Here’s a very VERY obscure game that I’ve owned for about 20 years now. Champagen by Apple, NO, not THAT Apple, Apple games are famous for the…um….for…the Champagen game! I’ve really scoured the internet for any information on this company and there’s nothing, nothing at all. It’s as obscure as they come, I’ve always thought the game to be German with the Champagen name, it just sounds like how Germans would say Champagne.
I first stumbled across this game whilst going on holidays to visit friends in the Lake District. We’d stay in a beautiful Victorian bed and breakfast, a giant house separated into a number of flats and part of the amenities the hotel offered was toys and games for children. My brother and I stumbled upon this game and would play it whenever we were up visiting and after years, I managed to track down my own copy.
The game is extremely simple, you create a pyramid of the small, clear, plastic glasses with the red glass at the very top. The aim of the game is to remove glasses without making the red glass fall. If you make the red glass fall, it’s game over! Similar to how Jenga and pop up pirate work, the standard rules for this game end with one loser and multiple winners however there’s a few different ways to play the game if you wish to implement house rules.
Setting up the game is probably the most tedious part, and this is due to how neat the pyramid needs to be. You know how you grab the nearest flat thing at the start of a game of Jenga to make sure the tower is completely straight and aligned? Yeah, well, you can’t do that with this game. It takes a steady hand to build this up, you start with a triangle of 6, then 5, 4 and so on, resting the stem of the glasses on the gaps between the glasses on the lower layer. Mentioned before, the red glass goes up top.
You begin the game by taking it in turn to remove a glass at a time, trying your hardest not to send the whole thing tumbling down. However, taking glasses from any layer tend to invariably free up glasses on the layer immediately down from it, making it much easier for the next player to nab a glass without worry. Most games start off seemingly easy enough, and you’ll think to yourself “where’s the risk with this?”
But as that pyramid starts to thin out, you’re left with this spindly stack of glasses and spotting your move can be really tough. It’s possible, though a rare sight, to get the game to a point of no win for the next player, no matter what they take, it’s going to fall down. I say a rare sight because whenever I’ve played this before, it’s generally people’s clumsy handedness or… general state of inebriation that sends the tower tumbling over. This is definitely a party game, one to bust out for a few rounds of with a few friends after a few drinks.
So that’s the base game, but I’ve come up with a few house rules that can make the game a bit more tactful. Firstly, I’ve tried a game where the player with the most clear glasses at the end of a game wins. “But you’re only taking one glass at a time?” I hear you say! Well, playing this way, you’re actively wanting glasses to tumble but NOT the red glass. Any glasses you free up under layers from removing a glass become yours and this becomes a careful game of skill and tact to think about which glass removal keeps you safe but also lands you with the most glasses falling. This game mode tends to be over a lot quicker, but having a clear defined winner definitely helps with keeping it fun and competitive.
It seems like a bizarre concept for a game, I get the impression someone was watching You’ve Been Framed or a America's Funniest Home Videos, saw one of these real champagne towers go south and think “hmmmmm theres a game there”. It’s an odd game that never fails to raise a smile initially but the novelty wears off quickly and players will be happy with just a few rounds of it. Games usually last around the 5-10 minute mark though this is widely variably, all depends on how dexterous or clumsy your players are. There’s really not much else to say about this oddity, it’s fun for a short while but will leave you wanting to play Jenga instead. Copies can be found on eBay and the game also goes by the name Schampen. Oh, and if you’re wondering, I’ve not played it with the glasses full of champagne…yet…hmm, there's a thought...
The 90s were home to some unusual fads. Gogos, yucky yo-balls, tamagotchis, clackers, beanie babies…for some reason we kids of the 90s latched onto these fervently and obediently. You weren’t anyone on the playground if you did have the latest toy trend or fad, these kept you part of the in crowd. This week, we’re looking at one of the stranger fads from the time, the obsessive collecting game known as pogs.
Pogs hit the stores, or more accurately, hit the newspaper shops, in 1991, in shiny, foil packets. I remember getting my first pack thinking they were some sort of new gum or candy. Opening the packet to see cardboard discs with a captain caveman rip off on them, well, it was surprising to say the least.
