from one empty space to the next, as long as there remain pieces to jump over. The only thing that they cannot do is move a single space without jumping (or jump over multiple empty spaces). Players take turns selecting and jumping with a piece until one person has successfully moved all of his pieces across the board. Whoever successfully does this is declared the winner.

The first thing that I like about Jumpin is that it is an abstract reasoning game, but it is unlike any of the other ones that I have played. (Yes, I have heard analogies to Chinese Checkers, but I believe that the inability to move a single piece truly sets Jumpin apart from even Chinese Checkers.) Moreover, if I played games that were similar to Jumpin, it would probably be because they borrowed mechanics from Jumpin, not the other way around (the copyright on the one I bought is 1964). My favorite element of all abstract reasoning games is that they challenge me to think in new and different ways, and the fact that Jumpin is so unlike anything that I have played is wonderful.

The next thing that I like about Jumpin is the challenge that each player faces in navigating his pieces into his opponent's starting position. If there were simply a line that the pieces had to cross, and then they were removed from the board, then the game would be completely changed (and I think it would be much worse). However, once a player starts getting some of his pieces into his opponent's starting zone he is forced to pay attention to how he will successfully navigate his other pieces into the zone. Normally, the "easy" path that he has created will get blocked because of pieces that have already crossed - therefore, he will be forced to repeatedly readjust where his pieces are, thus costing extra moves. Whoever is able to anticipate this and plan accordingly will have a distinct advantage.

One element of Jumpin that I haven't decided if I like is the fact that you can strand a pawn. If you jump away from a pawn, thus leaving it completely by itself, there is no way of moving that pawn unless you backtrack to it's location on a future turn, or if your opponent is kind (foolish) enough to move adjacent to it. For the most part, I have been able to avoid stranding pieces, as this was a trap that I very quickly noticed. The few times that I did strand a piece, I found it to be incredibly frustrating. And, the game is unforgiving enough that stranding a piece will most likely cost you the game against a good opponent.

A pawn's eye view

An unpleasant element that I noticed about Jumpin that I do not recall experiencing in other spatial reasoning games is that there feels like a lot of down time. The game starts off fairly slowly as each player is simply jumping over one or two pieces. After a little while, the game really starts to get exciting as players will be able to jump their pawns across the entire game board in one or two moves. After this exciting phase, the game slows down again as the players are attempting to finalize their navigation into their victory area. I wish the game did not have these "slow" phases, but was able to maintain the feeling of excitement that it had in the middle of the game.

My next con for Jumpin is that it feels much more like a race than a challenge against an opponent. In most spatial reasoning games, you are constantly facing decisions of whether to move in a way that benefits yourself, or move in a way that blocks your opponents. I think the best example of this is Abalone in which you feel like two sumo wrestlers attempting to move each other. However, in Jumpin, I rarely felt like what I did affected my opponent. Yes, he was able to jump over any of my pawns that I moved, so I would occasionally have to make sure that I did not help him with my movement. A few times I could even block a move that he was planning to make. For the most part, though, you will only be jumping over your own pieces, he will jump over his, and you will see who managed to race to the finish line faster.

Overall, I give Jumpin a 7.5/10. It was quite a pleasant surprise to me that I had received a spatial reasoning game, and I enjoyed playing it.  The slow parts of the game and the fact that I don't really feel like I'm challenging my opponent keep it out of my upper tier of spatial reasoning games, though. (And, it doesn't help that I feel like I get worse at the game the more I play it. I can't really understand what's going on with that element of it.)

If Jumpin sounds interesting, you might also want to check out Pentago, Ingenious, and Stratum.

Ploy Review

Another classic 3M game from my large box that I bought at GenCon is Ploy.

In Ploy, the object of the game is to capture your opponent's commander, or all of his other pieces. It has a very Chess-like feel. Each of your pieces has 1-4 lines on the top of it. On your turn, you are allowed to move 1-3 spaces (depending on the piece), but only along one of the paths that the piece is pointing towards. Conversely, you may take your turn to re-orient one of your pieces instead. Play consists of taking turns moving a piece either along a line or by re-orienting it until all but one of the players (it can be played two or four player) have lost their commander or all of their pieces other than their commander.

