Ganz schön clever Review - JonGetsGames

welcome to John gets games today I'll be reviewing guns shun Claire now this is a German role and right style game so that means that one player is gonna be rolling dice and then everybody will be able to participate in some of those roles and you each have a large pound of paper and a bunch of different minigames on it that you can play in different ways that will each give you a variety of victory points as well as bonus actions that can bounce around back and forth between each other now first I'll explain how the game plays and then I'll jump into my review but before we go into that I'd like to briefly ask that if you enjoyed this video that you consider clicking the like button down below as well as the subscribe button also if you would like to support the channel please check out Jang it's Gamescom slash support to see a variety of ways in which you could do that all right let's now move on and see how this game plays at the start of the game each player is gonna tear off one of these sheets from this large pad and they're gonna put it in front of themselves next up you're gonna take the bottom part of the box you can see it as this silver platter right here you're gonna put that in the middle of the table now you're gonna figure out who the starting player is going to be and they're gonna take all six of these dice and before they actually roll those dice they have to look over here along the top of their Pat now you'll see there are these numbers and these are the overall number of rounds that you'll be playing if you're doing a four player game you'll do four rounds a three-player game you'll play 5 and a 1 and two-player game will play six rounds now if you notice here when you start the first round there is this little bonus which looks like a little circle with arrows on it what this means is everybody immediately gets this bonus at the beginning of the starting round and that means that you're gonna circle this spot right here so that we have unlocked the ability to do a single reroll if we'd like at this point the active player who can be us right now is gonna take all of the dice and they're gonna roll them at this point they now look to the top left portion of their sheet they can see these three different slots this means that they are going to try to lock in at three different dice and evaluate the results now you do this in weight and the first thing that happens after rolling the dice is this player is gonna choose one of those dice and they're gonna put it up here in the top slot now once they do that say for instance if the active player took this blue two then any of the dice that were rolled to have a value that is lower than the dice that was picked are going to be taken and put up here on to the platter at this point the active player is now going to evaluate at this specific die and if you look down here on there are five different locations which match up to the five different colors on the dice this white guy over here is a wild die option so in this case we have done a blue die over here and so we look over to the blue section now the way the blue section works is you always take the value of the blue dye wherever it is and you add it to the value of the white die wherever that is whether it is on the platter on the table or maybe even on some of these player sheet and then once you add those two up you're gonna cross out at the spot that is associated with the sum of those numbers so in this case we have 2 plus 1 is 3 so we cross this off right here and we have now finished evaluating this dye we can now go ahead and roll the rest of our dice because we want to activate 2 more so in this case we got several different ones right here and if you remember we have this reroll available to ourselves so if we want to right now we could go ahead and just cross this out if we didn't like this rule at all and now we're forced to roll all of the dice that are currently available to ourselves and now we have to pick one of these as a result let's say for instance that maybe we've grabbed at this yellow two now once we put it in over here we obviously don't want to put any of these up on the platter because they're all a equal to or higher number than the two that we picked and now we come to the yellow section so in this case you'll see there are two twos out here so we need to choose to cross out to one of those perhaps we would choose to cross this one out right here and as you can see now for the yellow section and the blue section you are going to be trying to make rows and columns out of the crossed off areas as you can see if we were able to cross off a 5 and a 4 later on that's gonna be a full column and that will give us 16 points at the end of the game but the other thing that we potentially get over here is if for instance we cross off this entire row by doing the 1 and the 4 then we would gain access to this special ability this one has a green X and what that means is once that happens we just cross out at the next green spot that is farthest to the left over here on this section if you look over to the blue area you only have the bonuses on the columns as well as the rows but you're going to get points over here for the number of blue crossed off areas that you have at the end of the game ok so in this instance we can roll the dice for one more time and at this point we get to choose from these options I figure let's now talk about how the rest of these areas work if we were to take this 5 right here if you look to the green and it just has a requirement of having a value that is greater than or equal to a number that is printed on the panel so the very first green slot just needs to be something that is greater than equal to one so obviously that is any dye result so a high green value right now does not help out very much because you're just gonna cross these off and at the end of the game you will just see how many points you get based off of how far along you've got also there are some bonus abilities that you'll get by