Pogs have a history much longer than the the 90s though. The game was based upon that of the Japanese game of Menko, a popular game from the Edo period of Japan, dating from around 1603 to 1867, yes, pogs go back THAT far. The game wasn’t played with cardboard discs however. Menko used wood, ceramic and even clay to make the game pieces, switching to cardboard pieces as the game gained popularity. Ceramic, wood and clay would still be used as the games slammers. The game is near identical to that of Pogs, opponents would bet their pieces against their opponents and flipping them over would result in winning those pieces.
Menko would eventually switch to using cards, not round cards but rectangular cards, and this is believed to be the origin of collectable card series, talk about a varied history!
Being a popular game in Japan, it was immigration to Hawaii in the 20th century that would plant the seeds of the Pog game as we know it. Naturally, travellers from Japan to Hawaii would bring the game with them, and native Hawaiian children were quick to pick up on the game. They quickly adapted the game and used what they could find as game pieces, namely, cardboard milk bottle tops. I want to mention this now, I have NEVER seen a cardboard milk bottle top, foil yes, but never cardboard. In fact, i can’t remember the last time i saw a glass milk bottle…anyway, getting sidetracked here…
Menko spread like wildfire in Hawaii and was a very popular game, for many generations children of Hawaii would play the game and parents would pass down their bottle caps to their children, older caps being particularly prized. A teacher seeing the popularity of the game amongst her class would soon bring Menko into the global spotlight…
Blossom Galbiso noticed that the game was a great way to teach children mathematics and that the core fundamentals of the game required no athletic prowess. In 1991, she reintroduced the game of Menko to her class as a teaching aid, and the students so enraptured by the game quickly went about amassing as many cardboard milk bottle tops as they could. Urban legend claims that the packaging company that made the tops was inundated with requests for additional tops to grow the game.
The name Pog comes from a Hawaiian fruit drink that, you guessed it, had cardboard tops for their bottles, the name POG being the acronym for Passionfruit Orange Guava. Naturally, tourists to Hawaii saw the the game being played and began taking the concept home with them. Pog was born, and it had a global foothold.
The game at it’s heart is very simple, and admittedly, pretty boring. You and your opponent or opponents each wager what pogs you’re willing to put into the stack, the ones you’re laying down. All the pogs are laid face down and stacked into a column. You then take it in turns to throw your slammer at the stack, sending the pogs flying up in the air. Any pogs that land face up, you get to keep, and the rest go back into the stack. The game continues until all are flipped right side up. Yes, you’ve probably seen the problem with this already. Gambling! For kids! What fun! Teach children from an early age what it is to bet and lose!
Someone with skill could take the whole lot, leaving you pogless. I heard in other schools Pogs were banned for such reasons, fights would break out, kids nicking pogs out each others pockets, bags, trays. Yeah, really fun game this one! I will say that aiming for the edge of the top Pog was the trick to getting them to flip…
In this barrel I have Pogs from nearly all series and a few others too. I won’t pretend to know which is from which series as honestly, as a kid, I didn’t care, even back then. The odd thing with Pogs is that even though they were collectable, there was no chart, no image of all 50 or 60 or 70 of a series so you knew which you were looking for. Yes, they were all numbered, but come on, it’d be nice to know which I was missing.
The first wave Pogs quickly introduced Pogman, the aforementioned Captain Caveman wannabe. More often than not, Pogman would be in some kind of weird situation in the pictures, here he’s the bearskin for a palace guard, here he’s surfing. He was like a jack of all trades and definitely the mascot that the brand needed. In a pack of pogs, you’d get six standard Pogs and a slammer. Some of these slammers are ridiculously 90s in their design, patchwork neon colours, check, semi- aztec designs, check, the punisher skull, check.
There were a number of series of pogs too, The World Tour, Chex, Wheetos, Wotsits. These things were practically unavoidable for a time, EVERYONE at some point had at least one pog, whether they wanted them or not.
It wasn’t long before other companies caught onto the popularity. Slammer Whammers was probably one of the bigger alternatives, and if I’m being perfectly honest, the art for their caps appealed to me far more, they were cooler, they were edgier, they were rad! I remember getting these from toys r us, yes, pogs had gotten to the stage where it wasn’t just a corner shop collection but a full fledged game.
