Reviewed By: Pugilist

Game Name: Clout
Publisher: Hidden City Games
Game Type: Collectible Chip Game (Thrown)
Number of Players: 2
Solo Play Ability: None
Playing Time: 15 minutes
Ages: 8
Game Cost: $9.95 (per 2-player deck)
Booster Chips: $1.99 (2 Chips)
Game Score: 85.6% / 100%

I'd first seen Clout at Origins 2005 and I ignored it.  I saw it again as part of the welcome pack at Origins 2006 and I ignored it again.  In my defense I was doing four or more interviews and reviews a day and spent most of my spare time trying to catch my breath.  All right, that sounds more like an excuse than a defense.  You see, I used all my good excuses long ago and am left with "I was an idiot."  I'm getting tired of using that one though, so I tried the whole "I was busy" thing.  Maybe next time it will work better.

Regardless, luckily the other folks from Spewgilist.com, who were just as busy, remembered that we got Rocketman boosters in the welcome pack from 2005.  We loved Rocketman and armed with the knowledge that we were, after all, getting to try this for free, decided that giving Clout a try couldn't hurt.

One of the best decisions we made while at Origins 2006.

It quickly became the game we played when we had a spare 15 /- minutes.  We played it with two players, with three players, with four players.  We played it in the open gaming hall, attracting folks to watch or join, we played it the hotel room, we played it in the car on the way home (Mini-vans, not only chick magnets, but great platforms for game play.)  Some of the more perceptive may be able to ascertain that this is a huge hint as to how we felt about the game.

So, without even reading the extremely well written and compelling review and descriptions to be included below, you know that we loved the game.  That said, Clout has an acknowledged marketing issue.  I'll give you the standard description of Clout and, if you've never heard of it, you'll scratch your head and shrug your shoulders and move on.  Take the extra five (5) minutes to read the rest of the review.

"Clout is a collectable chip throwing game where your strategy is a combination of chip selection and hand-eye coordination."

Yeah, exactly.

So Clout has a image problem and another, more serious problem.  As a collectible game the value point for booster backs seems skewed. The starter packs come with two (2) 15 chip decks and run $9.95, less than $0.34 per chip and a great price point for a two-player game.  Booster chip packs contain two (2) chips and run $1.99.  It's a tough sell.  If you are willing to buy a box of 36 booster packs you'll drive your cost to around $0.70 per chip for a total of $49.95 for the 72 booster chips.  For people who are used to getting 15 cards for $5 the price point per booster chip hits the "hmmmmmm" point.

Of course the cost of materials for the chips is more than slightly higher than for pasteboard.  Pasteboard, for you unlettered heathens, is the name of the type of paper used to make most CCG cards.  Yes it is an old fashioned term and not in general use, but as I am a cantankerous old coot, I'll use all the old-fashioned words I can lay my tongue on.  But back to the Clout chips.  They are high-quality Vegas-poker type with full color labels on both sides.  They are well constructed, well designed, and visually pleasing.  It's the price point that slows things down.

But there is an important consideration, at least to start.  You do not have to buy a single booster pack to try the game.  You can drop $10 and have a lot of fun with a great two-player game.  I'm going to suspend my normal step-by-step review of a game for a moment in favor of an extended sales pitch.  In the interest of full disclosure, I have no commercial interest in this game.  If you buy it and play it and make it a part of your daily life, I get nothing.  OK, my vast mind control experiment becomes a smashing success and I get to "IN YOUR FACE" the folks at Mythbusters, but that's all.  Barring that, why then am I so anxious that you try this game?

This is a game you can play with your kids, your friends, at family gatherings, over beer and pretzels, over coffee and donuts.  Hell, if you want, get your Significant Other to agree to Strip Clout. 

Do NOT send me pictures! 

Whatever it takes, give the game a try.  If you don't like it, fair enough, call me names and send me hate mail.  I have a feeling it will become a game you use to show folks that a high level of geekdom is not required to get involved with the genre, if you have the gumption (another old-fashioned word for you) to give it a try.

Before we get into the game play and description, let's come up with an alternate opening description first.  Here's my idea:

"Clout is a game of strategy and control.  Assemble and deploy your troops to demoralize and crush your opponents and establish and maintain control of the field in 15 minutes or less.  And remember, gravity is your friend but inertia can be a wily bugger" 

And here's the tagline:

"Clout: Physics, Inertia, and World Domination"

Admit it, that gave you chills.  It's OK, you can acknowledge our awesominity.  That's a real word, just ask us.

So then, how the hell do we actually play the game?  Glad I asked.

Finding a Play Surface

Clout does not come with a board.  There's a reason for that; the world is your board.  OK, maybe not the whole world.  Specifically, it's tough to play in the ocean and a lava field would not be conducive, but certainly just about any flat surface that is not deadly to life through 15 /- minutes exposure.  This is because Clout is the ultimate "play almost anywhere game."  The goal is to have a square meter of flat playing space.  Rather than run to an area conversion website, you can use a square yard.  No. it's not the same, but, just for you, we'll let it slide. 

