Ever since Splendor came out in 2014, there has been a bunch of games that have been given the title of “Splendor killer” to the point it really has no meaning. And last summer CMON had a release that many called the “new” Splendor killer. So does Gizmos kill one of my favourite games ever? Or does it offer crazy combos and engine building to stand on it own merits? Let’s hit the lab and find out.

Components

CMON Games started out as Cool Mini Or Not. And while Gizmos does lack killer minis, the production quality is top notch. Start off with it’s spiraled notebook like ascetic, good artwork on square cards, high end transparent marbles, and a really cool marble dispenser, and Gizmos has a very good table presence. I played the game with my niece and the first thing she did was grab a marble and sing its praises. So if you like games with a bit of a toy factor, Gizmos delivers.

Game Play – Basics

Players take turns in a clockwise order, performing one of four actions:

File: File 1 Gizmo from the Display Area.
Pick: Pick 1 Energy of your choice from the Energy Row.
Build: Build 1 Gizmo from the Display Area or from your Archive.
Research: Draw Gizmo cards from 1 of the facedown Level Decks and choose
1 to File or Build.

It’s a pretty simple setup. Play continues until one player has either aquired their 16th Gizmo, or their 4th level 3 Gizmo, triggering the final round. But what makes Gizmos really fun is the engine building that comes out of the game creating some crazy combos.

Game Play – Advanced Tactics

The secret sauce of Gizmos is the way that one action can trigger a bunch of actions. These chain reactions, with one Gizmo triggering another, allows players to set up big turns, score a lot of points, and purchase other Gizmos that seem very expensive. Even better, when you take your turn you get to choose the order that your Gizmos fire off.

One example of a mega combo can be that Sally decides to do the Build action. She chooses a Red card (there is a thematic name for Red, but we will get to that), discarding one Red marble. Based on her other Gizmos Sally is allowed to perform an addition Pick action. Sally picks a Red marble from the general supply. This fires off Sally’s other ability of taking a random marble from the supply when picking a Red marble.

And once you have multiple Gizmos built, you may find yourself firing off multiple actions every turn. One thing to keep in mind is that while there is no limit to the number of Gizmos that may be activated, each Gizmo can only activated once per turn. For some players, you may want to “tap” an activated Gizmo by turning it 90 degrees.

Theme

Gizmos has great table presence, but the theme is pasted on. At no point are you going to call the marbles Heat (Red), Electric (Yellow), Atomic (Blue), or Battery (Black). They are simple Red, Yellow, Blue, and Black.

Replay Value

I still play Splendor. It’s still one of my favourite games. But others feel that after a certain point it gets samey. And while Gizmos offers 108 different Gizmos, most of them do the same types of things. “Pick” Gizmos allow you to grab an extra marble. “Convert” allows you to use a marble as two marbles, or a certain colour of marble as wild. Build, File or Research lets you perform one of the other actions. So after a while this will leave you either feeling you’ve seen all the game has to offer, or feeling like you know what the cards do and wanting to see how you can combo things together.

Over All Impression.

I’ve mentioned Splendor more than once previously, because Gizmos does offer a lot of what Splendor does. Both play in a short amount of time, with really simple rules. Both have you building a tableau that makes future purchases easier. But what really shines in Gizmos is the combos. I often find myself super engaged on another player’s turn not because I want to see what Marbles or cards they are taking away from me, but because I want to see all the combos they fire off on their turn. If you like to engine build and setup combos, I think you will really like Gizmos even if you found yourself tiring of Splendor after a couple of plays.

Gizmos is the kind of game that will constantly hit the table for me, with different types of games, and had earned it’s spot on my game shelf.

For a history of this great game, check out the Acquire page on Wikipedia. It also gives a good overview, which I decided not to repeat in this review.

I’ve played the cardboard-tile version with the 9×12 grid a few times and loved it. So, I decided to try the newer version that has plastic pieces and a smaller 10×10 grid (the one listed on Amazon here).

The new version plays the same except for a few main changes:
1) Uses plastic tiles instead of cardboard tiles. These plastic tiles stack onto the spaces of the plastic grid in a way that prevents them from moving (a nice feature). The plastic tiles also stand up on their own like dominoes instead of needing scrabble-style tile trays.
2) The size of the grid is a smaller 10×10 instead of 9×12. I liked the larger size of the original better, but the smaller size is fine – it just leads to a shorter game.
3) Instead of only a Majority and Minority share holder for mergers, the new game has Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary bonuses. This is great for 6-player games. For 2-player games, you only use the Primary/Secondary bonuses.

CONS: The main problem with the new version is that the numbers/letters on the plastic gray grid are almost impossible to see. After I painted the numbers white, it was much better (dry brushing works). I also wish that the the grid was labeled like a spreadsheet with letters for the columns and rows for the numbers.

I’ve played the new version mostly with 2 players so far, and it works well as a 2-player game.

While I wouldn’t say this is my personal favorite worker placement game, I would say it is an objective worker placement masterpiece that most avid worker placement fans will enjoy

Gameplay/Replay

As a family running a vineyard you use your workers through the year to grow various kinds of grapes, turn them into wine and fill orders with the various people looking for certain kinds of wine of certain ages. The game is played over multiple rounds where you go through 4 seasons doing things throughout each season to help make your vineyard the best. You start by placing your rooster meeple on the turn order track to get a reward, the better the reward the later in the round you go. In the summer you choose to build improvements, plant grapes, get grapes to plant, entertain visitors or give a tour. Fall gives you a summer or winter visitor then in the winter phase you can harvest, make wine, entertain winter visitors, hire an additional worker, or fill an order. The catch to all this is you only have so many workers to spread through the entire year and a summer worker cannot be played in the winter (barring certain visitor cards changing this of course). Play continues till someone scores 20 then the year is played out and the player with the most points wins. With all the different visitor cards you will find a new way to play every time.

The Bad

Very little to talk about here. I guess if you hate crass jokes about a word that is a synonym to rooster then you might get irritated when people say “ok it’s wake up phase grab your roosters” and all the people as immature as I am start giggling. Also the theme is a little dry (Ha! Get it?!) but I found myself enjoying the game theme and all.

As worker placements go you can’t go wrong with this one. Get the essential edition though it really improved the original game by leaps and bounds