Pipeline

Pipeline is the sort of title I keep wanting to put back on the table, even though I know exactly what it brings: a little fuss, a lot of staring, and players looking at their boards as though they have been personally insulted. It is a good game. It simply makes no effort to be convenient.

This is Tetris with pipes, and every piece that refuses to fit the way you pictured it makes you reconsider the whole plan. Play is a constant balancing act around your network: build, adjust, hunt for the neat connection, then realise that the neat connection belonged to two decisions ago.

The new goal cards in Emerging Markets add the right seasoning because they are odd enough that you have to work out what, precisely, they expect from you. That is where the interaction lives: everyone is pursuing their own crooked little plan, while the table watches to see who has genuinely solved something and who is merely moving pipes around with the expression of a person who definitely has this under control. The rulebook earns a brisk B for the patience the whole affair demands.

It will not suit everyone; somewhere, Horseless is laughing. Every so often, when everyone wants to play Tetris with pipes, Pipeline is exactly as good as it needs to be.