6 nimmt! Brettspiel

• Designer: Wolfgang Kramer
• Publisher: AMIGO
• Players: 2-6
• Age: 8+
• Time: 30-40 minutes
• Times played: 4, with review copy provided by AMIGO

6 nimmt! is one of my most favorite and least favorite cardgames.  What?! Yeah, it all depends on my mood. 6 nimmt! sometimes gives you the illusion that you really have control of your path through the game, while other times, it’s a rollicking randomly capricious game where you just play a card and see what happens.  Heck, at one Gathering of Friends, I once won a game of 6 nimmt! by never looking at my cards and simply playing one at random each round… Regardless of that, it is a game that always elicits laughs, groans and all other sorts of emotions as the cards play themselves out in the rows on the table.

6 nimmt! Brettspiel is the second boardgame based on this great cardgame – the other being Tanz der Hornochsen.  While obviously similar, this 2019 release is different from Tanz der Hornochsen. In this game, players still secretly and simultaneously choose a numbered tile from their hand, and then these tiles are placed on the board from lowest to highest in number.

The game includes tiles numbered 1-100, and each player receives a hand of twelve tiles.   Each tile additionally has between one and five bullsheads on it. To start the game, four tiles are revealed at random and placed in the first position of the first four rows on the game board.

On each turn, each player secretly and simultaneously chooses a tile, then they are revealed all at the same time. Tiles are added to the four active rows on the game board from lowest number to highest. A tile is placed in a row to the right of a tile with a lower value, with the smallest difference between tiles mattering should multiple options be available. (For example, a 44 would be placed to the right of 42 and not 38 should both of those numbers be present in different rows.) If a tile is lower than all rightmost tiles, then you place it to the right of the tile with the highest value.

As each tile is placed on the board, be sure to pay attention to the symbols found on many of the board spaces.   If the space has a positive or negative number on it, the player who played the tile moves his score marker accordingly on the chart.  Of note, whenever you score negative points, you can draw a Lucky card from the deck for each clover space you pass as you move backwards. These cards either convert a non-final row space on the game board to +5 points (instead of whatever it was) or convert a final row space to a bonus that might end up netting you points instead of losing them.

If the tile is placed on a space with a positive or negative bullhead symbol, the player gains or loses points equal to the number of bullheads on their played tile. If the tile fills the final spot in a row, then the player loses points equal to the sum of bullheads on all other cards in this row, then this card is moved down the game board to the first position in the highest empty row.

Once everyone has played all of their tiles — or in a two- or three-player game, refilled their hand, then played through a second set of twelve tiles — the game ends and whoever has the most points wins.

The game has much of the same feel of 6 Nimmt the card game – in that, unless you have the very next number in sequence to one on the board, you’ll never be entirely sure what might happen to your card…  The actions on many of the board spaces also serve to give you both positive and negative incentives for nearly every play – as you’re doing something more than trying to avoid being the 6^th card in a row or being forced to take a row as there was no legal space for your card.

The game moves quickly, in a recent 5p game, we only needed about 30 minutes to play the twelve rounds of the game.  Sure, it helps to have a player handy who can quickly facilitate the placement of the tiles and can call out appropriate scoring changes to be made – but in the end, there are only 12 decisions to be made in the game!  Each round never failed to bring cursing, laughing, groaning, etc. Our scores were almost all negative by the end, I think our winner was just slightly positive (still in the single digits) while everyone else was firmly negative!  Going negative doesn’t really matter here, and in fact, the Lucky cards that can be gained by moving backwards can actually be a nice boon to have.

6 nimmt! Brettspiel is admittedly similar to the card game as well as Tanz der Hornochsen – yet, the different board layout makes it interesting enough to play, and it distinguishes itself from the other games in the family.  I’m glad to have a copy of this, and it will make a great filler this winter in the gaming basement.

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

• I love it! Craig V
• I like it.   Dale Y, John P, James Nathan, Mark J
• Neutral.
• Not for me…