Ingenious Review

boardgamequest.com:

We review Ingenious, an abstract strategy game published by Thames and Kosmos. Ingenious is designed by Dr. Renier Knizia and is being reprinted after a long time out of print.

Reiner Knizia has 712 (and counting) design credits. Ingenious is just one out of that bunch. What makes it special is that it has been in print for a large part of the nearly twenty years since it was first released.

So why has it been in print that long? And is it more special than Knizia’s other titles? 

In Ingenious, players will be taking turns adding tiles onto a hexagonal grid. These tiles are two hexagons welded together on one side, making for a ten-sided tile. On each title there will be two colors (also represented as shapes to make the game colorblind friendly). When a tile is placed onto the board, the player who placed it then counts out from each edge of the hexagon. If off of that edge, along a straight line, there are one or more unblocked hexagons with that color, then you get that number of hexagons in points of that color. 

Here’s the twist: At the end of the game, each player looks at how many points they got of each of the six colors. Whichever color you got the least amount of points in determines your final score. If I got 18 points in five different colors, but seven points in the final color, my final score for the game is seven. 

After you place a tile, you draw a new tile to your hand of six. If, before you draw, you have no tiles with your lowest scoring color on it, you can wipe your entire hand and get six brand new tiles. 

Lay your tiles with precision, plan your moves accordingly, and draw well to win Ingenious. 

Knizia is known for several other phenomenal titles. Ra, Modern Art, Medici, Zoo Vadis, Through the Desert, Tigris & Euphrates… the list goes on forever. So why play Ingenious over the other titles? 

First, this is one of the only titles I’ve played from the Good Doctor that feels entirely family friendly. This game has an air to it