getting farther down into the green area next up we have the orange spot and if we were to lock in and orange then we would simply write the number of that orange dye down here in that section and that will be worth points to us at the end of the game equal to the value so a 2 for orange would just be worth 2 points to us at the end of the game but as you can see there are a couple of slots farther down that have a 2x so if you are able to maybe grab a 5 or 6 when you are at that spot because again you fill in from the left over then you can get a lot of points for this specific location now the last one is the purple over here now the way purple works is when you lock that in you are also going to be writing that number in and I'm gonna say that I pick purple right here so I'll put a 2 in and just like that and you can see that the next purple ones all have to be greater than the previous value now obviously there are a lot more than 6 locations on here so the way you get around capping out at 6 is that whenever you write a 6 into here it resets the clock and then you can put any value to the right of that spot so at this point we've now locked in three of our dice and we would take the last two dice and put them over here onto the silver platter and now every one of our opponents can activate one of the dice that are over here on the silver platter and they can all choose the same die if they like to and they're gonna activate it in the same exact way that I've already explained over here by putting the orange down here the green crossing off the slot over here and then of course the white is a wild so that can be associated with many of the different sections although if you use the white for the blue section you then add in the value of the blue die wherever that is once that's done you will pass all of these dice to the next player to the left and they will continue to roll the dice just like that once every player has been the active player and we get back around to the starting first player you'll move into the second round at this point you'll see that this bonus is a plus one so when you get to that point you're gonna circle this and the way this works is at the end of any one of the rounds you can cross this out in order to evaluate any the dice wherever they are you know whether that be on your own player sheet or maybe they're on any opponents pleasure sheet or over here on the silver platter so this just gets you extra dice activations with these plus ones and as you can see you're gonna gain a couple of these as you go along and in the fourth round you can take an X of any location or put a six down here in the orange or the purple if you like and there are many other ways to gain the plus ones like right here and right here for completing this area or getting all the way up to this spot on the green track and obviously once you get to a point where you have lots of these things crossed off you will start to bounce all around because you might fill in on this right here to get a blue X which might unlock a yellow X will jump you over here now you're gonna keep playing until you've finished all of the rounds that are associated with your current player count and at that point you're gonna add up all of the points for different regions as I mentioned before the yellow region you get points for completing these columns the blue region you get points for crossing out into various boxes and you just look to this little graph here the green region you just look to see how far along you got and then for the orange and purple spots you just add up all of the pit values that are written in there now the last thing that I haven't explained is this little fox right here now if you unlock a fox by getting up to that spot or maybe completing that particular row here then you will gain points for that Fox equal to your worst scoring region and if you flip over the board right now the sheet right here you can see you can put all of your scores for the five spots in here and then you look to see which ever one is lowest and you multiply that number by the number of foxes and then you write that in here and then add all of that up and put your final score right down here and then whoever has the most points is going to be the winner well let's now begin the review for GaN strand clever by starting with a few positive points and for the first of these I have to talk about the bonus explosions that can happen once you get to the middle and later parts of the game so what I mean here is each one of the minigames is gonna unlock the ability to do something in a different zone it might be crossing off one of the yellows or maybe it will allow you to put a purple six down below um you can add these in and as you're kind of getting to the mid point of the game you will do one kind of bounce over here and then you do this other thing but once you get to the later parts of the game you will find times where you will take a specific die mark off a spot which gives you a bonus which lets you go over here and cross that off which gives you another bonus so you can come over here and cross that off and then come here invited six and then you can just keep bouncing all over the place you have these massive turns and it's really satisfying like it feels like that's what the game is kind of geared towards is that endorphin hit of just doing a ton of stuff once you are into that later stages of the game now obviously this is gonna happen better for the person who is winning as opposed to somebody who is not winning as much but either way I've always noticed that people have this gleeful smile on their face once they get into those later rounds in fact they'll ask him I played one of my opponent said am I actually allowed to do this which does this which is this and this and this and this and it's like yeah and he's like wow that's cool and then when a head and proceeded to do it so I think this is a really big selling point to the game and it's just super fun next up we have positive point number two and for this one I'd