Commander

The first pro for Ploy is that it is very simple to teach (as is the case with most 3M games), as it is designed to be able to see what is going on. Each piece is able to move as many spaces as it has lines on it - aside from the Commander who can only move one space (though he has four lines). I really like that the 3M series had a great balance of complexity and depth through gameplay and not through rules. I have not played any 3M games that were more than a page of rules. And yet, the game is engaging and quite challenging.

The next thing that I like about Ploy is how the movement works. I think that it is neat. I don't really know how to describe this pro better. Seeing the board and orienting your pieces, then moving them to where they need to go as you try to strike while your opponent's pieces are facing the wrong direction just has a "neat" feel to it.

However, though I think that Ploy is neat, there are definitely some cons. First of all (disclaimer - I don't like Chess), Ploy embodies everything that I hate about Chess. It is a game of positioning and patience. I like thinking in games, but I do not have the patience for constantly protecting each of my pieces as I attack my opponent at a glacier's pace. That is how I feel about Chess, and that feeling is carried into Ploy. If you like Chess, I think that you will actually love this aspect of Ploy, and it may put you on a level footing with your friends - if you enjoy playing Chess with them, but have not studied the game as much as they have. Playing Ploy may be a way of getting a similar feeling game without feeling like someone wins because they've studied the game more.

The last thing that I will mention about Ploy is that it is "fiddly." Since the pieces spin, and do not lock into place, it is very easy to accidentally nudge them and have them facing between two lines with you not knowing which ones they are supposed to be facing. If you are a gamer that constantly need things to be neat - your always stacking discard piles, etc, then you will probably find yourself spending a lot of time in Ploy fidgeting with the pieces on the board trying to make sure that they are always lining straight up with the lines that they point towards.

Overall, I think that each person's enjoyment of Ploy will be directly related to how much they enjoy Chess. Therefore, I give Ploy a 6.5/10. I have debated this quite a bit - I think that Ploy is a very good game. Unfortunately, I also think that it is horribly boring, in the same way that I think that Chess is horribly boring. If you disagree with me on this one crucial point, then you should definitely check out Ploy, because it is a game that you might love!

If you like vintage 3M games, you should also check out my reviews of Acquire, Quinto, and the (non-3M game that might appeal to a similar audience) Ploy.

Quinto Review

If it's a board game and can be played in less than a few hours, I'll probably be willing to try it. Today's case in point: Quinto (the vintage 3M version).

Quinto is basically number-Scrabble. Each player takes five tiles (which each depict a number from 0-9). The number five starts in the middle of the board. Players take turns placing numbers in a row or column, but must use a previously placed number in their new string of numbers. When placing a new row, the numbers in that row must all add up to a multiple of 5 (hence "Quinto"). There are a couple of minor extra rules. First, no row can consist of more than five numbers. Second, if you place all five of your tiles in a single turn, it must be able to score in at least two directions (such as when you add an "S" to a word in Scrabble and then create a new word going the other direction). Players get points equal to the sum of the numbers in each of the scoring rows and columns. Play continues in this fashion until no more tiles can be played - at which point players lose points for any unused tiles and whoever has the most points is the winner!

The first thing that I like about Quinto is the rule that you cannot have more than five tiles in a single scoring group (row or column). Whereas this seemed like a completely arbitrary rule that played off of the title when I first read the instructions, it really is crucial to the game. If it weren't for this rule, players would simply continue playing off of the same row repeatedly until the row stretched the length of the board. Therefore, if you scored 75 on your turn, I would easily be able to add 10 to what you had placed and score 85. This rule prevents these kinds of situations, and causes the players to actually play the pieces in more of a crossword fashion.

The second thing that I like about Quinto is that it is math based instead of number based. Whereas I do not have a poor vocabulary, word games help me to realize that my vocabulary is not exhaustive. In Quinto, however, all of the players are on an (approximately) even playing field. Assuming that everyone can add in multiples of 5, anyone can play the game and there is no advantage going into the game based on previously acquired knowledge. I wish that there were a way of leveling the playing field like this in Scrabble.

There are some cons to Quinto, however.  Though I really enjoy math (I have a degree in it), I still find the game to be fairly boring. There simply isn't anything engaging in it. If I were working with young children on how to count by fives (or how to add in general), the game would be an incredibly useful teaching tool. However, as a game to play for fun, there are a lot of other games that I think are much more engaging.  Here's really the best gauge I can come up with for you to determine whether this game is for you: ask yourself, "How many times can I look at an 8 and a 7 and go 'oh!  I can make 15!'?"  If the answer is not "I could do that all day!" but is closer to "twice," then this probably isn't the game for you, either.

