A little over thirty years ago, Wolfgang Kramer was traveling back across the border from Austria, when he and his wife were delayed because he was picked out by German border security for a luggage search.  Although they didn’t find any contraband, they did find Kramer’s export license, so they asked him to pay for their only purchase, a new pair of ski boots bought in Austria.  Scarred, or perhaps inspired by the experience, Kramer began developing a new game called “Hot Goods”.  In this game, at customs, players realise that someone has planted ten “Hot Goods” on them, so they try to get rid of them by throwing them at their fellow players.

– Image by boardGOATS

Happy with the prototype, Kramer took this to Amigo Spiele who were equally enthusiastic about the game, though less inspired by the theme.  As a result, smuggling across the border was dropped in favour of a purely abstract game, illustrator Franz Vohwinkel added the now iconic bull’s head artwork (which is still in use today), and thus, the game became 6 Nimmt!.  To mark its thirtieth anniversary, Amigo have released a new edition, with standard rules to for ten players, four new cards contributed by the general public, and a new cooperative variant.  Although these are guaranteed to add interesting variety to the old favourite, it seems unlikely that they will improve on the perfection of the original, crazy-fun-filled game.

– Image by boardGOATS