The latest game in the Clever line of games from Wolfgang Warsch is out. Clever 4Ever is the newest one. I’ve actually owned this one for a bit, but I never got around to playing it. Which, I think, is a shame because I love the rest of the games. Not all of them are in my Top 100 Games (of all time) 2023 Edition. But I like them all a lot. And Clever 4Ever, is that one going to disappoint or be equally as fun?

Clever 4Ever

Let’s talk about where Clever 4Ever is taking this series of games. Because I think that the system has had it’s ups and downs along the way with what it does. The first one is very nice and straight forward, that’s why Ganz Schon Clever (That’s Pretty Clever) is my favorite. But then you have Doppelt so Clever (Twice as Clever) and the game is a bit more complex. And it requires the player to do a bit more to get the points. Clever Hoch Drei (Clever Cubed) keeps some of the complexity, but makes a number of the areas more straight forward.

Complexity

Clever 4Ever is a bit more complex again. So it feels like the even number ones are ramping up the challenge a little bit with the scoring. Mainly here there are so many little things to keep track of. If you use a 2 through 6 on the pick section, what is the bonus, and how do those work. It’s not that complex, but there is a level of complexity to it. The yellow section with the subtraction versus addition versus points in columns. Green needing two numbers, or grey filling in shapes.

But, with that said, I think it feels a bit better than Doppelt so Clever. Mainly, as I play, I feel like there’s a bit more chance to explore. It might come down to the fact that unlike in Doppelt so Clever, nothing uses other dice with it. The grey or silver section in Doppelt so Clever wants you to discard dice. So you need to push at the right time for that. In Clever 4Ever, it’s all single uses of dice, just how efficiently can you use them and get the bonuses and scoring.

Luck

On the downside, it does seem a bit more luck centric. Mainly in the pink section, you get bonuses to points or get to use the bonus symbol based on what you roll. That means most of the time I really want to have a 5 or a 6 that I play. Yes other bonuses can push you higher, like the 3 filling in two spots. Technically that can push you to the end fast, but that’s not what people will want.

And the yellow section. Only roll high yellows, it’s going to be hard to complete that top row, or even work on it. Because you need to always increase numbers and it doesn’t reset on a six. So now that’s a challenge of just rolling the right things. Now you can use other bonuses to fill in that section, and that’s probably the smart way. But it’s also true for the middle row, you want low numbers. So the luck factor, to me, feels a little bit higher.

Upcoming Streams

On every other Monday I stream at 9 PM Central. And I do small solo game plays. Expect to see a lot more small solo games as I work on my goal of getting to 100 new to me games this year. I’ve started off strong, but there are a number of solo games that I can play to work towards that number. I had hopes of painting but with the new schedule, it’s harder to do now. So when I do a painting stream, it’ll be more random.

On Wednesdays, well, I said that I plan to play at least 10 games of Rogue Angels. This is going to continue how I play my solo campaign games on the channel. My goal, play four different campaigns 10 times each. It’s tricky, but I think that I can do it. That is at 8 PM Central time for the campaign games. The next part of Rogue Angels can be found coming up here.

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