Flight FBG-006 · Board game
Clumpity
The lucky little strategy game where order matters.
Roll four dice and move four pawns around a ring of eight spaces. Land a pawn where others stand and the whole clump pays out in chips. Your score is your scarcest color, so the trick is the order you move the dice.
- 2 or more players
- 15 to 20 minutes
- Designed in 2005
- Play online
- Game designer and artist: Brennan Pope
Play it first: ClumpityFree in your browser, so you know what you're voting for.
Vote for Clumpity to go to Kickstarter first. One vote each, and you can move it any time.
How it plays
Roll, move, clump, collect.
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01
Roll
Roll all four dice: one yellow, one green, one red, one blue. Nobody owns a color. Every pawn on the board is everyone's to move.
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02
Move
Each die moves a pawn of its own color that many spaces, the way the arrows point. You choose which of the two pawns, and in what order the four dice go.
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03
Clump
Land on a space that already holds pawns and you form a clump: one chip for every pawn there, in that pawn's color. A red pawn landing on two blues takes one red chip and two blue.
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04
Collect
Your score is your scarcest color. Reach the goal, 12 of every color with two players down to 4 with six, and the round you're in becomes the last.
Why it works
The same roll, two different turns.
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Order matters
Yellow and green both roll a one. Move green first and it walks off the space yellow was headed for: nothing. Move yellow first and it lands on green: two chips. Same dice, same pawns.
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Balance beats bulk
Only your scarcest color counts, so a pile of blue chips is worth nothing without the yellow to match. And when scores tie, the player who took fewer chips wins.
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Don't leave a clump behind
Whatever you build, the next player inherits. Land on the big clump, then spend your last dice breaking it up before you pass.
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There's no way to roll a seven
Have to leave a clump? Park pawns on the space just after it. From there it's a full lap away.
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Lucky, and little, and strategy
The dice decide what's possible; you decide what happens. In testing, a computer player that weighs every order beats one that doesn't about six games in seven.
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Room for everyone
Two players or a crowd. Seven or more play two rounds, best score wins, and a teams variant lets partners pool their chips and take turns rolling.
Solo, and online
Four ways to play alone.
Every mode below is in the free online version, along with the full game against friends, at one screen or each on their own in an online room, and against computer players, easy or hard, who count as players at the table.
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The Computer Duel
You against one computer, in a race to 12 chips of every color.
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The Hunt
Eight turns to land the biggest single clump you can. A five or six is a normal hunt. All eight pawns on one space, the Überclump, comes about once in a hundred.
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Lone Pawns
One pawn per color, so the order of the dice is your only choice. Six chips of every color; par is eight turns.
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The Daily Puzzle
Four bowls of 5 to 12 chips. Empty them exactly, taking at least a chip every turn and never overfilling a bowl. The bowls and the dice are the same for everyone each day.
What's in the bag
A board, eight pawns, four dice.
- 1 gameboard of eight wedges, C, L, U, M, P, I, T and Y, that fits together as an octagon and comes apart to pack
- 8 pawns: two each in yellow, green, red and blue, starting on the four colored spaces
- 4 dice, one in each pawn color
- Chips in the four colors
The story
Made in 2005, in a cloth bag.
Clumpity was designed in 2005 and never released. The original set travels in a drawstring muslin bag with a paper label, and its one-page rules close with a couple of hints on strategy and a promise: "I've never seen it myself," about the Überclump.
Where it stands
Back in play.
Its rules have been brought up to date: seven or more players play two rounds, a tie goes to the player with fewer chips, there's a teams variant, and four solo modes, each tested in simulation before it was settled. You can play all of it online today, free. Want to see it on Kickstarter? Give it your vote.
Play it first: ClumpityFree in your browser, so you know what you're voting for.
