Thames & Kosmos | 696115 | Ingenious | Sophisticated Games | Ultimate Family Strategy Game | 1 - 4 Players | Ages 8+

We are a family that thrives on finding a board game with the right mix of challenge, revenge, quality pieces, cunning and variety of play. It seems they are very hard to find these days, unless you go down the route of quest / strategy trilogies - not our thing, or revert back to the age old classics. I read review after review before selecting our Christmas buy and this has been sitting in my Wish List for the best part of a year. We have been disappointed with mediocre, middle of the road, basic games on many occasions but were quickly wowed by this little gem!For starters, you don't need an hour reading the rules to understand play and both young and old can pit their wits against each other with equal degrees of success. The aim of the game is to win by gaining the most amount of continuous links to enable you to advance a colour co-ordinated pin along your board (be careful here - it's not about who reaches the end first but more who doesn't leave any of the coloured pins behind when there is no more board to play). We love to out manoeuvre each other, without mercy and are all thoroughly competitive, so the fact that the game works on placing pieces on a board wherever you like, rather than following a trail, is a bonus and allows for additional bragging and heckling! We have played this many times over the Christmas period and learnt some tactics but not enough that the same player wins each time. Very enjoyable. My 8 yr old son is happily able to hold his own against his 65 yr old grandparents. Only downside is that it is for 4 players (although we play in teams), as we are always looking for 6 player games.

This is a really nice alternative to the classics, bringing together strategy, luck and logic (thinking about placement of tiles), with a really simple board and set of tiles. The colours are lovely and vivid on it and you also get 4 score cards included, with little coloured pegs which you move up each time you score.We started off playing slightly incorrectly, in terms of scoring, as it can take a while to get the hang of the proper method of counting the score up, particularly when you just want to get on and play it. This worked just fine too though so, if needs be, you can make up your own rules if you feel it is a little complex for younger players. Once you have played a few times and read the instructions through properly though it is really simple and fun to play.The concept of getting the highest low score is a brilliant one to determine the winner. So basically, you might all do really well in some colours, but each be struggling for one because of limited board space, so it adds an extra element of strategy, in scoring as high as you can and using remaining space in the optimum way. You can also play in a sneaky way and try and block off colours if you so wish, meaning that you liit how high other players can get their score in certain colours.The simplicity combined with how it makes you think makes this a real winner with pretty much any age group; everytime I play it with new people, they always seem to want a few games and to really enjoy it. A great one to add to your collection.

Great game. Simple rules yet takes you need to be thinking about your strategy rather than going for the immediate best move. The winner being the least worst score in any colour means you have to balance getting the biggest score with not getting behind anywhere.Looks good. Does take up a lot of space on the table. It could have been smaller. The only thing I would really mark it down for is that the scoring pegs go into thick cardboard rather than plastic and I don't feel the card will wear well.If you are only ever going to play the 2 player version - get the 2 player travel edition as that is very well made and the smaller size it not an issue.

Bought this game for my 10 year old daughter mainly based on how many great reviews it has and I have to join those people saying how good it is.It's a simple concept, I see it as a mixture of Dominos, Connect 4 and Othello in the way you need to think. The game board contains 6 symbols of different colours and with that you get a scoreboard (and coloured scoring pegs) which represent each symbol. Each playing piece has two coloured symbols (although this could be two of the same symbol) and these are placed on the board in order to create lines of adjoining colours.Once the playing pieces are laid down you add the up the colours in the lines you have made and advance your coloured pegs along the scoreboard. Sounds easy enough however the key to the game is that the winner is the one whose lowest placed coloured peg is the furthest up the scoreboard. That said, there is an incentive to getting the colours up the board as far as possible too.There is more to the game than the above and some changes you can make to adapt to 2, 3 or 4 players but this is a really great game and one that makes you think but without ever feeling too difficult. My 5 year old played last night and understood the concept straight away.All in all, I now know why it gets so many great reviews.

Like a lot of other people we generally buy at least one new board game at Christmas, to hopefully enjoy a new game over the festive period. Based purely on the reviews this game has already received we plumped for this one (and Piranha Panic which is also very good but in a different way). Ingenious has become our new favourite game, it has the right balance of fun, thought and grrr factor (you know where somebody just before you upsets all your best laid plans). Each game requires a slightly different tactic to get the best out of it, which isn't to say you need to be a mensa genious to win. Our kids aged 7 and 13 both enjoy playing without constant bickering (quite an achievement I promise you) and they wouldn't keep playing if there wasn't a chance they could win. Simple rules to understand and yet massive replayability. The game gets a big thumbs up from us all. If you enjoyed this I also recommend Blokus and Sequence which have also provided many hours of enjoyment.