Kevin Beane
United States
Dallas
Texas
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This is a good filler game. A little bit of strategy, a lot of screw-your-neighbor and bash-the-leader, and play is quick, perhaps 15-20 minutes.
You start out with two cards a faucet and a handle, and you have to try to connect the two together with a minimum of ten other pipe cards (if you're playing with 4 players).
The pipe cards are horizontal pipes, vertical pipes, t-joint pipes, and elbow pipes. All your cards must be played vertically - you can't lay a card sideways to make the pipe fit.
Beyond the different shapes of pipes, there's also copper pipes, which can't leak or be sabotaged, and lead, which can leak and be sabotaged.
You draw five cards, picking up a card on each turn and either laying down or discarding a card on each turn. You can either extend your own pipe, if you have a non-leaky piece that fits, or you can lay down a leaky piece on one of your opponent's pipes.
There are two ways of sabotaging your opponents with leaky pipes. You can either fit a leaky piece to his pipe as an extension, if it fits; or you can lay an identical, but leaky, card on top of a card he has already placed (unless its copper). A double-whammy is to lay down a leaky extension that not only gives him a leak to fix, but leads him in a direction he doesn't want to go.
You can fix a leak either by placing an identical, but non-leaky, card on top of the leaky card, or by putting a wrench on it. You get two wrenches to use at your discretion. Placing the wrench uses up your turn.
There are a couple other restrictions to sabotaging your opponent. You have to leave him a direction to build in. If you look at the images, you'll notice there are some stopper cards, (gap closers, pipe closers, whatever you want to call it.) If your opponent is building a long, straight pipe, you will be tempted to shut it off with a leaky stopper card. But you can't, as it leaves him nowhere else to build.
You can only lay down leaky cards on your opponent's pipes. You may be tempted to lay down an unleaky fitting-but-unwanted elbow or t-joint on your opponent's pipe, but you can't.
Further, you cannot lay down a leaky card on your own pipe (an example of when you might want to is if it's an ideal fit, but leaky...and accepting the leak to fix with a wrench).
If you have a leak, you cannot continue to build until you have repaired the leak, although you may use your turn to sabotage your opponents instead. Your finished product cannot have any loose ends either, like T-joints with an open valve. This is what the aforementioned stopper cards are for.
Perusing the other comments and reviews, I'm seeing a lot of complaints about the amount of space laying all these cards take up. I played two games with four people, and we were able to easily acommodate all pipes on a regular dining table, although we did have to sometimes gently shift our constructions to make for more room from time to time. Not a legendary game but not much to complain about, either.
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tim Tim TIm TIM TIMMY!!
Costa Rica
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I had this as a kid, and totally forgot about it, Now I must have it, Hendal Wants it
Thanks for sharing.
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Richard Scarry
United States
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(grin) I'm guessing you had/have both an old and a new version? The current (Winning Moves) version is hand of five, draw one, play one like you said, but they dropped the number of in-between cards needed: twelve for two players, ten for three, eight for four.
I prefer the original rules, which seems to be where you got your number of cards per player from: fifteen for two players, twelve for three, ten for four and eight for five. Also, that one was hand of five, play one, draw one, which cuts down the number of options a hair.
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~Ryan McSwain
United States
Amarillo
Texas
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Our older version also has a hand of five cards.
Nice review.
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