There were star wars pogs, Simpsons pogs, batman the animated series pogs, Reboot, The Mask, Toy Story, Biker Mice from Mars, NBA, seemingly every licence wanted to put themselves on these odd cardboard discs. Some Pogs were more interesting and intriguing than others, check out this lenticular buzz lightyear one, yeah, animated pogs. Even Chupa Chups, the lollypop company got in on the action!
Pogs came free with cereals and with bags of crisps and each had their own specific lines and series. Of all the pogs I have, the Wotsits series is the only one i have a complete collection of…that probably says more about my childhood diet than i care to think about. This slammer is from a lucky bag….you know the game had it’s foothold everywhere when you’re finding them in a lucky bag.
Then came along Tazos…Tazos were plastic discs that you could find within walkers crisps. They were EVERYWHERE. The likelihood of getting a Tazo in a bag was slimmer than not getting one. They were endorsed by Looney Tunes and later Star Wars, this was when the special editions were just hitting the theatres, ready to disappoint millions with shoddy CGI effects. Aside from being plastic, Tazos differed from Pogs in that they had these small notches in the side of them. You could slot them together to build…things? Structures? It was unusual to say the least, I don’t remember ever caring for this and the whole thing seemed gimmicky.
As mentioned before, slammers would come with every pack but there were a number of varieties. your bog standard pog slammer is about the thickness of two pogs but plastic. There were thicker slammers, like this England one here, look, it even has groves for your fingers in case you forgot how to hold a disc… The real king of slammers though were the metal ones. They would invariably cause you to win a game of pogs, the whole stack would go flying. Gamers would shy away from playing with you if you had a metal slammer and most would accuse it of cheating. Sore losing I say. Metal slammers also had the unfortunate problem of denting and marking the cardboard pogs.
Of course, it wasn’t long before pirated pogs started to flood the market. Poison caps being the main culprit are easy to spot, the backs of them are left blank. Poison caps would invariably stick with three themes, skulls, 8-balls and the yin yang logo…my guess is due to them having absolutely no copyright infringement. Market sellers would sell bags of these for a few quid and you could really pad out your collection, though other players would want you to play with REAL pogs, not this imitation rubbish. Real pogs had the logo on the back, The World Pog Federation, yes this actually existed, and the federation actually held tournaments… for throwing plastic discs at cardboard. The mind boggles thinking about this.
Alas, the bubble had to burst at some point and I remember it vividly. Being on the playground, around 8-9 years old, a kid in the class above me throwing all his Pog collection in the air and yelling “scamble!!!!”, kids running to pick up what pogs they could. This started happening more and more and games of pogs less and less until everyone had moved onto the next thing….Gogos.
Looking back on Pogs, it remains utterly perplexing why such a boring and dull game ever caught on the way it did. I get the collectability of the caps completely, and with there being such a wide variety and many licences going into the game, there really was something that appealed to every kid. But i question myself trying to explain to modern children why we were so obsessed with these cardboard discs, these pointless, useless cardboard discs and I can’t come up with any reasonable explaination. It really is a case of “you had to be there”. The images on them though really are a time capsule for a generation, the art, themes, jokes, licences really encapsulate the 90s in such a unique way.
It goes without saying that I don’t play pogs any more. So why have I held on to this small barrel of them? They make great chips for playing cards. I might not play pogs any more, but I guess pogs taught me that gambling can be fun in small doses.
Toy train sets are about as ubiquitous as a toy as they get, since the introductions of railways in the early 19th century, toy manufacturers have made toy trains and train sets. These have varied from the very basic such as brio to the ultra realistic and heavily detailed Hornby railway system. There's no other way of putting it, children love train sets and will continue to do so. Train sets however are quite complex, track has to be laid just right, tight corners will cause trains to derail, the connections between track can be particularly fiddly for young hands. Detailed sets can be fragile, the way children play and the way adult collectors play are completely different. Whereas adults will want to realistically replicate line lay outs and operation such as goods yards and sidings, children just want to see trains moving around and at speed. Japanese company Tomy realised this and what they developed was the fantastic Tomy Train range, a train set that they could actually play and interact with.
Looking at the old box here, you can see that they went all out to send this message “the first train for little hands.” Bright bold primary colours are used for most of the pieces, and the box displays all the aspects of the set that the child could interact with, points systems, display boards, level crossings, train wash, there was a lot to entertain a kid here! The box windows show the train clearly and the figures all happy and smiling, more on both of these soon.
