Clever 4Ever

• Designer: Wolfgang Warsch
• Publisher: Schmidt/CMYK
• Players: 1-4
• Age: 8+
• Time: box says 15 minutes, but that’s a bald faced lie.  Maybe 15 min/player?
• Played with review copy provided by CMYK

Clever 4Ever features the same gameplay as Ganz schön clever, Doppelt so clever and Clever hoch drei, but with new categories in which to score.

Your goal: Choose dice, then place the numbers into the matching colored area, put together tricky chain-scoring opportunities, and rack up the points. The dice you don’t use are as important as what you do because every die that’s smaller than the chosen one can be used by the other players, keeping everyone in the game at all times.

On a player’s turn, he rolls six-sided dice in six colors: yellow, green, pink, blue, gray, and white. The player then picks one of these dice to use, marking some space(s) on his score sheet based on the die chosen. But the choice of dice isn’t without consequences: any dice showing fewer pips must be set aside on a silver platter, and the player won’t be able to use them for the rest of his turn. He or she then rerolls the remaining available dice and repeats the process until either (a) the player has used three dice, or (b) no available dice remain.

The twist is that the players who are off turn are keenly interested in what makes it onto the silver platter, because they can each use one of those dice. It’s a simple way to add interactivity, but an effective one. It also adds tension for the player on turn: if they take a high dice, they’re likely shifting better dice over to the silver platter. 

The interesting part of the game, however, is in choosing where and what to mark on the score sheet. Unlike in other Roll n’ Writes, the choice here isn’t necessarily obvious, and there are plenty of options.

Each color of dice has its own grid on the score sheet, each with its own way to earn points and bonuses. 

• Yellow – There are three rows here, the top row has numbers that must be ascending from left to right.  The other two have no defined rule for number placement – the middle row will score negative points, and the bottom row scores positive points.  Interestingly, you generate bonus actions for the top two rows, but only score points for the bottom row.  Further, you score a bonus for each completely filled in column.
• Blue – Like most blue sections in the Clever universe, this area combines the blue and white die to form a set of coordinates to tell you what space to cross off.  There are bonuses given for each row and column – though you only need to have two cells crossed off in a row/column/diagonal to trigger the effect
• Grey – This gives you a little game that feels like Noch Mal or Brikks.  You can cross off a polyomino of size X;  X = number on the grey dice.  Each block has a special action within it that is triggered, and you score points for each completed column.  
• Green – each box here has a top and bottom half.  You can fill each row in from left to right, and you do not have to complete a box to write a number in the next.  The bottom halves all give you special actions, but you will not score points for a box until you place a number in the top half.
• Pink – a single row of boxes, and you’ll score more points for the more boxes you have filled in.  You can score bonus points for each even number written in a box, and there are a number of special icons along the row, but you’ll only trigger them if you write a 5 or 6 into the box corresponding to that icon.

The white die has two functions: (1) as noted above, it affects which space is marked off in the blue section, and (2) it can also be used as a die of any color.

The game is all about setting up combinations by taking advantage of the bonuses. In the game, you can earn re-rolls, the ability to mark off a space of your choosing in another colored area, and the chance to be able to modify a die that you have chosen from the platter.  Most importantly, you can also earn a “+1”, which allows you, at the end of any player’s turn, the right to use an additional die of your choosing, be it one the player used or one on the silver platter. Finally, you can earn “foxes,” which can add greatly to your score as discussed below.

Play continues around the table for 4, 5, or 6 rounds, depending on player count. At that point, players tally up their scores. Each player scores the five colored areas per the rules above. But players also score their foxes, multiplying the number of them earned times the lowest score from the five colored areas. All six subtotals (the five areas plus the foxes) then equal the final score. 

My thoughts on the game

As you have probably surmised from the name, this is the fourth entry in the series of Clever dice games, and surprisingly, the series does not yet feel stale.  With each successive iteration of the game, Warsch comes up with interesting subgames for the different colors, and it is never obvious at all as to which one can score you the most points.  Of course, that’s the beauty of the design, and it’s what keeps you wanting to play the dang game one more time to see if you can better your previous score!

