Game Preview: …aber bitte mit Sahne

By W. Eric Martin
October 1, 2008

Publisher: Winning Moves Germany
Designer: Jeffrey D. Allers
Players: 2-5
Playing Time: 15 minutes
Release Date: Spiel 2008
Language: German
Link:

At the heart of Alan R. Moon’s and Aaron Weissblum’s San Marco is a procedure known to moms the world over: the “I cut, you choose” method of resolving arguments between squabbling youngsters.

In simple terms, if a pair of anklebiters are both demanding the last piece of pie, you hand a knife to one – not so that he can do away with the competition, but rather so that he can cut the pie into two slices; the other child gets first choice of the goodies, so the cutter has an incentive to make the slices as equal as possible. With three or more pie claimants, you can instead invoke the “moving knife” solution: One person holds a knife over the very edge of the pie. Slowly he rotates this knife over the pie, and at any point someone can yell out “Stop” or he can lower the knife into the pie. In the first case, the yeller gets the piece; in the latter, the cutter does and someone else takes knife duty. Once only two pie fiends remain, you can switch to the standard “I cut, you choose.”

While this procedure is the central game mechanism in San Marco (along with its smaller sequel, the two-player card game Canal Grande), dividing the available cards into equal piles is almost never possible and is, in fact, not something you’ll necessarily want to do. Each player has the same long-term goal – score more points than anyone else – but the short-term tactics you’ll choose will differ depending on your starting positions and many other factors.

Despite the fame that this game mechanism has achieved, it hasn’t been used elsewhere – until now, that is. (Why else would I spend so much time on the build-up otherwise!) Jeffrey Allers, famed BGN Postcards from Berlin columnist, has returned the mechanism to its roots in a game that’s nothing but pie slicing. “My inspiration was the whole pie division problem and how I wanted another game that dealt with this tension,” says Allers. “Even the theme was intuitive – if you’re going to have a game about pie division, why not use the theme of actually dividing a pie?”

...aber bitte mit Sahne – the title comes from a folk music song known to all Germans young and old; lyrics and a soundfile available online for the curious – comes with a deck of wedge-shaped pie slices and is played over five rounds. Each round, the active player (or slicer) deals out a complete pie of 11 slices, then divides the pie into a number of pieces equal to the number of players. He can’t rearrange the slices, which come in eight flavors and point values, but he can cut wherever he chooses so long as each offering has at least one slice. Each flavor comes with a different number of slices, and those numbers range from 3-11 (with no flavor having six slices). For those who have already done the counting, you’ll realize that the game contains 57 slices, which means that two slices will remain out of the game, foiling those who want to count cards.

In clockwise order, starting from the left of the slicer, each player chooses an offering; she can then eat all of the pieces, save them all, or do some combination of both. Eating slices locks in a certain number of points; saving them lets you work toward a majority holding in whichever flavors you’re collecting. After five rounds, whoever holds the majority in a flavor (or is tied for the majority) scores for that flavor. These points are added to those gained by consumption, and whoever scores the most is king of the pie.

Game review, by W. Eric Martin

Version played: Prototype (with only 52 slices of pie)
Times played: Ten, with all numbers from 2 to 5

The scoring dynamic in ...aber bitte mit Sahne creates interesting challenges because you ideally want to win a flavor with as few slices as possible, eating any extras along the way so that you can score more points. Trying to sneak your way to victory in cherry (which had nine slices in the prototype) by holding on to only one more slice than the nearest competitor may or may not pan out. Whether you’re taking a chance on ending up with pie on your face or luring someone to a fruity demise will often depend on where you’re sitting at the table. If you and I have the same number of cherry slices going into the final round, only one slice remains and I’m ahead of you in player order, then I’m guaranteed a majority – assuming that something else doesn’t tempt me instead. After all, I’m likely to be competing in more than one pie type for dominance and the slices are never kind enough to come out grouped together as you’d like them.

When Jeff first showed me the game, which had ten-slice pies at the time, I worried that the two- and five-player games would be uninteresting. Won’t the pie be divided into 2/2/2/2/2 every time with five players? Won’t it be dull to go halfsies on a pie for five rounds with only two players? Wouldn’t it be better to divide the pie in fourths in a two-player game to create more choices? The answers turned out to be no, no and no. The short play time might be one reason, but more importantly the decision of how to divide the pie is almost never trivial. With two players, you know that each slice you don’t get is going to your opponent, which means you’re weighing everything that both players hold, along with what’s left in the deck and the current arrangement of slices. You’ll stew over how to divide the thing because every option seems wrong. Being able to divide the pie into four slices would make your job easier; it would reduce the pressure on you to make good decisions, and that’s hardly a recipe for a good game.

While the pies in five-player games do have a tendency to be split into equal chunks of two slices, it doesn’t always happen – and even when it does, the splits are still hard to make because you’re trying to judge what four other people desire and you’re almost never right. You can’t know ahead of time whether someone will be competing for pie majority or merely interested in eating for points, so no matter how many mental menus you run through, someone will almost always stick their fork where you least expected it.

(As noted above, the published game will have 57 slices in the deck with eleven slices in each pie, thereby creating even more of a kuchen cutting challenge for the current slicer. Adds Allers, “The change makes collecting chocolate [the most common flavor] more valuable and creates more of a dilemma over whether to collect or eat them at three points each.")

The only drawback I’ve found in the game so far is that the triangular pie slices are absolutely no fun to shuffle. I’m working with a prototype copy, of course, so perhaps the published version will have chunky pieces that mix more easily. My dream version would have squat three-dimensional pieces that are color-coded by type. You could put them all in a bag, mix them, and draw out the slices one by one to create the pie. We’ll see what Winning Moves puts together by the end of 2008. My mouth is already watering to sample the final offering. Congrats, Jeff, and thanks for the sweet game!

Other branches of the Winning Moves octopus may or may not release a slightly altered international version of the game. If they do, you can rest assured that the name will be far less German…

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