PUBLISHED GAMES OF SID SACKSON
(T)
with commentary by Nick Sauer and Herb Levy
Take 5:
This game,
published by Gamescience/ Renwal in 1969, is the
precursor to Sid's later game Fields of Action. It is basically a
multiplayer version of Fields of Action.
The two main differences being the unusual board layout (as seen in the
photo) and, the initial set-up of the game pieces being random instead of fixed.
- NS
The idea of movement ability based on the number of surrounding pieces is brilliant. A more vibrant graphic design coupled with a theme would make this a game worth reprinting. - HL
Tam-Bit:
This two-player game was published by Renwal in
1969. It is a very abstract
game with a dice rolling game system that is very close
in feel to
Can't Stop
and Solitaire Dice.
I like it but, am concerned that it might have a runaway leader problem.
- NS
Tele-fun
Game:
This was
published in 1983 by a company called Market Force for AT&T Information
Systems. I gather that Market Force
was a sort of vanity press company that happened to do board games.
The game
was a training tool for AT&T sales personnel and, was not generally released
to the public. Given that when I
started working for Bell Labs it was still part of AT&T, you would think
that it would have been easy for me to acquire a copy of this game.
You would be wrong.
Given that it was designed to be a training tool first, it actually looks like it might have some potential as a real game as well. The movement system is unlike anything I have ever seen before in that each player has two pawns. One moves on the outer "race track" and the other moves through the central office squares. On their turn, a player rolls two dice and decides which die roll to apply to each pawn so, you have a little more control over your movement than in a standard "race track" style game. The basic idea of the game is to collect orders (read: money) to upgrade your office phone system which, in turn, enables you to collect more orders. One of the neat things is that the game includes cards that are purely color markers for each player to show what color they are playing. There is also a card to show which player is the manager (bank). I would like to try this one out at some point as I was left wondering whether or not this had been a real game that Sid was working on prior to him selling it to AT&T. - NS
Tempo:
This is one of three games that Sid did for Hoyle/Stancraft in 1970. This is an interesting game of capturing pieces where your piece's ability to move and capture is based upon its position relative to both you and your opponent's other pieces. The first player who can not make a legal move loses. I think it’s a neat concept but, seeing what pieces can move and how is really difficult unless you play the game on a regular basis. What adds to this is that the corner pieces have a set of special rules for their opening move that makes me wonder why they just weren't left out of the game in the first place. - NS
Temptation
Poker: 
This was published by Western Publishing in 1982. The game is a fairly straightforward variant of standard poker that allows the players to buy cards (stay in the hand, is actually a probably more accurate description) for steeper and steeper prices. It is a lost Sid classic and in my opinion is desperately in need of reprinting. - NS
Totally:
This was published by Aladdin in 1974. This is another Sid game that I like but find problematic getting people to play. That problem, specifically, would be math. The idea of the game is that one player takes a set of their number tiles and, all the other players then take the same matching set from theirs as well. After this, two number cards are flipped up and the timer turned. Players then have until the timer runs out to build a crossword style pattern with their numbers. Each row and column must sum to one of the two revealed numbers. The scoring system strongly encourages players to make maximum use of their tiles by penalizing them for unused tiles. A number of such rounds are played and, the first player to 500 points wins. It's a really neat game. The other thing I love about the game is the completely sexist cover art that no game company in their right mind would use today. - NS
An oddity here. The rules state that there are 30 square tiles per player and an example used in the rules shows four 1 tiles. However, the copies I have had are complete with 3 tiles each running from 1 to 10! (That makes 30.) There is no fourth 1 tile! This might be an example of either a later edition or a rules change in the game that didn't catch up with the written rules on the box. - HL
Transformation:
A neat little two player game first published by Hoyle in 1971. It is a pattern matching game where players exchange colored stones to try and form one of four distinct patterns to score points. There is a really interesting mechanism for stone trading that prevents players from undoing their opponent's previous play. - NS
Triad:
This was a
game self published by Sid Sackson in 1957. It was the third game
"published" by him chronologically. Poke
was published in Esquire Magazine in 1946 and he published Slam
himself in 1951. Slam,
since it has more rules, came in an approximately 2 by 4 inch white paper
booklet. Both of these games would be reprinted in Sid's book A
Gamut of Games in 1969. Triad
would not become available (except by getting it from Sid directly)
until it was published in GAMES magazine in 1986. It is a double sided
piece of green paperboard as seen above.
The game itself is similar to Mah Jongg but, uses a special deck made from
two decks of cards using the ace through 8 of each suit only. For four players a third set of cards is added. The card mostly details scoring for
the various hands that can be formed. - NS
