Ingenious is the game of vexing and perplexing hexagons.
Yep, sure.
In Ingenious, a.k.a. Einfach Genial, players take turns placing coloured domino-style tiles on a game board, scoring for each line of coloured symbols that they enlarge. The trick, however, is that a player’s score is equal to their worst-scoring colour, not their best, so they need to score for all colours instead of specializing in only one or two.
Ingenious Game Play
Simple one this.
Each player has a secret selection of 6 tiles each double-ended with a colour. Either 2 different colours or 1 colour on both ends.
On your turn, you put one of your tiles on the board so one end matches an adjacent tile already on the board. Then, that tile is scored.
Scoring is “one point in that colour for each hex of the same colour that lies adjacent to it and each hex in a straight line from it”, taken from the publisher. This does mean you can score both ends of your tile, even if they’re different colours.
You move up each scoring track for the colour that many points.
If you hit 18 points in a colour you can take another turn and if you get 18 points in EVERY colour you win instantly.
Otherwise, if no one can place a tile legally the game ends. The player’s score is equal to their lowest-scoring colour, highest low score wins.
Theme
I mean, no. Better than pasting a rubbish one on though right?
Setup
Put out the board, and give each player a rack and 6 tiles.
The bit that takes the longest is pushing the little scoring markers into the scoring card 🙂
Components & Artwork
No art, but the components are decent. The plastic tiles are really nice and each colour has its own shape which I’m sure will help with differentiating the colours.
I would like to see larger numbers on the scorecards so you see your opponent’s card easier. Although, the board from 10+ is shaded a darker colour which makes it a bit easier.
Ease of Teaching & Accessibility
Very easy. It was taught to me by a 6-year-old and I got it fine, then I beat him 😀
It’s definitely a family-friendly game and what you would call a decent gateway game.
Ingenious Summary
Plenty of similar games here. The one it reminds me the most is Qwirkle due to the way it looks. Actually, the new version of Ingenious called Axio looks a lot like Qwirkle.
The game itself is good. But I did just feel like all I was trying to do was buff my lowest score each round.
But, I was thinking that I had to balance ‘scoring big on the single lowest colour’ or ‘scoring not so big but scoring on two colours’.
I did have an issue that I only drew 3 blue tiles all game meaning my blue score was my lowest, but it was enough to win. You can get around this with the rule that if you have no tiles on the rack of your lowest colour you can discard all your tiles and redraw them.
So I enjoyed it but I would love to play this against expert-level players to see how I do. This could be my favourite abstract game for 3+ players.
Jesta ThaRogue