Cleverer and Cleverer

A few years back, I wrote about the dice game Twice As Clever. My gaming group had picked up designer Wolfgang Warsch's sequel to his dice game That's Pretty Clever!, and while we found it a bit complicated, we still enjoyed it. (And we attributed it to the fact that we had skipped the first game, which we all assumed was simpler.) Since my post, the "Clever franchise" has grown with three(!) more games (including a "Kids" version), and my group has played a total of three out of the five. So I wanted to check back in with more recent thoughts.

I'm going to combine here my comments on the first game, That's Pretty Clever!, and the third game, Clever Cubed. That's because it would be quite hard to explain how the games are different without going deep into the weeds. Fundamentally, the whole franchise (at least, what we've played of it) works like this. On their turn, a player rolls a set of six dice of different colors. They select one to mark something on their own personal roll-and-write sheet; if any of the other dice have a lower value than the selected dice, they must be set aside. The player then re-rolls any remaining dice (neither previously selected nor set aside), and repeats the process... up to a total of three rolls. After that's done, each opponent gets to mark something on one of their own sheets as well, by selecting one of the dice that was set aside by the player taking their turn.

What each die does when you go to mark it on your sheet is where each of the games differs, and what makes later installments of the franchise grow more complex. There's a wide variety of "set collection" type effects, bonus effects, "press your luck" type effects, and more. On the one hand, there's enough variety here that you can easily have your favorite "Clever game" simply because of the particular scoring methods it includes. On the other hand, the gameplay itself is so fundamentally similar that you probably wouldn't need more than one of these games in your collection unless you appreciate the variety. It seems like my group does appreciate the variety -- and the franchise is clearly built for that. Each game is just dice, pens, and scoring pads, and so the price point is quite low. They're also very portable, if you want to take your gaming on the road.

My personal preference is for the original, That's Pretty Clever! An uncharitable description would be to call it "Clever Enough" in comparison to its sequels, but I really do enjoy the game without the later bells and whistles. (Though I'm a gamer who prefers Calico to Cascadia -- I quite respect a solid, simple design.) Still, it's not like I will avoid the sequels. In fact, my gaming group has talked about a future game night where we do a "vertical flight" and play all the Clever games for a more direct comparison. (Though it seems like we should at least add Clever 4Ever to the collection before we do.)

I'd give Clever Cubed a B (like I gave Twice As Clever), and That's Pretty Clever a B+. If "roll-and-write" has ever gone over well in your gaming group, you should probably pick up at least one game of the series and see what you think.