presentation
Penki
Row-formation including jokers
Penki means “Five“ in Lithuanian, and the aim of the game is to arrange five pieces in a row, which can include joker pieces in this variant. 28 wooden rectangles have two indentations for pieces. Each player is assigned a color and the joker pieces can be used for both colors. 24 disk pieces per player color and eight joker pieces are placed in the bag. Players alternate turns to draw two discs from the bag and place them as a pair on the table, until each player has 14 pairs laid out for himself. Then one of the wooden rectangles is placed for a starting tile, the long side of this tile determines the base line of the game “board”.
In your turn, you can either add a new wooden tile, horizontally or vertically in a grid of maximum 9x9 indentations, to the board, there can be no gap in tiles and there cannot be an empty rectangular tile between the new tile and the base line. Or you pick up a pair of your discs and place them in a tile in the board. You cannot pass a turn! If you fill the last free tile in the board, you must add a new one immediately. If you manage to form a row of five of your own discs or a mixture of five disks from your own pieces and joker pieces, you win. Those rows can be formed horizontally, vertically or diagonally. If by placing a pair of discs a row is emerging for each of the players, you win, if you did not make the last turn. Tied games are possible.
I am temped to say, Gerhards as a publisher means one game, one hit. Penki perfectly fits this range of abstract, attractive games for two players, with a mechanism that is standard, albeit being varied sophisticatedly and with a challenge!
Players: 2
Age: 8+
Time: 30+
Designer: Hartmut Kommerell
Artist: not named
Price: ca. 35 Euro
Publisher: Gerhards Spiel und Design 2016
Genre: Row formation, abstract
Users: For families
Special: 2 players
Version: multi
Rules: de en fr
In-game text: no
Comments:
Attractive components
Standard topic
Topic varied with sophisticated, challenging mechanisms
Compares to:
Other “x-in-a-row” games
Other editions:
Currently none
Chance (pink): 2
Tactic (turquoise): 3
Strategy (blue): 0
Creativity (dark blue): 0
Knowledge (yellow): 0
Memory (orange): 0
Communication (red): 0
Interaction (brown): 3
Dexterity (green): 0
Action (dark green): 0