Heck Meck am Bratwurmeck (aka Pickomino)

I do not expect anyone to get this quiz picture so a free drink from me at the club for the first person that gets it.

Last week the quiz picture was of course Tigris & Euphrates 

A player board from Grand Austria Hotel, this was the game I wanted to review but it is a big game, perhaps too big for me to do it justice here.

Table 1 - Grand Austria Hotel, Cacao
Table 2 - Imhotep, Medieval Academy, Heckmeck am Bratwurmeck

Hansa Teutonica - I played this for the first time this weekend and its a very interesting game with many different ways to collect the necessary victory points.

Viticulture - a player board with 3 fields

Table 3 - Hansa Teutonica, Viticulture, One Night Ultimate Werewolf, Skull
Table 4 - Traders of Osaka (incomplete game),

Traders of Osaka (from a game played last year)

Due to lack of time the spotlight is on Heckmeck am Bratwurmeck (aka Pickomino) a quick light game which plays in 15-30 minutes The game consists of 16 dominoes which have consecutive numbers from 21-36 at the top and a number of worms from 1-4 at the bottom. On a turn a player rolls all the dice (which have worms on the “6” face but are otherwise normal) and after rolling they must choose a face that they have not already reserved in front of them (therefore any face on the first roll) and take ALL dice of that face, the player then takes the remaining dice and may roll again. The idea of the game is to collect the dominoes by scoring a pip value of a domino from the dice set aside in front of a player (worms faces have a value of 5 for this purpose), if the value is high enough you may take one of a lower value if the relevant domino has already been taken and even better, if you match the value of a domino on top of another players stack (dominoes are stored in a stack when achieved) you may take that domino and place it on your stack.

Sample of the Dominoes

A sample die roll with some of the dice - you have to admit - cute worms (if worms can be cute)

There is however the possibility that you will bust, either your dice never achieve a value high enough to take an available domino or after rolling you cannot take a face that is not already represented in your set aside pile, in such a case you put back your top domino and turn over (remove from the game) the highest value domino still left on the table. The game ends when the last domino is taken or turned over at which point the players count up the worms on the dominoes they have, the player with the most worms wins and the reason our first game took so long as everyone kept playing to steal dominoes so the same domino travelled from stack to stack. It really is a fun game with plenty of quick mental calculation to keep you on your toes, oddly enough this was first played at the club at our inaugural meeting and it took about 45 minutes to play (a real exception to game length) because we kept stealing each others dominoes, a memorable game.