EDITOR's NOTE: The Meeple Guild is providing additional reviews over this holiday week, so check back daily for new game reviews.
YORKTON - When you are a hobbyist – it doesn’t much matter which hobby – you likely haunt various online sites and social media groups dedicated to your interest.
On one excursion into the ‘rabbit hole’ the ‘Net can be, I came upon the board game Pijersi, by designer Lucas Borboleta, who was good enough to send a copy for The Meeple Guild to test drive.
Let’s start by stating Pijersi is an abstract strategy game, which means I was excited to test run it, but always take such games to the table with some trepidation.
Some games such as Wana turn out to be bland and uninspiring.
Then a game such as Pathogen is a hugely pleasant surprise.
So let’s get this out of the way, Pijersi was more game than expected even after reading the rules.
This is a crossing game, you win by getting one of your pieces to your opponent’s home row first.
Along the way you can capture pieces to deplete their resources.
Each player has four types of pieces, a ‘wise’ piece that moves, but doesn’t capture and can’t be directly taken. It is a set up piece as you will learn in a game of two.
The other pieces are rock, paper and scissors, capturing as per that old chestnut of a game. As a mechanic it’s hardly new, Shing Shang used in dating back to 1970.
But it works here too.
There is an element of stacking – up to two pieces – and of course unstacking – adding a nice level of strategy too.
The overall rule set works rather nicely. No this isn’t a new chess, or Hive, but it’s a fine game for a coffee break.
The board is nice, and the pieces while just wooden cubes with graphics, they are functional, and wood is always a winning aesthetic for me.
Of course we had to get some background on Pijersi from its designer.
“The ideas that led to Pijersi traveled a long way from 2015 to 2022 through prototypes of four quite different abstract games,” explained Borboleta. “The guiding principle of this research was a kind of modernization of classic abstract games, by introducing a flavour of a mini wargame . . .
“In 2020, after four versions, the rules of Jersi became frozen,” said Borboleta. “Note that after this long travel, there remains no wargame flavor in Jersi, beside two actions per turn. Finally, the search for a simplification of Jersi led to Pijersi.”
Borboleta added the rules for capturing rock-paper-scissors are simple and well-known; so that's easy.
Winning by reaching the opposite edge with a rock, paper or scissors cube is also a simple objective.
“The novelty begins with the ‘wise’ cube,” said Borboleta.
This was a pleasant surprise. There is a bit of a learning curve of course, but it’s not so steep as to deter playing the game.
There is certainly strategy here, and a misstep can be a disaster, but that means staying sharp. On the smallish board you can get tunnel vision, focused on offence and miss an attack you are too late to handle. You need to guard the home row as achieving it is the win condition.
Definitely a game to recommend.
