Phil Walker-Harding has a knack for creating games that are easy to play and hugely enjoyable for gamers of all experiences. In Gizmos he turns his hand to the engine building genre. Engine building games are games where you are creating a potential chain of combos that you can set of with actions on your turn or other peoples’.

Gizmos is certainly rules light, almost deceptively so as some of the engines you can build can combo in surprising ways. Engine building games are games where you are creating a potential chain of combos that you can set of with actions on your turn or other peoples.

In Gizmos you are acquiring cards to play to your tableau which then react to your future actions. On your turn you will choose one of four actions – File, Pick, Build, Research.

File lets you reserve cards from the display so you don’t miss out, but you have limited space to do this. Pick is how you get hold of marbles which are needed to Build cards from your file or the display, and Research lets you draw a number of cards from one of the draw piles and either build or file a card of your choice.

As your tableau builds up, each time you take one of these actions you will trigger bonus actions from your built cards. Each card can only be triggered once per turn but this can still lead to impressively long combos. Combos don’t score you points thought and you’ll soon need to build a few level three cards to content in the end game scoring.

Gizmos is a great game to teach people about engine building games. It will grab people’s attention with it’s table presence, with the imposing marble dispenser drawing most of the attention, but they will stay for the enjoyable combo building gameplay.

Player Count: 2-4
Time: 40-50 Minutes
Age: 14+