After you have your space you get to decide how difficult you want to make the game.  A hard surface makes for a more challenging game while softer surfaces present there own challenges but, because of the nature of the game, can be a tad easier to start.  We've played on everything from a Formica counter to an oversized couch cushion.  Each surface was interesting, especially as we switched surfaces between games. 

Building a Stack

There are a couple of limitations when you put your stack of chips together.

1) No more than 25 total Clout points
2) No more than 15 chips
3) You must have a base
4) You cannot have more than one copy of a unique chip
5) You cannot alter you chips in any way, most especially you cannot glue strings to them, sharpen the edges, or cover the flat surface with contact cement.  I won't say that any of the folks playing in our games did any of these things, but they know who they are.

After that, well, it's up to your imagination, counting skills, and ability to connive, scheme, and plan in order to crush your opponents.  That last part is important, that means you win.  I included that just in case some people had not stumbled onto that small fact as of yet.

So, you've found a surface, you've assembled your stack.  What's next?   It's like I can read your mind; I know.  What's next is that you begin throwing your chips.

The first chip you throw - that's right, you throw your chips, please pay attention.  Regardless, the first chip you throw is your base chip.  That serves as, well, your base.  As you can see, the concepts are fairly straightforward.  You throw a chip, your opponent throws a chip, etc, etc, etc, until no one has any chips left.  But there/s more to it than that; of course else the game would have held our attention for all of 3.2 seconds. 

Each chip has a label.  Each chip has abilities.  After you toss your chip onto the playing surface you apply it's abilities to any opponent and/or your own chips near it.  Your goal here is to eliminate or degrade the value of your opponents’ chips on the playing surface while keeping yours in play and of high value.  A wrinkle to this is that chips have different "Clout" values and it is the total of the Clout value that determines who wins a round.

Wow, that was fast.  Is that really the whole write up of the game?  No.  You would be able to tell this if you would have scrolled down a bit rather than complaining.  That's a quick overview of the game and should give you an ideas as to how straightforward play is.

There are a number, a fairly large number, of abilities that chips can have.  I could mindlessly copy and paste them from the Clout website, and don't think the thought hadn't crossed my mind, but, in the end, I decided just to give you an overview of ability type.  Basically, there are immediate abilities and continuous abilities.  Immediate abilities are one and done.  Continuous abilities are, and here's a shock, continuous.  How and when you play your chips makes all the difference.

Each turn you will see strategy shift as you and your opponent try to out play each other and listen to the curses of a throw gone horribly wrong.  Smack talking is a viable option at this point.  This is especially true when you are poised to win and flub the last throw and have to listen to the cackling of your unworthy opponent as they snatch an undeserved victory.  Or, so I've heard that stuff can happen.

The last chip you throw is worth zero (0) points now matter what the Clout rating.  That said, all of it's abilities are still in effect and it can be affected by the abilities of any chip in play.  Once the last chip is thrown and the last effect recorded and the last pieces removed from the board it's time to count up the Clout value of the chips you have on the table.  The important thing to remember when counting up you Clout points is that chip abilities may affect the amount of Clout points tallied.  However, we're only talking about 15 chips total you may have here so this should not take a huge amount of time.  If it does, don't be surprised that your opponent, with one (1) chip on the table, always wins even when you have 10 chips on the table.  It's the new math.

How many rounds make a game?  Decide for your own damn self.  Just make certain you do so before you start playing, else the game may never end as someone tires, unsuccessfully, to win at least one round by constantly changing victory conditions.  Not me of course.

So there you have it.  We ignored the game for over a year, the marketing slogan needs some tweaking, and, to be honest, the price point for boosters is a tough sell.  Even with all of that, this is a great game.  And while I understand some folks have compared this to POG, those folks have issues I cannot address in this article due to advice from our lawyers.  Our lawyers have told us we are not allowed to refer to people who compare Clout to POG or as "jumping onto the poker chip bandwagon" as unmitigated morons who cannot pour sand out of a boot even with instructions printed on the heel, so we won't say that.  We'll stick with the standard: "Spewgilist.com does not agree with those people or sites who have not, in our experience, sufficiently played or reviewed the game to render an accurate or meaningful conclusion or opinion."

That said, if Clout is like POG then Monopoly is the same as Deep Sea Fishing.  They both involve chips in the former and people in the latter.  This is one of the reasons we do not do 15 minute reviews of games.  If a game sucks, we'll tell you exactly why we feel it sucks.  If a game is great, like Clout, we'll give you the reasons you should part with your hard earned cash and give it a shot. 

So, pick it up, give it a try, and learn to love gravity.