Matthew BaileyGame 4 of 4 of the “Bailey Boys penultimate day of the Easter holidays let’s cram it all into 1-day mini Marathon” was “Ganz schön clever Kids” a kids version of “Ganz schön clever a roll ‘n’ write from Wolfgang Warsch played by myself, Jack(7) and Toby(4).
Ganz schön clever Kids (German for “That’s Pretty Clever”) features gameplay similar to Ganz schön clever, with one player rolling dice on their turn, then choosing what they want while everyone else gets something from what’s left behind.
On your turn, roll the five dice. The faces of these dice have a yellow, red, blue or green background with an object from that “zone” on them. you can only take dice with matching colour backgrounds and then resolve them on your card.
Balloons are in the yellow area, for example, and you must mark them off left to right: red, blue, green, lilac, blue, etc.
For the train of candles in the orange area, you must have as many candles as are on the next train car in order to mark it out.
Gifts in the green area can be marked off in any order and earn bonuses if you complete a row or a line.
Sweets in the blue area are depicted in pairs — doughnuts, cake, cupcakes — and you mark spaces in a row left to right as long as you have a pair of matching sweets on the dice.
If you can’t use a die, e.g., you took red, blue and lilac balloons and could mark off only the first two, then you must return the unused dice to any others left behind. Each other player then chooses dice of a single background colour — and players can choose the same or different colours — and marks off what they can.
If you mark off a circled item or a row of gifts next to a circle, you can immediately cross off an item in the section of the same colour as that circle. Crossing off this item might give you another bonus! This can lead to some awesome chains if you plan it right and is a key part of the strategy and key to winning.
When a player marks off all items in one area, the game ends at the conclusion of that turn. Various items or rows you complete have rainbow stars connected to them, and whoever collects the most rainbow stars wins!
I really like this game. It’s a perfect level of complexity for kids to be enjoyable and unlike most kid versions of games, there is enough here that you could happily play it with adults and is one of the few “kid” versions I will recommend alongside the normal version.
Everything is simple but nice and the dice are wooden and of decent quality.
I totally recommend it.
