The Game of 49 Review

"Bid, Bluff and Buy"

The Game of 49 is a simple game based around the concepts of out-bidding your opponents in order to control portions of the board and eventually work towards getting four in a row. You can do this in any number of ways and it's best not to reveal this information to your opponents.

Its relatively easy to understand the game as a simple quick read of the instructions will give you a clear set of rules to move forward from and the concept isn't too complex. It's also interesting to be sitting there waiting for what places you need while attempting to burn out the cash of your opponents by raising bids for even non-essential spots.

It was also relatively easy to setup and just jump into playing when adding new players though I still felt like the core of the game was a bit simplistic. I like games to have some more strategy to them as while you try to get good spots without others realizing as I won a game with just the base bid, it seemed as though everyone always had a stack of money to them.

It's even more beneficial to throw out money as the wild cards that appear give a high payout to those that do. This does get capped off at a certain point, but playing smart and burning out the cash of others which should be effective wasn't quite at the right amount. I still certainly enjoyed playing the game as it's a solid bidding game, I just had that issue with terms of strategy within it.

The Board/Pieces

The board game comes in a square box which is what I'd consider to be the size of most typical board games. It features a simple square board the size of the box that has no additional folds which is great and easy to use. For pieces you get a number of different colored circular opaque chips to use for whenever you win a bet.

These for the most part look great, but I did have an issue where some of the colors were a bit too similar for when we were sorting them out. Other than that there's some cash amounts used for bidding which all look solid in design and easy to read colorful cards that you pick out each turn. The final thing included is the manual which once again fits that square size and features very colorful and easy to read pages for when you're learning about the game.

The Conclusion

The Game of 49 provides a solid bidding game that's incredibly easy to pick up and play. It's also very simple to setup with no need to get anything ready beforehand which is great as you can just grab it and play. The pieces were also nice and the core concept of the game works mostly well. It was exciting to bid against others and I found that three players or up seemed to be optimal for the game.

When playing in a two player match it went by very quickly whereas higher number of players made it last much longer. It's also rather intriguing that some matches can last quite a long time if everyone is paying attention whereas some matches can be very quick. This is all based on the mercy of the card deck versus the amount of money the players have on their hand when it comes around. If you're looking for an easy going game based around bidding for your Connect 4 than this is works quite well.

The Game of 49 Review
Review Sample Provided by Breaking Games

Rating Overall: 7.0