A college student carrying a lacrosse stick draws my attention as a fan of the sport.
A nice chess board on a table catches my eye as a board game fan too.
It’s also neat that two of the main characters on the fine Brit TV show Grantchester often head to the pub for a brew and a game of backgammon.
So recently when characters Fatima Namazi, (Medalion Rahimi) and Devin Roundtree (Caleb Castille) were seen on an episode on NCIS: Los Angeles playing a game using magnets that I had never seen before I was more than a little curious.
There was of course a chance the game was some TV script creation and was not really a game at all, but that frankly seemed like more work on the writer’s part than they were likely to out into a weekly TV drama.
The game was played with magnets, or small magnetic stones to be more precise, and a Google search with that as a guide quickly got me to the game Kluster.
Kluster is a dexterity game for one-to-four players, where each player is trying to empty their hand of magnetic stones (12 in a two-player game) by placing them inside an area defined by a chord laid on the table – it comes with the game.
On a turn you place one stone inside the area delimited by the cord. The trick though is that magnets attract and if in placing a stones pieces already on the table come together, or ‘kluster’ you collect the klustered stones meaning you have more to place in order to win.
The game rules can be taught in a flash, and the games too are quick, so this one is a coffee time dream.
It’s also a wonderfully frustrating game, but in a good way – in large part because it plays so quickly and you will want to try again and again.
There are really simple solitaire rules too which are fun.
Kluster was the first game from designers Paula and Robert Henning, although they did note in an email that more are in the works.
As for their magnetic gem the duo noted “Kluster was an accidental game.
“We weren't trying to develop a game, it just kind of happened. After we wrote down some rules for Kluster, we thought how cool it would be to get a ‘tabletop’ game out there for people to enjoy playing together, instead of on an electronic device.”
They explained, the idea came in 2006 at a friend's dinner party, in Lake Arrowhead, CA.
“He (the friend), brought out a handful of the hematite magnets and didn't know exactly what to do with them. Robert flipped over a ceramic platter and told everyone to try to get rid of their magnets without letting any of them cluster together. We still have the rules I noted on a napkin,” explained Paula.
“After the original idea in 2006, we shelved the game for about eight years and ran another business, but that's another story.”
You can check Kluster out at www.mjgames.ca or www.borderlineeditions.com
