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Not one to flout tradition, I'll say that Peter Wichmann's NMBR 9 — which debuts from German publisher ABACUSSPIELE in early 2017 and which will, I am positive, end up being recommended or nominated by the Spiel des Jahres jury — offers simple, inviting Tetris-like gameplay in which each player tries to piece together blocky numbers from 0 to 9 into a high-scoring pile of digits.
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NMBR 9 is a true multiplayer solitaire game along the lines of Take it Easy!, with each player building their own structure and with your only interaction possibly being to eye an opponent's number pile enviously and decide you need to take a few chances if you're going to catch up to them.
At the start of play, each player receives two sets of number tiles from 0 to 9, with each digit being a blocky creation that you could mistake for the appropriate numeral if you held it at arm's length on a foggy night after a few drinks. Someone shuffles a deck that contains two sets of cards numbered 0 to 9, then you reveal the top card, grab the appropriate tile, and start to build. Well, not much building happens with only a single tile; it just sits there on the table, looking like everyone else's tile and you feel kind of silly, like you're copying one another and not being original, but you have only one tile to work with, so how different can you be anyway?
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With each card revealed, you add a new number to your creation, touching any previously laid tile on the same level along the edge of at least one square. You can lay one tile on top of others as long as you don't cover any holes in your structure and the covering tile has at least two different tiles underneath it. Easy peasy lemon squeezy – except of course it's not since the numbers have been carefully constructed to frustrate the bejesus out of you due to their general lack of smoothly interlocking sides. Sure, the 4's peg nestles into the 7's divot, and the 5s lock together arm in arm like reunited lovers on a Parisian train platform, but most other combinations leave you muttering "If only, if only" over and over again, especially the stupid 3s.
Once you've all placed the twenty digits in your structure, it's time to score your creation, and since this is a European designer and publisher, they use European-favored scoring. All of the tiles on the lowest level of your structure — the ground floor, as it were — are worth zero points as they comprise the 0th floor. (In case you didn't know, while the ground floor of buildings in the U.S. is considered the first floor since, you know, when you count things you start with 1, in Europe the ground floor is considered an entryway of sorts and not part of the real building that starts immediately above it. Thus, it does not merit a number and is dismissed from the count, just as your tiles on the lowest level will be dismissed, whatever numerals they might be.)
Tiles on the second level — the first floor in European terms — have their value multiplied by 1, while tiles on the third level — the second floor — have their value multiplied by 2. This multiplying effect continues, but I've seen a tile on the fourth level only twice in five games, so don't worry about needing to multiply too much. Players sum their points, and whoever has the highest total gets to shame the losers as the losers that they are.
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The cards fit in the center slot, making this a superbly designed, yet still superfluous storage tray
I've played the game five times so far on a review copy from ABACUSSPIELE, and NMBR 9 feels like nothing at first because of that copying effect I mentioned above. You place the second tile, trying not to look at what everyone else is doing because you're going to do your own thing, dammit, and not be like everyone else — only to look around after placing it to discover that you've all done the same thing. Baa baa!
Over time, though, the buildings start to differentiate themselves. You place a stupid 3 in a possibly terrible situation with the hope that an overdue 1 will appear to allow you to close the canyon and build a solid foundation, while someone else is content to place the flat side of the 3 against other tiles to give them a little more room on which to spread out when building the next higher level. You weigh the 6 in the hand for the immediate 6 points and a narrow foundation for future growth versus the 6 in the bush for a wider foundation that will enable a better range of placements in the future. You hesitate to place a 9 on the ground floor since those points will turn to dust, but as the largest tile in the game (with no holes in it, mind you) that expanse sometimes needs to be buried.
The vacuform tray in the box allows for possibly the quickest game-starting time ever since you need only shuffle the cards and reveal one, with everyone then grabbing the tiles out of the box one by one as they need them. As for games #2 and 3, which inevitably follow the first, you can simply separate your tiles, push them to the side, then get ready to start building 1s again…
Stupid 3s...
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