. . . all of which makes Taj Mahal my favorite Knizia game (and I own 30).

Of course, this design characteristic is not unique to Knizia. Consider the dilemma Moon puts on you in Union Pacific. Every turn there's a decsion to make: add a train to the board (making the company more valuable) or invest (making a payoff in the company more likely). You can't do both, even though there are times when you absolutely need to.

At his best, Kramer also puts the player in a position where you want to do more than the system will allow (El Grande, for example). Many of the best Euro games share this feature, no matter who designed the game.

I'm not sure I follow your statement. Since there's no element of luck or random events in Stephensons Rocket, I always felt like I was in control.

Another great design by the Master! The scoring rules --- reminiscent of his Tigris & Euphrates --- turns what might have been a run-of-the-mill tile-laying game into a outstanding strategy game.

When teaching the game to new players, you take a deep breath before starting the "How you win" part.

I still like the tip that someone posted a while back about this...

Instead of:

"Your final score is equal to the lowest number of cubes you've collected in any single color"

say

"Your final score is the total number of complete sets of 4 colors you have collected"

Collecting and counting 4 different colored cubes in sets seems a bit more intuitive. Don't you think?

I've concluded the easiest way to explain how to count the score is to demonstrate with a neat lineup...
Lay out some 1pt victory cubes in neat rows all together:






And point to the score. Say, with appropriate gestures, "your score is your weakest colour".

People make their own visualisation pretty quick that way.

I'd probably teach them Ingenious first. Then when they learn T&E, they'd understand the scoring system.

Jason

If you paid $50 for Lost Cities, you really need to learn how to shop around.

In fact, with the exception of some OOP titles (and few of those), it's hard to find a Knizia game that can't be had for under $50. A few (LOTR, E&T, Rheinlander) nominally list for $50, but they're obviously a lot more than art and cards.

I live in a different country. We use monopoly money.

.

Plastic Monopoly money at that!

Funny Joe!

For the American geeks: 1 US dollar = 1.35 Australian dollar

It's not the exchange rate but the shipping cost that's the killer. (although I'm sure I could get Lost Cities for around $35)

I possibly could have found it for $35 too, as part of a bunch of stuff coming from overseas or from certain folks I know who'll add it in to their shipments or waiting for a better buy opportunity.

But... I walked into a local game store with a list of stuff you see, and it was all "out of print, out of stock, I'll check out back nope sorry" and I'd be badgered if I was going to walk out empty handed.

Let me add to the Kinizia theme:

I Can't Believe Not One Person Has Thought Of This Before Now! category

Kinizia has made so many games that just seem like the human race should have come up with before say, 1987?

Kingdoms is one of them. Love the game but how difficult was it to come up with such a simple design and idea.

You would think the idea of a basic grid with positives and negatives that you draw and place would have been something that should have clicked ages go.

I just played this game for the first time a couple days ago. I liked it, but what boggled me was: you've got this little bitty board barely larger than the box (and could be reduced to the size of the box), and it's a four-piece jigsaw board. What were they thinking?
Game
Physical design of game

That's the beauty of Knizia's production. His designs run the gamut from high end strategy challenges like Tigris & Euphrates and Merchants of Amsterdam, all the way down to the simplest of games, like Kingdoms, Loco, and Money. I have yet to play a Knizia game that I wouldn't play again, regardless of its complexity or target audience.

... you realize that you're screwed if you undercommit, and you're screwed if you overcommit, and you can't find a reliable way to figure out where to draw the lines.

That got me. At my games club last week I played three games, I knew the first one was a Knizia (Euphrates & Tigris), but the other two I only found out halfway through (Medici and Lost Cities).

LOOT is the one that got me. I was considering buying the game for the kids when I read in small print on the back that the game designer was Dr. Knizia. I bought a stack for my kids to give as gifts at birthday parties.

This is a neat little Carcassonne spin-off, that several in our group prefer to the original Carcassonne. It's an excellent two-player game.

Auctioning.

Wait...set collecting.

No...player prediction.

Press your luck?

Damnit.

-MMM

IMHO, Ra hasn't lost any of its appeal over the years. We played it again about a week ago, and enjoyed it just as much as ever.

The first game I think of when I think of Knizia (the second one is Royal Turf). Masterpiece.

Still one of Knizia's best designs, regardless of the number of players who say they "just don't get it."

Considering that the 'art' on the playing cards has no intrinsic value of its own, it took a clever design to turn a 'worthless' deck into an outstanding art auction game.

I just don't get it. (Someone had to say it.)

I love Ra and Samurai, though.

You have to explain to anyone who will listen that this is not just go with camels !

Remains one of his classic tile-laying games. Simple, but challenging.

With some subtle strategies and tactics that aren't readily apparent before the first play, Ingenious is one of those abstract games that appeals even to our abstract-game haters. An excellent design.

Sorry, you can't use the terms "IBM consultant" and "worthy" in the same sentence.

Bite me.

I think Knizia hit a homer with this one --- a cooperative game with simple rules that can be played in an hour or less. Very true to its theme.

My Knizia experience (still limited in the scheme of TKP*) is somewhat one of polarisation... choose one of many different possible actions each with few possible options each time, OR there's only one or two distinct actions but each with many options. He doesn't seem to do much of "several actions, each with several options".

Possible action: Lay a tile. Possible options: Anywhere on the board.

OR

Possible actions: Any one of: Buy, or Sell, or Bid, or Move, or Draw the next card, or ... ... Possible options: Well if you Buy you can only buy A, if you Sell you can only sell X or Y, if you Bid you can only bid on R, if you draw the next card there's only one, etc. etc.


(* Total Kinizia Potential)

Many Knizia games do have limited choices, but this is certainly not one of them, especially with the expansions.

I will agree with Skeletor. For the game in question, you have several choices:

Heal a point
Play a card or two (offering maybe a half dozen more real choices as a subset of this)
Take two cards
(Kill a foe in the expansion)

Pretty minimal choices when comapred to something like Go or Hacienda or Ticket to Ride. Though I would not say fewer options "closes" the game in any negative way.

Lol. Compared to the choices in Go?

1. Put a stone down.

2. Ehhh... I'm sure there's something...

Ok this has addition been sitting here ages not without further comment or explanation, and I'm still completely in the dark. Maybe it would make sense to me if I'd ever seen the particular game?

Given the ranking on the game, my guess is that this is a disparaging comment directed towards the sort of people who play Knizia games...

Either that, or they're so involving that all you do is play them -- not stopping to shower, or eat, or visit the little gamer's room...

I'll take Column B.

The simplest of games, on each turn, a player does two things: play a card, and take a chip of any color. Yet, we've had a lot of fun with Loco as a filler game ni our group. This is a game that virtually the entire family can play.

I was going to say:

"The game is set in Egypt, but you just can't see why."

Ditto Kingdoms.

A good portion of Through the Desert is setting up the board. Game play is usually about 30-40 minutes tops for us.

Y'know, I just don't understand why people think that this game takes much time to score. It takes me all of five seconds per expedition, and I absolutely hate mathmatics.

'beau's right. Experiencd players should know their score by the time the hand ends. It's like not knowing how many checkers you have left when a game of checkers ends.

Out of curiosity, why would I bother tracking my total? During play it's a useless piece of data. Tracking it would add, say, one to three seconds per five second turn, make the game take longer, and use up some of my limited attention and memory for no benefit. In watching the total, I suspect most people would lose track (or confidence in their memory) a couple of times a game and re-add the whole thing. (I know I would.)

I agree it takes maybe three to eight seconds to score a suit, or about a minute per hand. Which is not a lot in the Grand Scheme Of Things. But one minute scoring a three minute hand is quite noticeable, especially relative to "so how much money did you get?" after a one hour game. I suspect it just comes down to personal tolerance for time spent scoring. I'm fine with this myself.

The spreadsheet I mentioned (yes I really do use one) is actually just to speed up marginally adding the four or five two-digit numbers together (from each suit) and confirm I don't make a mistake. And 'cause I can't be bothered finding pen and paper.

As a category though, Knizia seems to go for some relatively convoluted numerical systems for scoring (as opposed to "whoever has the most money wins") so I wouldn't fault Kristoffer his light hearted post.

Well it certainly is if it's a Ra board and you're playing Lost Cities.