Going back to 1959, Tomy invented the plarail track, pronounced Play Rail, a plastic rail system for their then hand operated train sets, these sets would be replaced with battery operated trains in 1961.
The design of this was so good that it’s barely changed to present day. Similar to brio and the tabs on a jigsaw, the track pieces have a simple connection, just push the piece of track down onto another. Making this as easy as possible was a genius move in my opinion, didn’t you hate having to have your dad help out setting something up as a kid? I know I did, it took the experience away from me, I wanted to set things up my own way, having to deal with wires and plugs, fiddly connections, it was never fun. Having plarail track as a system, there was very little room for error, score one for Tomy!
The box comes with a suggested layout but really you’re able to flex your creativity here to build whatever track you like, the pieces allow for this and setting up a custom layout is very easy.
Lets examine the engines and other vehicles. With this Tomy Train 4 set, the train is made to look like the British Intercity 125 train, in fact, the box says on the back “Intercity train”. A number of trains featured in the line were based on real life locomotives, Santa Fe, Am-Trak and….the Disneyland express? Ok, that’s a stretch, but Tomy knew children would want steam engines too. They all have this almost chibi style distortion of their proportion which personally, I really like. The trains are powered by a single AA battery, this is underneath the train shell which just clips into place. There’s a little lever on the rear of the train that switches it on and off, big enough and noticeable enough for small children. A neat feature to the engines is this pin on the underside, certain track segments can be elevated to active this pin, it shifts the gears in the train to reverse, simple but clever. The rear wheels have rubber tires for traction and the trains don’t just have to be used on the track, you can just set them going on the floor. The rear wheels also have cog teeth to them, this helps them climb inclines to bridges, again another really nice thought. In fact, coming back to the track, there’s a number of ingenious innovations to manipulate the engine whilst it’s running.
Brake points simply lift the engine up so it’s wheels spin in the air, if you want to simulate the train stopping at a station or for a points change. Speaking of points, changing them couldn’t be simpler, just move the little red portion to change the direction.
Included with this set is the automatic changer, as the train passes, this red tab is caught by the underside of the engine and changes the points. This is entirely optional, you’re able to change the points to whichever position you’d like but how innovative to create a way that does it automatically without batteries!
All the trains and carriages have magnetic couplers, tomy clearly went out of their way to make this as easy as possible for children. All the carriage have this bare black base to them and the body clips into place. The majority of coaches will have the roof open to allow passengers to be easily put inside to ride.
This storage container carriage is a little different than the others. It has a magnet in the top of the lid and can be used in conjunction with the dockyard crane, another really well designed toy. No batteries here again, the winch mechanism is these two buttons, up and down, you press the button and bit by bit, the winch is lowered.
When down on the container, the magnets connect and you can unload cargo from the trains. Missing here sadly is an open yellow hopper, it had wooden logs that you could use the crane with, the logs would click into the winch.
Included with this set is a shuttle bus for the main station which isn’t battery powered like the trains. Instead, it has a simple spring driven motor, you push down on the driver and letting go sends the bus on it’s way.
The level crossing is weighted so that the barriers are raised when the train isn’t passing. When the train approaches, the weight of the carriages cause the blue slopes to push in and the barriers to fall, a simple mechanism but adds a nice sense of realism.
Another thing that adds a sense of realism to the toy is the train wash, an aspect of railways no-one gives much thought to, the foam brushes turn as the train goes through, it has one of the direction switches built into it so you can have your engine going back and forth if it’s particularly dirty, like most British trains are…
As mentioned before, the trains have the ability to climb inclines and these slope track segments have small teeth along the inner lip to help the train drive itself up. From there, you can use standard track to create your bridges using these red supports that the track simply rests on. These yellow bridge segments push into place on the studs on the top of the supports.
The studs are quite prevalent on the Tomy Train series and are used for holding the figures in place and also assembling certain structures. If you’re curious, yes, they absolutely support lego bricks and figures, I can’t think this was purely coincidental. Whatever the case may be, it’s nice to have the option there of having lego minifigs riding around the trains and on the stations. To me, lego figures are a bit more in scale to the trains but that’s not discounting the Tomy figures.
