Game: Pack & Stack
Designers: Berd Eisenstein
Publisher: Mayfair Games (2009)
Age Range: 8 & up
Number of Players: 3-6
Game Time: 45 min.
Mechanics: Tactile/Space Optimization
Complexity: 2
Challenge: 3
Though not strict, most private game collections can be broken down into two broad categories, loosely defined as fun and serious. There are, of course, grey areas that are as much dependent on the people who decide what falls into those areas, as the games that define them. To me, they’re all fun or I wouldn’t own them. To others, fun is often defined as “a game at which one does not have to do a lot of thinking.”
Pack and Stack by Berd Eisenstein is something of a hybrid. On the one hand, it would be included in a list of games that don’t require a lot of thinking (though there’s some involved), yet remain outside a list of that ‘fun’ category known as ‘party’ and/or ‘trivia’ games.
Here’s the deal: The game is played in a series of rounds, each consisting of four steps. The first of these steps is played in turn order. Steps 2 and 3 are played simultaneously in a free-for-all fashion, and step 4 is done in turn order. Step 1 consists of rolling five colored dice; three out of four of which have one blank side. The roll of these dice determines the loads you will play with in a given round. There are four types of loads, small wooden pieces, defined only by their color and size (length) – White = 1 (the white die has two, “1” sides), Grey = 2, Orange = 3, Turquoise = 4 and Purple = 5. The number on each colored die defines how many of that particular ‘load’ you can take in the round. Players then draw one or two cardboard cards (depending on the number of players), which picture a truck, with a geometrically shaped, and defined by a white border cargo space into which the resources you’ve just amassed must go. Players then reveal their cards, simultaneously, placing them in the center of the playing space and everyone playing tries to snatch one of the truck cards. The last person to snatch a card has to draw his/her card from the draw pile. Now, you attempt to place your cargo ‘cubes’ into the defined space on your truck. You can lay them flat or if you’ve managed to get yourself a truck that allows for multiple layers, you can stand some of these pieces on end to fill the space. The highest multiple level is “4” and while at first, you might assume that more available space translates into the ability to place more ‘loads,’ you have to be cautious, because you’re going to lose points for pieces of your cargo that you can’t place into the truck (this is where some of that thinking comes in).
When all players have, to their satisfaction (no race involved), completed loading their truck points are (pay attention now) deducted. You deduct a single point for each single space on the truck you were unable to fill (this is why a “4” level truck is tricky), and deduct twice the value of the load you couldn’t put into the truck. Each player starts with 75 points and rounds continue until one player has exhausted those 75 points, at which point, the player with the most remaining points wins.
Card selection in the free-for-all is key. It takes place after you’ve rolled the dice and know the make up of your load. If, as a random example, you have rolled a purple 3 and find yourself in possession of three purple pieces (with a length of 5), you’re going to want to be grabbing a truck with enough space to accommodate this largest of the pieces and have it be multi-leveled enough to accommodate stacking these pieces. Some of the trucks do not have a space to accommodate the purple piece at all.
Let’s say that you’ve rolled a grey 2, a white 2, an orange 1, a purple 1 and you’ve come up with a blank turquoise die. You were a little slow in the free-for-all grab of the available trucks and have a two-level truck with a potential for 12 loads (six on each level). Due to the truck’s configuration, you’re able to place all but the purple piece. The truck’s defined space has no room for the 5-length purple piece. By the same token, the five pieces you do have and can load, leave the truck’s cargo area with three single available spaces. You will deduct three points for the spaces you couldn’t fill. And then (and this is often painful), you will double the point value of the cargo you couldn’t place on the truck (in the example, 5 X 2 = 10) and deduct that from your points, as well. Our example player has played a single round and lost 13 points (17.3% of his total).
The free-for-all, snatch-and-grab-a-truck phase of the game is tricky because there isn’t a whole hell of a lot of time to compare your load with the trucks and their available space. There isn’t a time limit on this, but everyone at the table is grabbing at the same time and the decision has to be made quickly, or you’re going to get stuck with a truck from the draw pile that could be worse than anything available. It’s hard, too, to get out of the ‘snatch-and-grab’ mode when it comes to actually loading the trucks. Even though there is no time limit involved and you’re working on your own, there’s a tendency to feel as though the truck-loading phase is a race. It isn’t. You can take as much time as you need to cram every available piece of cargo into the truck (bearing in mind that pieces can lie flat or be stood on end; there is, by the way, no 5-level truck, so forget stacking that 5-length purple piece on end).
The rules suggest a number of variants, which, for the most part, deal with how and from where a player is capable of picking a truck. One variant, which sounds intriguing, though I haven’t tried it (the Oakland variant) allows players to retain cargo from round to round, which sounds dangerous; it’s bad enough that you get points deducted for unused pieces once, but twice? Then again, maybe you’ll get lucky and grab a big truck.
Most of the thinking that gets done in this game happens in the seconds that it will take to grab a truck from the array of them that get out onto the table. Before that, you’re rolling dice and after that, you’re just, as the game title indicates, packing and stacking. This requires some thought, but well below the level of anything you might find on your ‘serious’ shelf of games. If you divide your games into those aforementioned categories, place this one on the ‘fun’ shelf.
Pack & Stack is something of a re-implementation of a game of the same name invented in 1995. In the older game, it's more of a race to see who can fill their truck first and only two types of 'cargo,' and thus, dice are employed. This latest version has not been subjected to the Board Game Geek crowd yet, but it should be, shortly.
For more info: www.mayfairgames.com
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