Fictional Reality Magazine
Clay Richmond
December 2006
USA

This cool little board game is put out by Out of the Box Publishing Inc. and has really succeeded in impressing me. The game is a new way to play “four in a row” and is played between two players. This is another game where learning the rules hardly gives you the flavor, or the depth, of the game. The rules are exceedingly simple and can be read in less time than it takes you to read this review. Of course you may end up reading them more than once thinking that you missed something. The game itself is almost as quick as I think a very long game might last at most ten of fifteen minutes. I would recommend reading the rules once through, playing a practice game, and then if you feel it necessary, read them through again (though after your practice game you probably will no longer feel it necessary). The good part of the game comes as you learn the strategy, and I will tell you that after only a few games, I am already seeing that there are several different levels of strategy (no pun intended), and I don’t think I have scratched the surface yet. This is the most intriguing game of this sort that I have seen in some time.

The board is a hard plastic molded board that has a five by five array of spaces. Each space is a round depression that consists of three concentric circles each at a different level. The playing pieces consist of three different sized disks (and two colors, one for each player). The size of the disk determines the level of the space that the disk will reside when played. The disks are also made out of hard polished plastic. For each player there are a total of three large disks, four medium disks, and five small disks. On the back side of the board, there is a nice compartment where the disks can be stored, so the entire set is not only very high quality, but also very convenient for storage and travel. Obviously, the publisher did not skimp on this set as it looks very nice and is rugged enough to last for quite some time.

There is more than one cool innovation in this “four in a row” variant. First, the larger disks (and only the larger disks) can be moved after they are played. The second is that since there are three levels in each space, unless the top level is taken, you can cover up pieces with more pieces, and oh yeah, only the piece that is showing counts. This means that by moving a large disk, a disk under it (and it may be of either color) is revealed and suddenly back in the game. This could of course lead to some interesting strategies and situations. As I said before, the more you play this game, the more possible strategies will come to mind. I found this game to be very intriguing. It was not only fun, but every time I played I found something new to add to my bag of tricks. Since this game has no “luck” involved, serious strategy loving players will find this game very enjoyable with a large array of possible playing styles. This is the kind of game that I could see anything from competitions being built around to playing in the car while on a road trip. If you like Pente, Chess, or other pure strategy type games, you will really enjoy Coverup.

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