Naked Passo game for two in review, criticism and testing

Elegant box, beautiful material, simple rules > pure strategy for two players. This is Basso by Clemente Moses and Steven Mühlhauser (Steven Spell).

Basso: The structure of the game

It couldn't be easier: The game board is made up of 25 pieces in a 5 x 5 grid. The five red and black wooden letters are placed on the baseline.

Basu rules

On your turn, you can move one of your tiles to an adjacent space, even diagonally. Even if there is a maximum of one or two disks in the field, I can transfer my token to it.

All tiles below are blocked and cannot be moved again until they are freed. If the last disc is drawn from one of the game squares, that square is removed. The game plan becomes progressively smaller and the opportunities for movement become less.

Whoever reaches the opponent's side of the court first or passes the puck furthest to the other wins in Basso! If no one succeeds, the last player who can still move is the winner.

It is strategically important, on the one hand, not to let the opponent get in your way, and on the other hand, to make sure that your goals are not isolated as the game plan becomes smaller and smaller.

Conclusion on Basu's review: I underestimated it

Obviously I underestimated Basso's potential in the first few matches. It becomes more strategic with each round, and if both players are roughly equal in strength, it becomes an interesting strategic exchange of blows.

I'm rarely in the mood for purely abstract strategy games. However, Basso provided my husband and I with some great games on vacation. We played a game each day, which can also be played briefly in between, and decided the overall holiday winner. We both especially enjoyed trying different strategies little by little.

Advanced grammar

If both players are familiar with the basic game, each player can choose three of six different effect tiles and make the game more diverse: effects range from “You can move this disk twice” to “Put a game board tile that has already been removed back into the game plan.” . However, we played without these rules. Because we liked and challenged the simple, straight-forward placement of game pieces well enough.