Designer: Reiner Knizia

Artist: 平沢下戸さ (Geko Hirasawa)

Publisher: Group SNE

Wiener Walzer as you have probably deduced, has not been translated for the English-speaking market. This is not a game about your favorite Austrian sausage, though ironically, the game does feature the famous sausage. Instead, the title translates as Viennese Waltz. The game was released by Piatnik and followed up by a reprint of the same game in Japan by Group SNE. As you have come to expect from Herr Knizia, this tile-laying game has a set of simple rules, but with some depth in decision-making when choosing where to place tiles. The game is quick and should take no more than 10 min. per player, if even.

Choose your dance partner carefully as points are scored for both parties

So, in Viennese Waltz, each player has a stack of 12 character tiles with an equal number of male and female dancers, ranked from 0-5. The goal of the game is to pair off the dancers in the ballroom so that the dancers can score points. Obviously, the higher the value of the dancer, the more points you will get. The ball room dance floor is basically a grid of square spaces where players can play their tiles. Each turn, players flip over a single tile and place that tile on the dance floor. When a character tile is fully surrounded orthogonally either with other character tiles or with the edges of the board, a dance is initiated between that tile and the highest value dancing partner of the opposite sex. The points between the dancing partners are summed up and scored for their respective owners. So, if a “blue” lady valued at 4 dances with a “red” gentleman valued at 3, then both the blue and red player will score 7 points. In this way, the game introduces a subtle, semi-cooperative element to scoring as players have some capacity to select dance partners depending on tile placement and existing distribution of dance partners. There are also a few neutral dancers in the ballroom to start the game and if a partnership is formed with the neutral partners, then only one player will score points. The most straightforward strategy is to avoid partnering with the current leader on the score track. However, at times, it is fruitful to form any partnership that would score you maximum amount of points. Because if you don’t, others will. Once a dance is completed, the two partners are exhausted and their tiles are flipped over and they will no longer participate in any coupling. This then also allows some strategy for players to flip certain tiles to pave way for a more high-value pairing to emerge. You can think of it as sending your wing man or woman to lure way the posse that surrounds the lady so that you can get the last dance.

Before dancing, don’t forget to eat a balanced meal

Of course the game would be far too simple and one dimensional if points are obtained only from initiating a dance. To make decisions tougher, the entire ballroom floor is covered with buffet dishes. Yep, that’s right, when you send in a dancer on the floor to occupy a space, you also pick up a food token. There is where set collection comes in. There are five types of food (e.g. cheese, sausage!, shrimp cocktail) and if each complete set is worth 5 points. Each food token can have 1-3 units of one type of food, so the most valuable food tokens will generally fly off the board. As character tiles start to fill up the dance floor, the food tokens are being lifted up by players to form sets.

This dual mode of scoring is what drives the decision-tree for the entire game. Do you want to place your tile in a strategic location to initiate a dance or do you want to pick up a food tile? Picking a spot that fulfills both conditions is the most optimal choice, but that does not happen all the time. The decision itself is not complex or time-consuming, but it is also not a mindless game. Some thought must go into deciding where you place the tile, with whom you want to partner up with to score points and can you also maximize set collection. These are the variables that come into play during tile placement. I suppose one could make things even more complicated by allowing a hand of 2-3 tiles to choose from. But for a light-hearted Euro, that should not be necessary.

The tile-laying is clever, but lacks a bigger picture

In a way, Wiener Walzer reminded me of Genesis, another tile-laying game from Knizia that I reviewed recently where players are just placing tiles and scoring points. However, apart from the tile-laying aspect, both games play differently. Genesis definitely feels more complex in calculating how tiles interact with each other to score area majority points at the end of the game. The decisions are higher order with each placement having a broader implications that ripple throughout the entire board. In contrast, the impact of a single tile is felt more locally in Viennese Waltz – perhaps amongst the dance partners huddled in a corner of the dance floor. Because the metagaming is less intense, the game is also more suitable with younger kids. The theme while decidedly pasted on, is also quite charming and apt for the light-heartedness of the game. I mean there are games involving food or dance, but perhaps not in combination. Sure, it doesn’t really make much sense that the food is scattered throughout the dance floor, but perhaps the game is trying to advocate a balanced diet.

In summary

Overall, this is a cute and charming game with Knizia’s fingerprints all over it. It doesn’t get any simpler than flipping a tile and laying a tile, and there are some decisions to be made. The game also comes with a set of variant cards that read more like a last minute “take-that” add-ons to the game. This is very similar to the power cards in Tower of Babel and I would not be surprised if this is a publisher and not designer inspired variants. Some of the cards are completely random and punitive for no reason (e.g. take a buffet tile from someone standing next to one). Perhaps try the game first without any variants. Unfortunately, Viennese Waltz is never going to impress any hard core gamer or even Knizia fans who like his more complex designs. This is a light game that is best with family, maybe with young kids or casual gamers. In that context, I like the game just fine and have a fun time with my daughter picking up sausages from the floor (PS: they are definitely sausages and not cigars as one of the characters is eating them with a fork).

A word on the artwork by Group SNE: the choice of pastel colors with excessive detail to the characters ended up hindering game play in a big way. The color choice makes it incredibly hard to spot patterns on the dance floor – which is pretty much the entirety of the game. The shades of pastel are too close in color and the player character background colors are too muted to stand out. For example, the neutral color white has a bluish tinge that comes too close to match the blue player tiles. To be clear, I am not criticizing the artist nor the illustrations which looks gorgeous. The game is not unplayable, but the decision to use the artwork and combination of colors resulted in players having to spend extra effort to scrutinize the board to differentiate between the tiles – something that is wholly unnecessary and detracts from the focus of the game. This is another example of more is less. With that in mind, the Piatnik version is cleaner and clearer and is the one to get.

Initial impression: Average

Kids Corner

Cora says: I think this game is soooo good! Because the buffet items are cool. Like my favourite is the taco! And I’m also gonna let you in on a little secret, I sometimes just go for the buffet food! (Haha!) I don’t care about the dancing part at all! And I especially like the art and how it matches the numbers. Such as, 0 is not very beautiful and 5 is the prettiest!* I also love how you get points based on the Buffet food! It is cool! *(Of course 5 would be the prettiest, why wouldn’t it be?

Dad says: The game plays reasonably well with an 8 year old. I think the theme is actually pretty helpful in this case to lure them in. As you can see from the response above, the drawings don’t look easy on the eye and unclear what type of food it is.