Game Review: Quinamid

By Patrick Korner
December 10, 2007

Publisher: Third Dynasty Games
Designer: Antony Brown
Players: 2
Ages:
Playing Time: 10-15 minutes
Rules Language: English & German
Price: 25€ / approx. $44

One of the things I look forward to most when visiting the Spiel board game fair in Essen, Germany, is just wandering up and down the halls. I spend a lot of time poring over the preview articles, printing out hall plans, marking out stands and games I think might be interesting—but even with all that effort, I can bank on one thing: I will end up intrigued and impressed with a game that was so far off my radar screen as to be invisible. This year was no different, and this year the game was Quinamid, designed by Antony Brown.

Quinamid is, at heart, a variation on the “get five in a row” genre of two-player abstract strategy games. In this case, though, the game board changes regularly over the course of play, and this fluidity is enough to make the gameplay experience very different from most games of this type that I’ve played.

The game comes in a nicely-built lacquered wooden box, and when you open the sliding lid the well-made game components come into view. Included with the game are a set of five wooden boards in gradually decreasing sizes with countersunk playing spaces, a cloth bag containing 30 counters each of blue and red, and a rules insert in both English and German. (Rules in additional languages are available from the publisher’s website.). The component quality is superb, and I think the nice wooden bits enhance the gameplay experience.

Setting up the game is simple: First place the 6x6 board on the table. Then place the 5x5 board on it, such that it lines up with the edge of the 6x6 board on two sides (leaving two lines of playing spaces free). Stack the remaining 4x4, 3x3 and 2x2 boards in the same manner, resulting in a pyramid shape with two vertical sides and two stepped sides. Finally, give each player the counters in their colour, and you’re good to go.

On your turn, you have three options:

• Place one of your counters into any exposed, unoccupied space
• Slide one board (along with all boards above it) one space horizontally or vertically (as long as no portion of any board hangs over an edge—all boards must be completely supported at all times)
• Rotate one board (along with all boards above it) 90 degrees in either direction

Sounds too simple to work, right? Wrong. It works, and it works amazingly well. There is a bit of first player advantage, I think—as the 2x2 board space closest to both stepped sides is stronger than the others by a small amount—but not as much as in other games of this type. The rotating boards can completely mess up your plans, and memory elements introduced by the overlapping boards can result in some surprising “you won!?” moments when you uncover the fifth counter you need for the win. Gameplay is quick yet thought-provoking since you have to constantly check whether you’re missing a potential winning move by the opponent while putting your own strategy together. Of course, as in most other popular abstract games, it’s when you can do both at once that you can start to really pull away.

The other thing I like about this game is its speed—I have not yet had a game go longer than about 10 minutes, which makes it perfect for a quick two-player filler or for playing multiple times in a row in tournament mode. And if you start to feel that you’ve got the game figured out, you can introduce one of the many rules variants included with the rules. They change the game by adding restrictions to play that typically take the “obvious” starting moves and render them invalid —such as prohibiting a player from placing on the 2x2 board until he has at least one counter on every other board.

So overall, there’s very little about this game for me to dislike apart from the fact that it’s only a two-player game. This makes it less likely to come along on game nights, where multiplayer games are the norm. But for getting together with a friend for a couple of hours of play, this is a perfect addition to the game library and is a game I expect to see on the table regularly.

My only real concern with the game? Well, the price point isn’t exactly bargain basement, primarily because of the wooden components, I think. This makes it a less attractive game for those who don’t play two-player games regularly—and even less so for those who look for a little theme with their games. One way to alleviate the two-player issue is to try a team variant, but given the short play time I don’t know if it would work all that well. It’s probably best to appreciate the game for what it is—a superb two-player game—than try to force it into the multiplayer arena. And to be honest, that’s good enough for me.

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