Image Courtesy of EndersGame
This review continues my series of detailed reviews that attempt to be part review, part resource for anyone not totally familiar with the game. For this reason I expect readers to skip to the sections that are of most interest.
If you liked the review please thumb the top of the article so others have a better chance of seeing it and I know you stopped by. Thanks for reading.
Summary
Game Type - Solitaire Card Game
Play Time: 5-10 minutes
Number of Players: 1
Mechanics - Memory, Math Calculations, Card Management
Difficulty - Pick-up & Play (Can be learned in under 10 minutes)
Components - Not Applicable
Designer - <PERSON>, Bazaar, BuyWord, <PERSON>, Sleuth and many more...)
Release - 1969
Overview and Theme
Every now and again in this hobby I am lucky enough to come across game design genius. Now I don't mean that as a 'negative comment' (as in most things are rubbish) about our hobby, as I like most of you, are astounded by the great ideas that abound on a daily basis.
What I'm talking about here though is pure genius...the kind that was born of a great mind, largely without the benefit of a million other ideas that can be drawn upon and tinkered with until something semi-new is created.
Here I'm talking about <PERSON> his twist on regular Solitaire, that uses 2 suits from a deck of standard playing cards to successfully create a 10-Pin Bowling themed Solitaire variant.
It is pure genius and has traveled all the way from the mind of <PERSON> way back in 1969 when it was published in his book, A Gamut of Games.
This was a time when we didn't have over 1,000 games being released every year. Is it simple? Sure, but it is also very clever. 299
I rank this up there with , which is another largely unknown gem.
Many thanks must go to the 'Games Only You Have Played...' Geeklist for allowing someone to post their play and make me aware of this game's existence.
Shall we 'roll on'?
The Components
Well this won't take too long. All the game needs to play is two suits from a regular deck of cards and only the cards 1 through 10. The Ace counts as a 1 naturally.
That's it except for some paper to score on.
Image Courtesy of klausbh
Set-up
The set-up allows the game to play differently with each frame and indeed the set-up will be required to create each new frame too.
The 20 cards are shuffled and 10 of them are placed face-up to form the 10-Pin formation. It doesn't matter where you build them from but it is probably easier to place them from back to front to create the rows of 4, 3, 2 and 1. The cards should be spaced as seen below to create the classic formation used in 10-Pin Bowling.
X X X X
X X X
X X
X
The final 10 cards are then used to create three piles of cards, known as the 'Ball Piles'.
The leftmost pile should contain 5 cards, the central pile 3 cards and the rightmost pile 2 cards.
The top card of each pile is then turned face-up.
The frame is now ready to begin.
The Play
Like regular 10-Pin Bowling, the game is played over a series of frames, with scores being earned with each frame. The game plays out in the following manner -
Select a Card - At the start of a frame the player will always have 3 cards to choose from (the face-up Ball Pile cards), of which they must select one.
Knock Down Pins - Using the card selected, the player must try to knock down one or more pins and to do so some simple maths is employed.
A single card can be used to knock down 1-3 adjacent pins, which is simulated by removing said cards.
To be able to remove cards the total of the cards in the formation must add up to a total that has a final digit that is the same as the value of the card selected for the turn.
For example -
A player selects an 8 card from one of the Ball Piles and therefore needs to try and make an 8, 18 or 28.
The pins look like the following :-
4 8 1 10
5 3 1
2 9
7
In this example the player could choose to remove the 5 and 3 from the [5 3 1] row or the 2, 9 and 7 from the front of the formation as this adds up to 18, with an 8 being in the ones or units place value position. 872