Secondly, the game isn't even really very creative. Whereas Quinto is a really old game by modern standards (it was first published in 1964 from what I can tell), it really is just a derivative of Scrabble, which came out in the 1940's. Worse yet, I'm not really a major fan of Scrabble - which leads back to the first con, which is that Quinto is boring.

Overall, I give Quinto a 6.0/10. This game's mechanics work; they're just not fun. I am able to have fun joking around and laughing in games, and I'm able to have fun deeply strategizing in games - Quinto doesn't fall into either of these categories. If you're looking for a game to help teach children how to add, Quinto would be a good fit. For anything else, I'd recommend looking elsewhere.

If you like math intensive games like Quinto, you might also want to check out Power Grid, Lost Cities, and Atlanteon.

Acquire Review

A game that's been in my collection for a while, but that I'm just now getting around to playing and reviewing is Acquire (in all honesty, my version is the original 1962 version from 3M, not the latest reprint by Avalon Hill that I have linked to).

In Acquire, each player is taking on the role of a hotel mogul, and the goal of the game is to earn the most money. In order to do this, each player will be both buying stock and developing hotel chains. On each turn, a player will start with 6 tiles that represent potential hotels. They will choose one of these tiles to place on its appropriate position on the board (a grid that is labeled 1-A through 12-I). This placement can cause several things to occur: a hotel chain may be founded, two hotel chains may merge, thus causing a buyout of the stock of the smaller chain, or a single hotel may be placed in isolation. After placing their tile, the player will then have the option of buying up to 3 stocks of any of the hotel chains that have been founded. Once one of the hotel chains has grown large enough, or several of the chains have grown to sufficient size, then the game is over, all the players sell their remaining shares of stock, and the person with the most money is the winner.

Acquire has some very interesting features. First, the drawing and placement of tiles works pretty well. It gives the players strategic options as to where to place each turn, but still forces them to make the best of what is available to them. This keeps the game from becoming too redundant, as the game will be different each time simply based on where people are able to found hotel chains and when they are able to merge them together.  This aspect of the game is one of the main strategic pieces while playing Acquire.

Next, the buying and selling of stock works well. Each player is able to buy whichever stocks they want (and can afford) each turn, but only up to a maximum of 3. This helps prevent a player that has had a windfall of money from being able to buy all of the shares of one or more of the chains and helps maintain competitive balance. Also, the selling of stock - specifically the fact that there is a majority and minority shareholder bonus - encourages the players to have certain stocks that they invest more heavily in. Once a player begins investing in a chain, it is also important to figure out when to try to grow the chain and when to try to have it bought out by a bigger chain (thus freeing up some money or giving you more of the bigger chain's stock for a cheaper rate).

There were a couple of drawbacks that I saw to Acquire. First, Acquire is a game in which you can be defeated well before the game is over. In some games you always feel like there is a chance (however remote) that you will be able to come from behind if things go well, but Acquire is not like that. In one of the games we played, in fact, one of the players (yes, through poor strategy) had rendered himself irrelevant within the first few turns with nothing that he was able to do but place tiles - he had no way of buying or selling any tiles to generate any more money. I prefer games in which you always have a chance of coming back, or in which several of the players that are doing poorly have a chance of joining forces to come back against a player that is running away with the game.

Another problem that I see with Acquire is that there are some fatal mistakes that players can make. Specifically, if a player runs out of money for more than a couple of turns, this often means that he will lose. It seems like in the game the emphasis is more on selling stock than it is on growing a hotel chain to be larger, and I would have preferred that there was more of a balance which would allow both strategies to be feasible alternatives.

Overall, I give Acquire a 7.5/10. It is a good game that I will continue to play occasionally, but it is not something that I will play on a regular basis. If you are interested in playing stock based games, I would recommend trying Chicago Express before playing this game, but if you run across a copy fairly inexpensively or have a friend that has a copy of the game, it is definitely worth trying out.

Some other games that you might also want to check out are Monopoly Deal, Innovation (a card game) and Bootleggers.