The Very Clever Pipe Game

The Very Clever Pipe Game is a card game produced by Cheapass Games.

Gameplay
The game can be played by 2-4 people or teams. Like other pipe games, the objective is to create a closed circuit of pipes in one's color by playing cards from your hand. When a circuit is completed, the player collects the cards that have been played. The player or team with the most cards at the end of the game wins.

What makes this game unique (and thus, according to the maker, Very Clever) is that a player can choose to close off fields of light or dark backgrounds. In a four player game, for instance, each has a different goal: light pipes, dark pipes, light backgrounds, and dark backgrounds. With these competing goals, the game becomes quite complicated.

There are two basic strategies to this game. Some players prefer to make small circuits of only two or three cards, and others attempt to build up their circuit to pick up many cards at a time. Either strategy can win, although the former is safer and the latter more of a gamble. The strategy chosen can depend on the cards in the player's hand. An important part of the strategy is blocking opponents before they can gather cards.

Reception
The reviewer from Pyramid #29 (Jan./Feb., 1998) stated that "The Very Clever Pipe Game is indeed quite clever. You've probably seen games where you have to connect pipes to win - it's been done before. But this version has two different colored pipes on each card - and two different colored backgrounds - and the pipes keep disappearing."