Musical Chairs in its newest form: TamBuzi

Review of Tambuzi by Haba
https://www.boardgamequest.com/tambuzi-review/

Leo sent a gift to the Johnson children: a board game variation on musical chairs.

Now musical chairs, itself, usually sends someone to the other room crying, or having another child fall to the floor having been pushed there by another more aggressive participate in the game, or it might involve someone with a record player, having to turn his face away from the game, so that taking the needle out of the groove doesn’t advantage one of his friends to win.

At least that is the way Musical Chairs was played years ago.

Leo couldn’t not buy the game. It was regular $50.00 for $5. OK. That made the price of the game tolerable.

... the game set p and ready to go ...
... the electronic bongo buzzer in the middle and ready to go ...

Mary and I played the game once last night so that we could refresh our minds with the rules. 

We took our time, since knowing how the game was played before (in real life) didn’t help us all that much.

We were sure that there had to be two rules when we played with the children.

No crying.

No touching the game board if it isn’t your turn.

With that we were armed the next day with the rules in our hands and the children by our sides.

The children were super thrilled to play the game of musical chairs in its board game form, shouting out TamBuzi.

One of the good points about the board game is that at least a participant gets two turns to loose before they are right out of the game. That was one good outcome.

The second is that the equivalent of taking the time keeper’s arm off of the phonograph is now a timer which can be made to flash with only with lights, or sound as though it is lightening, or growl as though it is an African jungle animal.

Now that is quite the time keeper.

The third good rule in the game is that the scoring is a little more difficult, making the participants needing to add a column of figures at the end of the game, which no one except Michael  can do yet, so the melt down over loosing can only occur when that part of the game happens, and which we just didn’t allow time for.

For out test with the children,  Mary and I decided to start the timer with the least aggressive sound and work our way up to death by lightening. Silence was the first mode of the timer.

“Ahhh,” the children wailed, thinking they were ready for the whole “African death by safari” sound at the outset of the play.

We had our characters jump around the board for just 30 minutes and then supper was ready. 

TamBuzi might not be the best pre-supper game to play, if parents are wanting a calm 30 minutes before eating begins. But we did have the advantage of knowing we can play the game tomorrow evening, so back into the box the pieces went before a winner was declared.

The analysis of the advantages of the game as declared by Mary and Arta?

Well worth the $5.

Arta