Game Spotlight – 6nimmt

I totally blame Cheryl Orosz for this game. She has some excellent taste in games and brought a copy of 6 Nimmt to some function or other and after playing it once, I went out looking for my own copy. 

So here we are again with the German…”nimmt” being the third person conjugation of “nehmen” or to take. Which actually comes to bear when you play out the game. We had a discussion on whether 6 nimmt was a trick taking game or not and I’m not sure we ever finished that conversation. Cards are doled out periodically but the goal is to acquire the fewest points, which are determined by the cards . 

The 6 nimmt deck is a 104 card deck with various numbers of cows (or bulls) associated with a particular number on a card. Mostly the multiples of 5 and 11 will add more cows to the card value and their multiples will add a whole herd.  The object is to be the person who comes out with the fewest number of cow points to their name.

And how does one wind up with cows? The set up consists of 4 rows of cards to which the players build on in rounds of secret “bidding”. Once everyone has chosen a card, the reveal is simultaneous and the cards are added to the rows in lowest to highest order. If you happen to have the 6th card in a row of 5, you take that entire row and your card is now the new start for that row (see? The 6th card takes that row or 6 nimmt). Then you sadly count how many cows you brought home with that 6th card and hope you don’t have a 15 or a 55 cow in that “trick”.

Things I liked: 

• There is a strategy to playing a high card or a low card depending on the “board” at hand and I find it fun to figure out the best play to not get cows.
• There are no real maths to a game that is pretty much all about numbers. I mean, you have to add up your cows at the end so if you don’t take any cows, you don’t have to do maths!.
• This is a fast and replayable game.

Things I didn’t like: 

• I am not a big fan of the artwork.  shrug.
• It gets kinda tricky when you have 2 rows close in number to figure out where your card will land, and that can change if someone has a lower card and places first.
• In general I don’t like games that rely on waiting for players to choose a thing. This is why timers or peer pressure were invented so keep that in mind if you have one of those people who take FOREVER to plan their moves.