The figures are simple in their design, but have a wonderful charm to them. All of them have the same face, it’s just body colours and hair that change them. These feel solid and really robust, good as they would see a lot of play. Some of the figures have small magnets fitted to their feet, more about that shortly.
Tomy had a number of accessory packs and extensions for their sets. This traffic light clicks into one of the stop/start track segments and the light will change accordingly. It’s powered by 2 AA and surprisingly still works, this isn’t an LED it’s a tiny bulb that slides between the two coloured windows.
More impressive still is this talking train station. The voice for this thing is deeply ingrained on my mind, this thing has been lurking in my attic for twenty plus years but I still know exactly how it will sound. Hmm, maybe the battery is a little flat, this sounds slow? Wrong! This little white slider in the battery compartment allows you to change the speed and pitch, what a great idea! I love the fact Tomy went as far to make a station that replicates station announcements.
The branch stations that come with the set are a simple one piece which you can attach seats, signs, barriers too to make them look a bit more interesting but the transport terminal has some really wonderful play features. As mentioned before, the feet of the figures have small magnets, if you position them on this platform you’ll feel the magnet pull the figures into place. Manipulating these levers on the front cause the figures to move around the platform on their own seemingly as if by magic!
The escalator at the side is too magnetically operated, it will latch and stay in place but placing a figure on it magnetically releases the latch and the escalator rises up.
On the station is a destination board, love the fact that it’s got Manchester in particular but rather fantastic that it’s all British destinations, makes me wonder if different countries got different places?
On the rear to this little display, pull the lever, a bell rings and the time rotates round to the next train arrival. Such things really bring these sets to life.
I’d be lying if I said I brought this down from the attic and everything worked perfectly. To be perfectly honest, of all the things that I’ve brought down and inspected so far, this is the toy that’s required the most amount of attention. None of the engines were working and the talking station had gone quiet.
First, the engines. Putting fresh batteries into them did nothing so I decided to take them apart. Testing the motor on its own revealed that amazingly it was still working. The cogs in both engines though were worn and in places had cracks that were causing to cog to slip rather than turn on the spindles. A small touch of superglue fixed this. I then proceeded to put a small dab of engine oil into this small slot here to keep the motor running happy. Greasing the cogs also helped with them turning and performing correctly, though this red train is still a lot noisier than the inter city. The rubber tires that the trains use for grip on the tracks had perished too and were a hard ring of rubber that was slipping around the wheel and giving no traction. Fortunately, Tomy STILL makes replacements! I carefully peeled off the old and fitted the replacements, good as new!
The station ended up being the biggest surprise. I felt certain that it would have a small circuit inside with the sounds programmed on and that the board would need some cleaning and attention. What I found inside was really rather amazing. It’s a small record player, or more accurately, a gramophone player.
Pressing the button moves the stylus to the intended track on the record, i’m not sure how exactly this works but this cone acts as the amplifier for the sound. I’d always wondered why it sounded slightly crackly, i figured a poor speaker. Why it had stopped working was a very simple fix, the belt from the motor to the disc had simply slipped off, I put this on and fixed it back together and voila! I’m simply amazed by the ingenuity of this toy.
Aforementioned, this is the 4th set Tomy came out with, but there were a number of sets before and after. It wasn’t soon after the introduction of Thomas the Tank Engine on our screens that Tomy started to put out Thomas themed sets. I was a big fan of Thomas as kid, i had books, die cast vehicles, VHS tapes, bedspread, even wallpaper! but I never owned any of these sets, for some reason they passed me by.
Tomy stopped production of the Train system in 1998 but reworked the toy into the Tomica world series, which incorporated cars as well as trains. This line is still going very strong, with the Thomas line being a popular seller as well as Chuggington too. The plarail system is still being used for the track and amazingly is compatible with the old track, new sets have light blue track for the trains and grey for cars and trucks. The trains differ slightly, the couplers are no longer magnetic, they have this hook and loop system which, if i’m honest, isn’t as easy on small hands. The drive wheels have lost the cogs too them so the new trains won’t work on the old slope inclines. But old trains will work on the new track! Fantastic!
