Confounded Contraption

One situation to be wary of in board games is the "rich get richer" problem: success breeds more success for the player who leaps out ahead, and the trailing players can have a hard time catching up. So it was with some trepidation that I tried out a game that seemed built on this principle: Gizmos.

In Gizmos, each player is trying to build their own "engine" of cards. An array of pieces (each one a card) is placed in the center of the table. Each player works to increase their own pool of energy marbles, in four different colors, which are used to buy from that center pool. On your turn, you either buy a card or take one of the six randomly available energy for your pool.

The game has a strict timing structure, breaking your turn into several phases. It's all meant to foster card combos, not unlike the way deck-building games do. But where it's luck of the draw in a deck builder that determines whether your combo goes off, in Gizmos, all your cards are face up in front of you as you add them to your engine. You're building the most ruthless, repeatable card combo you can manage.

By about halfway into the game, a player who's doing well will often take an elaborate turn. "I'll draft this one red energy from the pool. This card says that when I draft red energy, I get to take a random energy also... and this OTHER card I have says every time I spend red energy, it counts double. Ooo! My random energy was black, and THIS card says that when I get black energy, I get to draft a second energy marble, so now I'll take yellow. Ooo, and by the way, THIS card lets me spend yellow as blue, so man, I'm going to have a REALLY good turn next time."

Oh, NEXT time?

To be certain, there is something deeply satisfying about this game. Strategizing your own engine and finding new cards that slot perfectly into it makes you feel damn clever. Taking a turn where 5 of your cards all work in tandem is pretty fun. And since combos are what the game is all about, everyone is going to reach a point where they've got some pretty fantastic stuff going on.

But it's also hard not to get combo jealousy of other players. The randomness of available energy and available new cards do mean that, strictly speaking, the rich may not inevitably get richer in this game. The engine you've built may not interact particularly well with what's available when your turn comes around. One could be debate whether this is solving one problem by introducing another. If you're the sort of person who thinks Puerto Rico has too much randomness (because plantation tiles are drawn randomly), you're going to have a hard time accepting this.

It's entirely possible -- likely even -- that this game is never going to feel "fair" to a lot of people. But at the same time, it's true that the act of building a huge card combo and watching it go off at least every other turn is pretty good for the endorphins. So I'm very much of a mixed mind on this game. I think it's not one I'd seek out again. But it's also fairly short, so I think I'd be up for playing it again if it were suggested.

For me, I think I'd call it maybe a B-. I could see other gamers reacting quite differently to it -- both more favorably and more negatively. Hopefully, I've given you enough to know if Gizmos is right for you.