Falsche Fuffziger!

[sniffnoy]

Today Mickey, I, and Sean-who-is-not-from-Vassar played Falsche Fuffziger.

Yes, really.

...hm, I guess most of you reading this now aren't familiar with this old running joke, are you? So Falsche Fuffziger is this game I bought a while back after playing it once at Gil's - the name is in German because the game is in German, because it was never published in English. The game is about counterfeiting - you're counterfeiters all trying to make the most money. Apparently the name literally means "Funny Fifties", but I'm told in German that phrase is also an idiom for "a bad influence". (Anyone who actually knows German, feel free to correct me. And perhaps take a look at the rules and clear up some things for us.)

So I bought this game, but nobody ever wanted to play it, and it became a running joke. (Well, one time other people suggested it, but that time *I* didn't want to play it.) But I never got rid of it. Well I brought it home (beginning to clear out my room, as described in this entry), and today, well, we actually played it.

And I have to say, with only 3 players, it's kind of eh. We need more! It must come out again! (I suspected it might not work well with 3, because it's an auction game, but BGG said it worked OK so we went ahead anyway.)

But now that old joke is at last ended.

(Also, Mickey lost so badly that he posted to Twitter that he'd never gotten owned so bad in a boardgame before. "Um, have you ever played Go?" Aside from that, he said. He was lacking in real money for much of the game and so had trouble buying more presses[0]. It was Sean who actually won, by a lot.)

-Harry

[0]Explanation: You're counterfeiters, so the game deals with both real money and fake money. You need real money to buy your counterfeiting presses, because the people who make them know how to tell the difference!

Comments

[grenadier32.livejournal.com]

It was one of the less forgiving games I've played when it comes to bad starts. :-P I really was never able to recover from the bad start I had, and the constantly increasing costs kept making it worse. I don't know how different it would be with more players though--presumably real money would be spread out more thinly between the players. *shrug*

I'll have to ask Sonia about that title in the near future.

And to perpetuate the running joke: all we really have to do is refuse to play it ever again. ;)

[sniffnoy.livejournal.com]

Unrelatedly, I just realized I think we forgot to turn over an additional card when machines had to be scrapped because the money inspector figured them out.

Also I think it would make more sense to play it with start player going to the next player after you win an auction, not you keeping it... maybe throw in your idea of rotating start player after each money laundering auction too...

[grenadier32.livejournal.com]

I was seriously harmed by the start player not changing in the first few turns--it meant that the start player didn't change until coin auctions even started! Because of that I kept assuming I could never win auctions because of the turn order thing, which of course was a problem that kept getting worse since I had no real money to get more machines and get more fake money to win auctions with.

[grenadier32.livejournal.com]

So a new development: Sonia has offered to do a translation of your original rule sheet. If I can get a copy of it, I can give it to her on January 2. Would that work?

[sniffnoy.livejournal.com]

Oh, cool. Of course, the rules might really be written that badly in the original!

I think also Gil had a different translation; maybe I should see if I could get in contact with him...