Waiting for my laundry this evening, I went for a walk down St-Denis to find some food. Walking buy a "smart games" boutique, I decided to duck in and see if I could find...
Quarto is the game Chicken had me play with him for an hour or two on that flight from San Francisco to Tokyo last May.
Quarto is a board game for two players invented by Blaise Müller.It is played on a 4×4 board. There are 16 pieces, each of which has four attributes:
1. large or small;
2. red or blue (or some other pair of colors, such as light or dark stained wood);
3. square or circle;
4. with or without a hole.Players take turns to choose a piece which the other player must then place on the board. A player wins by placing their piece to make four pieces in a horizontal, vertical, or diagonal row, all of which have a common attribute (all small, all circular, etc).
Quarto is distinctive in that there is only one set of common pieces, rather than a set for one player and a different set for the other. It is therefore an impartial game.
In other words, the object is to be the first player to line up for pieces that share a characteristic (color, height, shape, hole-ed-ness). That means you are tracking multiple variables and extrapolating multiple possibilities. Now, to twist it around some, you pick pieces for your opponent to play. Any progress towards achieving your goal is purely thanks to oversight of your opponent.
Loads of fun and incredibly challenging. I ordered the travel size.
