Designed by: Klaus Zoch
Bausack (some versions are called Bandu) is a stacking game with an element of strategy to it.
The game consists of several wooden pieces of various shapes. Each player begins with a rectangular ‘base’ piece which they place in front of them, and five beans. The starting player picks a new piece from the central pile and passes it to their left, announcing whether the bidding is to buy or to refuse the piece. If the piece is easy to integrate into a tower, then obviously you make the players pay to have it. If it’s an awkward shape that nobody wants, they pay to refuse. Players ‘bid’ by throwing away one of their beans – so a balance is struck between taking a smaller risk now and holding onto your beans to avoid an even more awkward piece later. This continues until somebody elects to pick it up (possibly because they can’t afford not to) and add it to their tower. It’s then their turn to pass a piece and being a new auction.
Play continues until only one tower is left standing, and that player is the winner.
There are many variations you can play both in terms of rules (see Sam Says below) and in terms of winning criteria – it’s possible to play tallest tower wins, for instance.
There is a bit of Take That. Players out of beans have no choice but to take the piece they're given, and whoever is handing the piece can effectively do a lot of damage with the right (or wrong, depending on your perspective) choice.
Very low
Almost none
Simple rules and fun mechanics. There are enough different pieces too, to make each tower in each game surprisingly distinct.
2-8
Players
8+
Years
30-60
Mins
Sam says
There's a few stacking games here on GNG - Animal upon Animal is probably best for really little ones, but I think Bausack and Riff Raff (a great game!) have struck the right balance between dexterity and a sneaky bit of tactical play - this is a game I return to with friends again and again, albeit with a much simpler, faster house rules than the official auction system, which I think is a bit long-winded. In our version everyone has two (or even one!) beans and there's no auction - a player is passed a piece and either adds it to their stack, or if they don't want to, passes it to their left - but pays a bean to do so. The next player can do the same, and so on - and the player who accepts the piece gets all the beans that came with it, giving them breathing space in future turns (assuming, of course, they add the piece to their stack successfully!) Nobody wants to be out of beans, and that should-I-shouldn't-I dynamic adds a lovely tension to the game.