On the front of the box of my set is clearly boasted the What Toy award winners badge 88-89 and it’s rightly deserved. These are fantastic toys. They’re charming, they’re engaging for young children, they’re brightly coloured, easy to set up, easy to run and above everything else, they’re hugely entertaining. I remember taking my sets to my nan’s house for the six week holidays and setting them up on her living room carpet, the Christmas I got these I set up a huge layout in the living room, these hold such warm childhood memories for me. Tomy Train and Tomica world have a surprisingly large community for them, www.blueplastictracks.com being the centre hub for the following. These are a great introduction to train sets for young children, Tomica world sets can still be found in toy shops but if you’re after vintage sets like this, eBay and second hand sites are probably your best option, just be prepared to do some repairs.
Video review here! https://youtu.be/C8KfnX66oXM
Master Labyrinth from Ravensburger from 1991, this game is a whole heap of fun! Wizards, magic wands, spells, potions and a constantly shifting and changing board!
The box for the game goes simplistic with the lid, and even as a child, I realised that this was the advance version of this game, this was the one for the big kids! Still, I love the art on the front, each of these wizards is showing how well the game is going for them. I love how the red wizard in the foreground is giving a sneaky wink to the players. The chap in the middle certainly seems amused by the antics, much to the annoyance of the wizard on the left, this nicely parodies how you as players will end up reacting as you play.
The back of the box shows quite a fair bit of information, obviously it has the blurb to lure potential buyers and players in. “You’ve got the magic formula that will make you the Master Magician. But where can you get the rare ingredients you need? Off you go into the labyrinth. But be careful: the winding corridors shift constantly, and it’s easy to get lost!” The back of the box also gives a brief overview of the game rules as well as the contents and a particular nice inclusion, the duration of an average game.
Setting up the game can take a couple of minutes but once assembled, visually looks impressive. The main board has tile pieces fixed in place, they act as runners for the rest of the tile pieces to move between. The players lay the tiles in place on the board. The instructions say to lay the board tiles face up, but wily veterans of the game might “accidentally-on-purpose” lay out a nice snaking corridor to make things easy for them when they start. Laying the tiles face down and then flipping them over prevents this from happening, it takes a few minutes longer, but keeps it fair and random. Next, you take the twenty-one ingredient tokens and lay them face down on the board in this pattern shown in the instructions, then flip them over, again keeping the spread of them random and fair. Each player is dealt one secret formula card and three magic wands. The secret formula cards show three ingredients, and each card is different, no two cards have the same combination. Cards will invariably contain ingredients that both you and your opponents will be after.
Before we move onto the rules and how to play, I just want to praise the art of the game board and pieces. Wonderful watercolour painted pieces, fantastically themed. The board has this intriguing keltic rune pattern to the centre of it that’s never seen whilst playing, it’s always covered with tiles, intact, the whole main board is never seen.
They could’ve left this as a blank piece of card with the tiles fixed on but the fact they went to the effort to paint and design this isn’t ignored by me. The tile pieces are equally impressive for their dedication, every single one is different. I’ve laid them out and looked at them and although there’s only three different types, straight corridor, corner and T-junction, the books, potions and brick-a-brack around the shelves are all totally different. The game manufacturers could've gone the quick, cheap and easy route with having one design and print it multiple times but they didn’t, this shows quality, hats off to Ravensburger for this.
The instruction manual is also wonderfully illustrated, it’s just a pity it’s in black and white. “There are twenty-one magic items in the labyrinth, but they can only be picked up in numerical order. The wizard who gets to item number one first may keep it, then all the wizards race for number two”. An interesting addition to the instruction manual is a brief historical overview of each of the ingredients, these are based in real life history and the supposed magical properties of each item. What attention to detail, again, Ravensburger getting a full 10/10 for theming, this absolutely wasn’t needed but just adds that little something special. Number fifteen, “If a weasel spit at you, you might break in two or go blind, but bones of a white weasel could be used to make you invisible” Wow, I never knew that, I’m staying clear of weasels from now! Four, “ Oil from black slugs was used to heal wounds”… I think i’ll stick with a bandage. I will say number nineteen always looked like an orang-utan under a palm tree, apparently it’s supposed to be a mandrake. Players make their way around the board collecting the ingredient tokens in numerical order but each player is secretly wanting to get the ingredients on their card. Moving the player pieces doesn’t require a dice roll, in fact there’s no dice with this game at all, if the corridors are open for you to travel from one side of the board to the other, you can!
