Pyramid Pick

Basari

Published by FX-Spiele

Designed by Reinhard Staupe

$32.00

Basari is an excellent little board game of trading, bargaining, and psyching out your opponents. The game plays well with both three and four players, but very differently at each number. The four-player game becomes more psychological, while the three-player is an excellent tactical game.

The game consists of an attractive board, 100 play jewels in four colors, and four sets of playing pieces including a pawn, home base, scoring token, die, and a set of three cards for each player.

In the center of the board are pictured four carpets to store the jewels on, and a scoring table. Around that is a series of spaces in a Middle Eastern arch theme, each of which has a number between 4 and 7, inclusive, and a picture of a certain jewel combination. Finally, around the outer edge, is the scoring track.

The game is won by being the furthest around the scoring track after three rounds of play -- usually about 20-30 minutes per game, and it's such a good game you'll happily play an instant rematch. A round ends when one or more players get their pawn around the board back to their home base -- those who do, score ten points. Then the player with the most blue jewels scores eight points, the most green jewels scores ten points, the most yellow jewels 12 points, and the most red jewels 14 points. Those who scored points for jewels must return some to the carpet, to prevent the next round from being an . . .

This article originally appeared in the second volume of Pyramid. See the current Pyramid website for more information.



Article publication date: March 5, 1999

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