LogFAQs > #933089201

76. 6 nimmt! (1994)

Category: Player vs Player
Genres: Simultaneous action selection, sequence-building, separate hands
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 0
Game length: 5-20 minutes
Experience: 15+ hands over 5+ sessions (2015-2019) with 4-8 players
Previous ranks: 33/100 (2016), 39/80 (2018)

Summary - Everyone is dealt a hand of cards with only numbers (unique integers) and pips (negative points). Each turn, each player simultaneously selects a card to reveal. Those cards are, in ascending order, sorted into buckets based on cards that are on the table. If you place the sixth card in a bucket, you empty it out and get all the cards (and the pips associated with them) in it. A hand ends when all the cards are played, and the game ends when one player has hit some losing total of pips.

Experience - I naturally don't have any sparkling memory of 6 nimmt!, but I remember being stuck in very large groups early on, with no one being able to decide on anything except this game. And honestly, for managing that large group rather painlessly, I give 6 nimmt! a lot of credit.

Design - Here's an elegant game that provides a nice, consistent experience. As I mentioned in Turn the Tide, simultaneous action selection in a quick game allows you to have lots of opportunities to feel clever or lucky, or to feel unlucky and cheated. You can feel both emotions very quickly between one played card and the next. 6 nimmt! isn't exactly mean, because you can't really make a move maliciously not knowing what other players have chosen or put in their hands, but it can definitely happen and feel really good when you undercut someone's card by exactly one, forcing them to be #6 in the pile instead of #5 like they anticipated being.

The game isn't particularly visually attractive for a filler. It's just a smart design with a bunch of cards (which, come to think of it, could be the basis of a few other games that are also just numbered cards... including one later on this list.)

Future - Like Love Letter, 6 nimmt! is lovely as a microgame, but it unfortunately isn't great with two, so it lacks a niche in my collection, and I've mostly seen what it has to offer. I don't think this game could particularly rise by more plays, but it's not like I'm turning it down as a 20-30 minute exercise in crowning winners and losers.
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness