Game Review: Chairs

By J. Neil Edge
July 13, 2007

Publisher: Fundex
Designer: Yves Hirschfeld
Players: 2-8
Ages: 5+
Playing Time: 20 minutes
Rules Language: English

I recently wrote a review of a dexterity stacking game called Bausack in which players stack oddly-shaped wooden pieces into a tower. Chairs is a dexterity game in which players stack oddly-shaped plastic chair pieces into a tower.

Sound similar?

Well, that’s because the games are similar, very similar. In fact the reason I own Chairs is that I managed to grab it in a math trade over on BoardGameGeek prior to me deciding to invest in buying Bausack. Of course, this turned out to be one of the few slower trades I’ve ever made and in fact ended up ordering, receiving and playing Bausack before Chairs even arrived. (The trader did make up for it by throwing in some sealed starter stacks of Clout Fantasy, so I got a little bonus at least.)

There are two versions of the game: one in a box with yellow, orange and blue plastic chairs, and the other in a “collector’s tin” with red and black plastic chairs. The chairs are all the same size—about three inches tall—and all have the basic design of a chair with a seat, back and four legs. They do differ in the shape of the legs, the holes in the backs, and whatnot which allows for interesting ways to play the pieces.

The rules are basic: Divide the chairs up evenly amongst the players, discarding any extras. Youngest player plays one chair. Each player must play a chair so that it’s supported by the “base chair” and does not touch the table. If the stack falls, whoever knocked it down collects all of those chairs and starts the tower anew. The first person to have no chairs left wins.

The deal with this game is simple: Don’t make a tower. If you want the most fun in attempting to screw the other players (and isn’t that why we play dexterity games….well it’s why I play dexterity games) then start with the base chair lying on its side or something odd like that. That forces the rest of the chair stacking to be more precarious than a simple up-and-down tower configuration. You usually end up with a giant tumorous mass of chairs with players sticking the leg of one chair through the hole in the back of another and trying to counterbalance gravity as best they can, while holding their breath until they have let go of that piece.

The problem I see with this game is that the 32 chairs in the box are too few for more than about four people. Three people seems to be optimum so that you are actually touching the tower (or mass) more frequently. If you play with, say, five players and people start with six chairs, after the first round one player might have 14 chairs while everyone else has three. Guess who’s not going to be winning this game?

The design of the chairs themselves is really well done and allows for some crazy balancing. (Check out the pictures on BGG and you’ll see that.)

Overall Chairs is fun a few times but gets old quickly. Having played Bausack prior to this one, I will always bring that game out over Chairs. The variety of pieces makes it more interesting, not to mention the variant rules which change the play of game (some of which could be added to Chairs). Chairs isn’t a bad game; it’s fun, light and quick. If you can score a copy cheaply and don’t already own something better, go for it as the game will bring out some laughs—but I wouldn’t suggest going out of your way to grab it. Now if they included folding chairs, you could give them to your WWE action figures and that would be cool…

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