like to talk about the satisfying push and pull between trying to go deep within a specific mini game or going wide across all of them and so of course by mini game I mean that the colored sections on your player area and you are incentivized to try and do well in all of them because as you are progressing through and gaining bonuses you will likely also grab foxes which will give you points equal to the worst scoring of the colored games that you have in front of you now what that means is if you end the game with like three foxes but your lowest score is like ten then that's gonna be a lot less effective then if your lowest score is something like thirty and I have seen that happen and it can really compound having that ability to just get tons of points from those foxes at the end but that being said every one of these areas seems to really benefit from investing deep into it and trying to go really hard on that one to get a much bigger output of victory points on it so there's no real one definite thing you have to do while you're playing like you're gonna want to try and do both and you're gonna see how the dice allow you to get to these different places as you're playing the game but I found it satisfying trying to balance going wide and going deep with these specific things up next we have the final positive point and for this one I'd like to talk about the great ideas that come into play with the silver platter mechanic in this game and so what I mean by this is when it's your turn and you roll the dice then you're gonna take every die that it's lower than the value of the one that you picked and you're gonna put it off onto that silver platter and you will not have access to it for the rest of your turn only your opponents will be able to work off of so this brings in a lot of great things to think about for such a tiny little rule on the first thing is do I go ahead and grab that five or that six early in the round even though it means I will get less dye activations or do I do something else so that I don't put a really favorable to high up on the silver platter that's gonna help my opponents you definitely will find yourself in the earlier phase of your turn trying to go after those lower value dice when the tempting high-value ones are still gonna be there like you might say no to that orange six or that purple six because it's your first roll and you know if you take it then you might not be getting any other actions but I have seen situations where somebody has done that for their first roll they take a six they lose the rest of their dice but with that six they do a whole bunch of stuff because it's near the end of the game and they decided to worth it to them because if they keep rolling they might not get that six again for example so overall I think it's a tiny rule that really adds a ton to the decisions that you're making why playing the game all right let's now move into the neutral section and the first thing I want to talk about here has to do with downtime now most roll and Ryan style games involve the active player rolling some dice and then everybody else doing stuff with the die rolls from that active player and in many of this type of game there is essentially zero downtime but gontran clever is different in that respect in a large part due to what I talked about in the positive number three that you have all these wonderful decisions to make as far as which dinah pick because they're gonna activate if your minigames in a variety of different ways and certain other dice are gonna go over onto the platter and when you add all these things together especially once you get to the middle and later stages of the game that's a lot to crunch through and there have been times where it's taken a while for the turn to get right back around to me around the table and it is nice being able to do stuff on your opponent's turns you just have to wait for them to crunch through and figure out what the three dice are gonna be so I have not found downtime to be debilitating in this game but I think going into it knowing it's a roll and riot style game you might be surprised at how long it can may be sometimes to get back around to you on the table and also just how long to play like most games of this take between 40 minutes and an hour I found and that's on the longer side for a roll and right style game but either way it's just something to know going into it next up we have neutral number 2 and for this one I just want to discuss the role of luck in this game obviously it's a dice rolling game so luck is gonna come into play and I will admit that's rolling hai is usually better than rolling low as you are playing through the game if you look at all the different minigames in front of you especially the orange section you just could put whatever number you want down into there and and whatever that number is will be victory points for you that means you always want to try and put fives and sixes down into that area and with the sixes I'm sorry with the purple you really want to get six is down because those reset your clock and allow you to put lower value dice back in there so you can find yourself pretty jammed up in the purple area with maybe a five as your last thing and you're really desperately trying to find that six you are rarely trying to find lower value numbers I found in the game like a couple times with specific dice like maybe with the blue dye you really love to roll Snake Eyes with that one and the white guy to try and cross off that two section and with the yellow area there's no real difference between rolling high and going low but with green purple and orange like I said already rolling high is really important in order to get into the deeper parts of the scoring for those areas but fortunately this game allows you to reroll and you get quite a few rerolls as you were playing the game and also just as a basic style to the game you are going to roll all the dice that you didn't use that didn't go up on to the silver platter so that's also a reroll so I found that while