Now onto what makes this game really special, the moving labyrinth. As mentioned before, there was one extra game tile and this is important for the movement of the labyrinth. At the start of each turn, you push the free tile into the side of the game board, the points where you can push are indicated by these little while arrows, handy to have those as there’s always one player who tries to push against the tiles fixed to the board. Pushing the free tile in will cause that row of tiles to move, the board to change and a tile to pop out of the other side. You’re then free to move your piece if you’re able to and pick up ingredient number one. As the game progresses the board will shift dramatically from how it started out, and you’ll need to think carefully about your move, this game requires a lot of forward thinking. Visioning how the board will look once you move a row of tiles is a key component to winning, and you won’t always see the best move you can make until it’s too late. Strategy is key to this game, you need to keep corridors open to you, it’s easy to get walled in and stuck by your opponents, a tactical move to stop you from getting ingredient tokens. Before taking your turn, it’s wise to think whether you can get to the next token or whether it’d be sensible to try to block your opponents’ path toward it. Yes, it’s one of these types of games where you can really throw a spanner in the works for other players, I particularly love games where you can be vindictive and sly towards opponents.
There are number of additional rules to moving the labyrinth, the most important is that you can’t immediately reverse the previous players move, which just aids with the whole backstabbing side of the game. Another important rule, say for example your play piece is on the edge of the board, and pushing a tile in causes the tile your positioned on to come out of the board, what happens? Well, your piece goes to the other side of the board. The same thing can happen with the ingredient tokens. This again plays massively into the strategy of the game. The token you need to collect is all the way on the other side of the board, with this move, you can hop right over there and collect it or likewise bring the token to you. Such moves can also help you out if the other players have walled you in, it’s a neat mechanic and in the focus of trying to create corridors to move to tokens is one that can be quite easily over looked. Moving doesn’t just restrict you to picking up the one ingredient token, if you’re clever enough to create a corridor that allows you to pick up multiple tokens you can do, provided they’re picked up in order. It’s enjoyable setting up a play that opens up one of these scenarios to you.
Mentioned before, each player gets three magic wands, you can use these at any time and they give the player another turn. You can’t chain these up so you could have, say, four turns, but having the option at any time to take another turn to move the labyrinth to your advantage is a great addition and requires careful thinking and planning as when to best use them.
The game progresses until all the ingredient tokens are collected, then the game ends. One thing I’ve always found unusual with this game is that there’s twenty-one ingredient tokens… but the twenty-first is numbered twenty-five. What’s the reasoning behind this? The instructions say that this gives the player bonus points. I can’t say that this is much of a bonus, the last token is twenty, this one is twenty-five, five points isn’t a staggering windfall of points. Who is winner is determined by counting up the tokens. One is worth one point, two is worth two and so on. Toward the end of the game, everyone is racing to get those high point ingredients. What about the ingredient cards? Well, for every ingredient you pick up that’s on your card you’re awarded an additional twenty points so with the potential of getting an additional sixty points, going for your ingredients is important. The winner is the player with the most points.
This is the Master set, there’s the standard Labyrinth game which doesn’t have the ingredient tokens, the ingredients are in place printed on tile pieces, players are dealt three ingredient cards they place face down and they race to get to those tiles first. It’s a simpler version, and personally, I prefer the Master set though I can see the standard version being easier for younger children. Master Labyrinth is still being produced, but it has again been refined since this iteration. The 2007 edition has the addition of a Labyrinth guardian and a dragon, that you have to battle with in order to win your ingredient tokens. I’ve not played this version but I’m interested to see how it works.
Here’s a game that I’d forgotten about before going up into my attic and it bowled me over how enjoyable it is still. This is one that’s staying down from the attic I’ve enjoyed it so much. It’s quick to learn how to play and incredibly strategic, you can be trapped one moment and with one move the whole board opens up to you. Blocking routes off to your opponents is always satisfying and seeing moves they couldn’t see even more so. Everything about this game exudes quality, Ravensburger clearly took the time with refining and presenting this. I honestly can’t fault this game at all, it’s wonderful, if you have a copy, dust it off and give it a play, if you don't I urge you to get one, you really won’t regret it. Thanks for watching, I’ll talk to you soon.
