Very Clever

Ganz Schon Clever (Very Clever) is a roll and write game that seems to be rather pleased with itself, judging by the name. Is it justified?

We’d say yes. Roll and write games are usually a hit at GNG and this is indeed a clever one, where you balance probabilities with strategy. Each player has a sheet with five different coloured sections on it that score in different ways, and on your turn you roll the matching-coloured dice (plus the white die, which is wild) and choose a single die for yourself, crossing off the appropriate part of your sheet. You do this twice more, before before placing the remaining dice on the platter (in the game box) where the other players can see them.

There’s three caveats to bear in mind here. The first is when you take a die, any dice that have a lower number instantly go on the platter, and aren’t available to you again. The second is when you have finished your turn, all your opponents get to choose a single die from the platter for themselves. And the third is that each section on your sheet has its own idiosyncracies about when and how things get ticked off, and how they score. There’s not much point going into detail on them here, but you’ll notice that each section is also seeded with bonuses that, when triggered, benefit other sections. This can lead to a chain of bonuses triggering each other near the end of the game.

The bonuses are free re-rolls and ‘free dice’ or the chance to cross off a hard-to-access part of your sheet. You’ll notice on the sheets there are also foxes: at the end of the game, each fox you have triggered is worth equal to your lowest-scoring area. After a certain number of rounds (depending on the player count) points are totaled and the highest score wins.