Clips: An Office Game
This new game is practically guaranteed to make your office job more enjoyable. It is incredibly easily to learn, cheap/free to start, and quite addicting. Consider this your warning. I don’t want to hear any complaints about people getting fired from their office jobs for playing too much Clips. Yes, the game is fun - its designed to be that way, but you gotta show some self-control, man!
Quickstart:
The play of the game is similar to dice except that binder clips are used in the place of the dice for obvious reasons; what would your boss think if he saw you throwing dice in your cube? Two small binder clips are used as the only game pieces. The game is played by two people who alternate turns of “Flipping” (or throwing/rolling/dropping) both clips onto a hard surface (desk, table, or floor). Points are scored depending on how the clips land. There are only three possible ways for a clip to land. These positions are:
flat - worth 1 point per clip
leaning - worth 3 points per clip
upright - worth 5 points per clip
The first person to 30 wins. However, each player must have the same number of rolls (if the first player reaches 30 points the second player still has a roll left to match or beat the first).
In Depth Instructions:
While genius in its simplicity, Clips also has some complexity to it. Here are some clarifications to the rules and extra instructions.
After the first player throws, and the point values for both clips have been added, it is then the second player’s turn. After, he has thrown and his points counted, one “round” has been played. Play continues in this fashion, adding the current round’s scores to the previous ones, until a round has ended with one or both players scoring more than 30 points. If a round has ended with both players scoring above 30 points, the player with the highest score is the winner. So, reaching the score of 30 does not necessary equal victory. If the first player reaches 30 points on a roll, then the second player still has a chance to catch up as the round is only halfway over (i.e. each player has the same number of turns). If a round has ended with both scores above 30 points and are tied, then a “sudden death” will serve as a tie-breaker.
In the event of sudden death, each player takes 1 clip. Both players throw their clips at the same time. The player with the highest score is declared the winner of the tie-breaker and the game. If the sudden death results in another tie, players continue to be in sudden death until someone wins.
Clips is already being proclaimed an instant classic. It is my ultimate goal to spread the news of this game, and have every office in America playing by this time next year. Enjoy.
Inspired by Pass the Pigs?
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00005JG3Y/104-1100809-1414307
Try it with 2 clips.
Comment by Gary — December 9, 2005 @
I can see the possibility of jazzing this up a bit. Give people the chance each time they roll the clips of picking one, both, or none of them to roll again. Scores higher than 5 are achieved by getting combos, like 1 leaning and 1 free standing = 20. 2 free standing = 40, etc.. the target score could be raised to 100. This would add an element of skill and decision making into it, a bit like yahtzee, rather than just what seems like pure randomness of it otherwise.
Comment by Luke — December 11, 2005 @
cool idea Luke. There are all kind of expansion rules you can add to this game - like your “combo” idea. We even have something similar to that at my office. “Six the hard way” is when you roll the clips and they land on leaning (3) and leaning (3) for a total of 6 points. Once that happens, the roller has the option to take one of those clips and go for a bonus role. If the bonus clip is a 3 or 5 we double it, but if the clip is a 1 then we subtract it from the score. Its risky I guess, but it could pay off big.
But I assure you, there is definately some skill involved in this game. The guys at my office all have their own throws that they claim guarantee them better scores.
Comment by leadingzero — December 11, 2005 @
I can see that this WILL soon be in the winter Olympics! Not the summer Olympics, but only because “pass the pigs” already made it to the summer Olympics and we can’t have the same type of games in the same Olympic season. If you were a hard core clips gamer you would have already know this. I used to kick ass at “pass the pigs” so I can only see that some day I will be receiving the winter Olympics gold medal…some day. I have to go train now by having a large half-naked, very hairy, man whip me on my back if I fail to roll a “Six the hard way”. It is truly the hard way. See you at the Olympics!
Comment by conedude13 — December 12, 2005 @
LOL, good luck conedude. However I hear the competition is going to be pretty steep
Comment by leadingzero — December 13, 2005 @