|| There’s a new edition of Tak out for pre-order right now, and I am not pleased. Weird, right? You’d think that, with all of the time and energy I put into the game and its community, I’d be jumping for joy at this news. Normally, you would be right. But let me explain why I’m less-than-thrilled.
Price point. The sucker is SIXTY BUCKS. $60. Sixty big ones. Sixty buckaroos. For what should be a wooden board and small wooden pieces. Instead, there is no wooden board. But to make up for that, they made three double-sided cardboard boards. Yep. More cardboard. “But there’s new art printed on the--” nobody cares about what’s printed on the cheap cardboard! If you expect people to fork over sixty dollars for your Tak set, you give them a plain, quality wooden board. You don’t give them cardboard.
I'll stop complaining about the quality of the boards. But let’s talk about what’s printed on them. Six different boards, essentially. Nice for variety, you might be thinking. No. You’re wrong. There are three boards that can play 5x5 games, one board that can play 3x3 games, one board that can play 4x4 games, and one board that plays a 5x5 game but you can supposedly fit a 6x6 game if you play on the diamonds that are so close to the edge, your pieces will probably fall off the edge. Before designing, they could have reached out to the community and asked what board sizes people played. Practically anyone in the community would have said that people play 5x5 casually and 6x6 competitively. And no one plays on smaller boards. Boom. Done. But no, they didn’t.
A lot of these issues could’ve been avoided if Greater Than Games had just reached out to the community. We would have said what we’ve been saying for years - we want an affordable Tak set with a wooden board that people can buy for $20, maybe $30. Admittedly, I’m not in the boardgame manufacturing business, but I think that has to be doable. That’s what we need if we want Tak to grow more popular. No one is going to see a $60 game on a shelf in a store and think “Hmm… That sounds like a good deal! Let’s buy it!”
Let’s forget all that, though. It’s still the same fantastic game with the same rules and general design. Wonderful. Except -- they are introducing “alternate” scoring rules. While we have no idea what these alternate scoring rules are, I have to say that I’m pretty upset about them. It’s almost as if my opinions here are following a trend. We, the Tak community, debated the notion of scoring individual games for around three years before we finally came together and embraced the notion of “a win is a win.” Flat win, road win, it’s all a win. Let’s not bring points into this, please.
All that said, the felt-lined foam insert to hold the pieces is a nice touch. Very practical and fancy. Well done. Would I rather have a wooden board and some pieces in a cheap cloth bag for $30? Of course - wouldn’t you?
I know I don’t speak for the whole community, but I like to pretend I do. Do you agree with me? Do you disagree? Share your thoughts and maybe - just maybe - Greater Than Games can hear our pleas for a better future for Tak.