The mini-games are interesting.  I like the challenge here where many spaces provide you special actions, but you’ll need to fill in other spaces with no other benefit other than triggering scoring for those boxes.  The yellow and green areas do this the best.  Speaking of the green game, I see why they chose the diagonal line to separate the top and bottom half as it gives you the largest space to write a digit in it – but a straight horizontal line would maybe have been easier for seeing that there is a top and a bottom half in those spaces.  The grey one feels the most challenging, and I have yet to see anyone get a fox from this area.  Finally, the pink line looks straight forward, but umm, it’s a bit convoluted, and people seem to forget the rule that you only get a special action with a 5 or 6 written in the box above..  

Components – on the whole, I like the pencils that are included, and the scoresheets are fairly intuitive.  As with all the other versions of the game, I really dislike the dark background to the sheets.  I find it very difficult to see the things that I have circled for bonus actions.  And it’s really hard to see grey pencil marks in the grey tetris area.   I found it hard to also see my circles in the pink area to remind me of bonus scoring.I also like to cross out bonus icons as I take them so that I’m not tempted to mistakenly do them again, and yup, it’s also hard for me to see those.  Yes, I know i have bad eyes, but it’s a recurrent issue for me at least.

The game plays pretty decently as a solo game, you set up as a 2p game, take your own turn, and then take a turn as a passive player – here, you roll the dice and then place the three lowest dice into the tray.  It’s not exactly the same as if a human has chosen which dice go on the tray, but if you’d seen some of the players I’ve played this with – it’s sometimes quite close to the same!  

Personally, my sweet spots are either 1 or 3 players.  Solo, the game does finish in around the 15 minute mark as advertised on the box.  You never wait on anyone – roll the dice, puzzle out which one(s) you want to use, and then go again. Six rounds will be over before you know it.  When you add more humans to the mix though, prepare for a bit more sitting around.  Sure, you’re doing something every turn, but the players alternate periods of activity.  In the first part of each player turn, only the active player is doing something, and everyone else watches them cogitate over the dice and then filling in their sheet.  Repeat for three times.  Once the three dice are on the tray, then everyone else does stuff, and the active player gets a chance to be fairly inactive as he doesn’t have much else to do at this point.   It’s hard for non-active players to plan out much ahead of time because they’ll need to see all three dice they can choose from before they select the one die they want to use for the round.

The rules try to even this out – there are 15 total player turns in a 3p game, and 16 total player turns in a 4p game; but I think that most people, including myself, find that you’re doing more on your active turns when you get a minimum of three dice to choose and do stuff with as opposed to one.  Regardless of who is doing it, each player turn takes two to five minutes – turns in the final round tend to go much longer usually because there are so many more chained actions that happen.  Additionally, players likely will have a few +1 actions left, and the additional marks to be made from the extra dice also require more time.  So, expect multiplayer games to hit about an hour or so.  1p and 2p games only have 12 turns, so they are correspondingly shorter.

In the end, if you’ve played any of the three previous versions and have liked them, you’ll certainly like this one as well.  The mini-games are different enough to give you a new challenge.  If you’ve never played a Clever game before, be prepared for one of the more complex games in the genre, filled with lots of chaining actions and difficult decisions.  

I’m looking forward to adding this game to my Mega-Clever mashup game where players get one sheet from each of the Clever games.  You’ll need to modify dice colors a bit as they do not use all the same colors, but you play all the boards simultaneously.  That is, whenever you choose a “regular” die, you must use it on all four boards.  It does get a bit fiddly with the +1 and dice manipulation bonuses, as they are not standard across games, and we’ve ruled that you treat each board separately for this.  Yea, it takes a bit of time to process it all, but it’s a fun challenge that is now 33% more crazy with the addition of the fourth board.

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

• I love it! Dale 
• I like it.
• Neutral. John P
• Not for me…