Cheapass' (www.cheapass.com) new "Hip Pocket" Edition of The Very Clever Pipe Game is a cut-down version of their original (1997) game of the same name. The cards are the same size. The rules appear to be the same (except there are no built-deck rules). What is different is that there are fewer cards, and the zip-lock bag would actually fit in a pocket. This version uses 40 cards of the set of 48 cards in a game, whereas in the original game you played with 40 of a total of 120 cards.
The cards are 2x1 rectangles (about 3 inches on the long side), printed in black and white on a thinnish, glossy(-ish) cardstock. On them are two different sets of pipes (black and white), and two different "backgrounds", called fields (light and dark). The pipes come in at the centres of each of the six external sides of the two squares making up each card. The artwork is excellent.
The cards are played from hand onto an imaginary square grid. The most basic game is played as a two-player game with the pipes alone - each player attempts to make closed sections of pipe with their colour, and they get to pick up the cards that made it. The game has some strategic depth, though the random element prevents the strategies getting too deep. Up to four players can be accomodated by using the fields as well.
The game works reasonably well as a four-player game, but is a little more beer-and-pretzels than the two-player version, because the board changes so much before your next turn. The three-player version seems like it should work very well - I tried it that way, but I suspect
that it takes a few more games to get fully used to balancing the tradeoffs involved in having one 'odd' player, who doesn't have someone playing with the same type of object as them. With a single "fields" player, there does seem to be ample opportunity for them to make lots of small two-card pickups that screw with the other two players enough to make it really hard for them to pick up cards themselves, but I can't say for sure that there's a particular bias that way; obviously this is partly compensated for by the fact that if a lone fields player tends to win more often, the pipes players can gang up on them.
The 1x1 empty squares (called pillars) that appear as the cards are laid down this way and that form an important part of the strategy: since pillars close off pipes, strategically forming pillars (or preventing it) is at least as important as choosing which cards to play.
You can also play it two-player using just the fields rather than the pipes. The game has a somewhat different feel to it in that mode. I'm not convinced that it's quite as interesting, perhaps due to the generally smaller but more frequent scoring, but that might just be due to not having played enough games that way.
The rules suggest that a game takes 20 minutes. Their website suggests 30 minutes, but I think 20 is closer once everyone knows the rules, unless you spend lots of time agonising over what cards to play.
The game is extremely simple to learn. Indeed there are only a few actual rules, and they are all fairly intuitive. The strategy can take a little longer to get down!
I have a vague impression that the game seems to play just slightly better than the original. I assume this is because of the smaller card set, which presumably has been selected from the original set for that reason.
If you like abstract strategy games with some depth, you will probably like the Very Clever Pipe Game. If you have the original version, this is basically the same game, and you'd only really need it if you want a version that's handier to carry around (the new format fits into a pocket in my laptop carry-bag, making it handy to carry for a quick lunchtime game).
If you don't like abstract strategy games, you won't like the Very Clever Pipe Game. This game requires a little more thinking than the average Cheapass Game.
Speaking purely for myself, I liked the original Very Clever Pipe Game very much, and the new version is as good, and it's both cheaper and more convenient to boot. I think the Hip Pocket format is a good move for Cheapass, and I hope to see many more games in this format. The Hip Pocket version of the Very Clever Pipe Game is incredible value for money.
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