I've been playing the game I have not felt overly penalized for rolling poorly because there's just so many opportunities to roll the dice that it seems like you're usually given decent opportunities to do stuff with them at this point I would normally discuss a couple of negative points to the game that I found that detracted from the overall experience but honestly I haven't been able to come up with any so let's go ahead and move on up next let's now discuss the variability for gon-chan clever and I feel like it's pretty much what I expected going into it that's largely because it is a small box game and it's a roll and write style game and in general those work with the same pad every single time you play like there are a couple they give you alternate setups for the stuff that you're gonna be filling out but this game is not one of those every single pad in that box is gonna be the same as the last but I have found that one play is gonna feel different from the next mostly based off of the opportunities that the dice are going to be giving you because you cannot max out all of the minigames every single time you play so that you will find in one game maybe you go really heavy on yellow and purple and in another game you finish out the blue area and you get a bunch of the as well and I think that gives gives a decent amount of variability to the game moving on let's now discuss the player counts for the game and on the box it says one two four I never really play games at solo so I haven't tried that one yet and I've actually only played this one at three and four so far and the biggest difference really between each one of these player counts is the number of main actions that you take in a two-player game you're gonna take six main actions and then obviously there's only one opponent across the table for you to do a secondary action on their turn versus a four player game where you will only have four main actions on your turn but there will be three secondary actions between each one of your main activations so you're still gonna be doing a lot in that setting now I feel like after having played three and four player I do think that three plays a little bit better obviously you're gonna have one more main action but the bigger thing has to do with just getting back to being the main player again sooner as I mentioned before there is a little bit of downtime as you are trying to come through all of the options as you're playing it and at a full hour game that's just one extra person that you're kind of watching crunch through a hold the different options that are in front of themselves and again that downtime is not terrible and I would not say no to playing this one again at four but I do think it's best at three in conclusion I've played gontran clever three times at this point and I have really enjoyed each one of those experiences when I first heard about this game I was intrigued by the idea of having these five different scoring areas on your player board that you are that have different rules amongst themselves and that seem to have these satisfying ways of filling them in and I am happy to say that that is the experience that I had with each one of the players of the game that I've done and the first positive point that I mentioned already is definitely the highlight of the game and that is when you get into the later stages and you start to just get all of these bonuses all over the place and it almost feels like an iPhone game obviously when you get to that point because you get a bonus and you pop up here and you get to do a thing and you pop down here and you can almost hear the little bells going off and little explosions in your head because you're doing all this really cool stuff and I'm just glad that the game is kind of geared towards making that happen and it's a neat way to handle having five different scoring types within your pad but then also having them feel so interconnected obviously you can try to go really hard on one specific set but every single one of these minigames is going to give you bonuses for pretty much all of the other mini and that means that by definition you are going to be bouncing all over the place as you are trying to find the best means to getting points each time you're playing the game so I think that the decisions that you're making as you're picking the dummies as well as the decisions that you're making when you're using utilizing the dice that are on the silver platter on your opponent's turns both work out really well together and I think this is a really satisfying and somewhat thinkI role and right style game I mentioned earlier that the game seems to usually play between 40 minutes and an hour which is a little bit long when you consider that against many other role in frye style games but I also think there's a lot of great decisions going on here and just a lot going on under the hood as you were playing this game and at this point I don't think I've introduced it to anybody who hasn't into the game saying well that was a really cool experience and I think that's what I'm going to be saying now like that's what I want you to leave here with is that I feel like it's a really cool experience I'm looking forward to playing this one more and I definitely recommend it as always I'd like to thank everyone who's been supporting this channel including all of these producer level patreon backers if you two would like to directly support the channel please check out John gets Gamescom slash support to see a variety of ways that you could do that also if you'd like to see more in depth board game reviews like this one as well as full game playthroughs and vlogs please subscribe to the channel thanks for watching

Channel: JonGetsGames

Views: 15,221

Keywords: Ganz Schön Clever, ganz schon clever, jongetsgames, johngetsgames, jongetgames ganz, jongetsgames ganz schon clever, Ganz Schön Clever review, ganz schon clever review, Ganz Schön Clever game, ganz schon clever game

Id: RVU3F744CJk

Length: 19min 0sec (1140 seconds)

Published: Thu May 17 2018