inconsequential ruminations

We played Showmanager with five people on Wednesday night.

Showmanager is a decent, but unspectacular, welterweight game. It is basically a rummy-like set collection game, but with a great theme. You play the part of an impresario finding performers for musicals. The artiste cards have very funny and very German portraits on them. They remind me of satirical political cartoons, or the cartoonists of Leicester Square in London, or the Charles Bridge in Prague. I have not seen Drunter und Druber, but it seems to have similar artwork.

You have to make tough decisions about what sets to collect, but it is not too analytical and turns shift reasonably quickly.

My only complaint is that it is easy for careless players, or learners, to forget the rule that you have to have two cards left in your hand after every musical. The only fair ways to fix this are to force players to put on a different musical with more cards or to randomly take cards from their hands. These solutions hit scores hard for an easy mistake.

It is out of print and quite hard to find now. There was a later rethemed version called Atlantic Star, about Atlantic steamers, but cannot be as good as it is the theme and artist cards that really make Showmanager.

I probably will not make the effort to get this, as it is a bit too light and gentle for my mob, but it would work very well for families and non-gamers.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 20th, 2004 at 00:46 and is filed under boardgames.