Abstract games are a tricky proposition. Some people don't like them since there's no theme to hook you in. I've enjoyed abstract games for a long time. I played Twixt and Chess when I was in junior high, and I've gotten into Go in the last few years. Kunst Stucke, the latest game from Karl-Heinz Schmiel, is an abstract game with a thin veneer slapped on top.
The idea is that each player is an artist who is working with the other artists to create a painting. Each artist has a particular set of ideas about how the finished product should look, and the closer he gets to those ideas, the more points he scores.
Upon opening the box, you'll find a square board with a grid on it, some chips, and a whole bunch of cardboard to punch out. There are five colors represented with 12 pieces in various odd shapes (think: Tetris). In addition, there are thirty scoring tiles numbered from 1 to 6 in the five different colors and five score boards for the players.
The scoring tiles are how you get points to win the game. If you have, for example, a red 2, then if two (and only two) red pieces are touching (horizontally or vertically) at the end of the game, then you score two points for that tile. You don't score multiple times for multiple occurrences of your grouping. The 6 tiles count for any collection of six or more pieces together. The score boards have five spaces for scoring tiles and they're marked with bonus values ranging from 5 to 15 that are added to the points scored for the tile placed on them.
At the beginning of the game, the colored pieces are placed face down shuffled. Each player gets a certain number based on how many players are in the game and 10 chips. The score tiles are mixed and placed on a tile board in five stacks of six tiles.
On his turn, a player must either place a piece on the board or discard it. When all the pieces have been used, the game ends and the points are totaled. When placing a piece, it must either be placed on the board in isolation or it must touch a piece of it's own color (it can touch other colors as well). The pieces must be placed so that they are aligned on the grid.
In addition to placing or discarding, a player can move pieces around on the board and place score tiles on their scoring board. Any of these three actions can be done in any order.
If he chooses to get a score tile, a player picks up one of the five stacks and examines them. He must then choose one of the tiles and place it on one of his bonus spaces face down. This can be done five times and then all of his spaces will be filled.
To move pieces around, a player must spend his chips. It costs one chip each time a piece is moved. When moving a piece around it must be slid around on the board horizontally or vertically and can't be rotated. Additionally, if the piece began touching another piece of it's color, it must end touching a piece of it's color, but it does not have to be the same piece.
I'm still trying to figure out how to play this game well. I have a good time, but I never seem to score a whole lot of points. One of the nice things about this game (and most of Herr Schmiel's games) is that you're always faced with decisions against a back drop of time.
How long do you wait to get scoring tiles? If you wait too long, other people will have had their choice of the tiles, and the board will be fairly filled, preventing you from manipulating the tiles as much as you like. If you go too quickly, you lock yourself into situations that may be untenable later in the game, when people start sliding everything around to help themselves.
When do you fill your higher bonus spaces? Do you play the big pieces at the beginning or wait till later in hopes of using them to block in groups that you need? When should you spend your chips? If you do it early, the pieces might just get moved back to where they were (or into a different, worse configuration). If you wait, you could get stuck in a position where you can't use any of them since the board is too jammed up with pieces.
The component quality is fine (the chips are especially nice and thick). Some of the people I've played with remarked that the price was a bit steep considering that you get basically a box full of cardboard, but I think that the quality of the game is high enough to overcome that. Also, the bright, plain colors make it easier to tell what's going on in relation to your scoring tiles rather than having some kind of design or decoration on them.
If abstract games are something you enjoy, Kunst Stucke makes a nice addition. The scoring tiles add nice interaction, since you're often unsure what someone is going for when they're manipulating the pieces on the board. You may find out you helped someone when you were trying to hurt them (or someone else). That aspect of the game helps make it appealing for people who may not enjoy abstract games in the first place.
Kurt Adam (mage@vt.edu) is the keeper of the internet Cosmic Encounter frequently asked questions list.