This may be the most aptly-named game I've ever played. After my first game, I mulled things over and concluded that The Very Clever Pipe Game was a very clever little game.
I was a tad leery at the outset— frankly, I've had my fill of connections games. They are legion, involve small variations on the same theme, and the brain-drain to fun ratio is too high. Happily, The Very Clever Pipe Game benefited from some more thoughtful game design.
This is not a game about connecting one side of a game board to another. In fact, there's not even a board. Instead, there's a set of 120 cards, each twice as long as they are wide. The cards depict various permutations of black and white pipes and caps. Sometimes the pipes branch, sometimes they curve, but in all cases there's a pipe or cap connected to each of the card's six possible junctures (2 on the long ends, one on the short ends).
Each player draws cards from his own twenty card deck (you can simplify things by drawing from a common 40-card deck instead, until you get to the advanced games which allow for individual deck-tuning). The first player chooses his color, leaving the other for his opponent. Players alternate turns playing from their five-card hands, trying to create closed sets of pipes of their own color.
A closed set is any connected set of pipes in which all pipe ends connect to other pipe ends or end caps (in other words, there are no open ends). As soon as someone forms such a set they pick up all cards which are part of it, setting them aside to be scored later. Obviously this can have a dramatic effect on the layout, perhaps clearing the board completely. This is a game where the best defense really is a good offense. Completing a set can decimate the almost-completed set your opponent is working on. This, as well as the likelihood of your opponent forking your pipes to make them harder to close off, means it's better to make lots of small sets than to try to create one large one. A bird in the hand...
As is typical in such games, cards may not be placed such that white pipes connect with black ones. In an interesting departure, however, the "board" is infinitely large (if you happen to have a Moebius table in your kitchen) and cards can be placed anywhere— they don't have to touch other cards. This allows for some interesting blocking maneuvers. When you don't have the cards to fork someone's impending set, you can play a card nearby to make it harder for your opponent to fit a card in the spot needed to close his set.
This ability to play cards anywhere can lead to anomalies in the layout— 1x1 squares completely surrounded by other cards and too small for a card to fit in. These spaces are called pillars, and instantly "cap off" all the pipe ends which lead into it. What seems at first to be a rules fudge turns out to be a key strategic element which reduces the luck of the draw. Don't have a cap? Can't fit a card in the right spot? Try to form a pillar instead.
Want more? Besides the pipes, card backgrounds are divided into light and dark "fields" as well. The basic game ignores these, but in more advanced versions players try to make closed fields instead of or in addition to pipe sets. And then, of course, there's the deck tuning...
The Very Clever Pipe Game is inexpensively, but not shoddily, produced. The package is a white envelope, the cardstock is thin but adequate, and the crisp rendered computer graphics are top-notch. Best of all, it's fun and its complexity scales to fit the players' preferences. Recommended.