Genial — board game details

About the game

What is Genial

In Ingenious, a.k.a. Einfach Genial, players take turns placing colored domino-style tiles on a game board, scoring for each line of colored symbols that they enlarge. The trick, however, is that a player's score is equal to their worst-scoring color, not their best, so they need to score for all colors instead of specializing in only one or two.

In more detail, the game includes 120 domino-style tiles, each consisting of two conjoined hexes; each hex has one of six colors in it, with most tiles having different-colored hexes. Each player has a rack with six tiles on it, and on a turn a player places one tile from their rack onto two hexes of the game board. For each hex on this tile, they score one point in that color for each hex of the same color that lies adjacent to it and each hex in a straight line from it. If a player brings the score of a color to 18, they immediately take another turn. At the end of their turn, they refill their rack to six tiles. (Before refilling their rack, if they have no tiles on it that contain hexes in their lowest-scoring color, they can discard all of their tiles, then draw six new tiles from the bag.)

When no more tiles can be placed on the game board or when one player scores 18 in each color, the game ends. Players then compare their lowest scores, and whoever has the highest low score wins.

Ingenious includes rules for solitaire and team play; in the latter case, two teams of two play, with each player not being able to see their partner's tiles and teams keeping a combined score that maxes out at 36 instead of 18.

Specs

Game details

Players: 1–4
Age: +8
Duration: 45 min
Difficulty: Light
Type: Board game
Year: 2004
Mechanics: Hand Management · Highest-Lowest Scoring · Pattern Building
Categories: Abstract Strategy
Designer: Reiner Knizia
Publisher: Devir

Community data

Genial on Meeplay

See what the Meeplay community plays and thinks about Genial, and add your own plays to the record.

765Plays logged

148Own it in their collection

0.7Average rating

Find Genial players

Reviews

What the community says about Genial

E

ElFrikiJugon7.5/10

De mi novia

D

davidarribas7/10

Otro jueguecito de baldosas del incombustible doctor, de tema totalmente abstracto, con este consiguió el "Juego del año en Alemania", se explica en medio minuto y tiene una táctica sutil, se puntua en cada uno de sus colores, pero al final solo cuentan los puntos del color en el que menos puntos tengas, lo que te obliga a diversificar y no poder concentrarte en un solo color, aparte de tener que estar constantemente vigilando a tus adversarios, dentro de la misma categoría encontramos a Jardines de la Alhambra (Die Gärten der Alhambra), pero este le supera con creces, el otro es demasiado ses

D

David_Trovador5.5/10

Sencillo juego abstracto, muy sencillo de aprender a jugar. A mi no me ha acabado de gustar, y eso que triunfa bastante este juego.

E

eugeniosarcino7/10

Esp) Buen Juego. Mecánicas simples de explicar y rápidas de jugar. Acaso el sistema de puntuaciión resulte un poco confuso al principio, pero nada del otro mundo. Escala muy bien de 2 a 4 jugadores. La edicion de Devir no es de lo mejor, las fichas de cartón son muy finitas y se desgastan al mezclarse en la bolsa. Por otro lado los marcadores de madera se pueden mover con facilidad y arruinar toda una partida.