Disclaimer: This product was sent to me free of charge

Usually when a review game lands on my door, I can trace down where it came from. I don’t have a large media presence, so unsolicited review games are rare, but not unheard of. I debated on even giving this game any oxygen on my website, but halfway through a glass of Bourbon and after two plays of the game, I was feeling a little spicy.

Starting off, the box arrived after, seemingly, been through war. Contained within two bubble wrapped envelopes, every corner of the box was crushed, and there was a hole punched through the back of the box. The text on the back of the box seems as if it was run through Bing translate a few times, and references a sponge that doesn’t exist. The last paragraph is copy/pasted twice. Just, sloppy.

This is every stone provided in the game. No contest.

Inside the box, a plastic baggy holds the string and magnets. The string is simple, yellow. It may as well have been taken off a sneaker. The magnets on the other hand, while they have some slight irregularities in their shape, are smaller than my thumbnail. The instructions were rolled into a tight cylinder, and crammed into the box. Again, the English is awful here. Grammer, typos, referencing the sponge that doesn’t exist, all incredibly poor. For example: “Each player takes turns placing a piece in any groove of the sponge. As you and your opponents take turns in banishment, as theplayers droptheir pieces, there are magnets that are attracted to each other. Youwill then receive the attracted maget piece in your hand,so in the process offalling, you should try.” (typos are not my own).

Thankfully, I already knew of the game that this one was ripping off, Kluster, by Paula and Robert Henning. In Kluster, the magnets are much larger and heavier, with a larger field of attraction. Players divide the magnets between each other and take turns placing their magnet into the rope circle. Should two magnets attract and collide, that player takes them into their hand. The player to empty their hand first wins.

Kluster is a fine game in its own right. It’s a dexterity game that focuses on precision placements, but I find that it lacks some of the tension that I really enjoy in dexterity games, such as the opportunity to make a Hail Mary move that completely swings the final outcome. Instead, what happens most often is when one player places a piece poorly and causes a collision, they may as well just give up at that point because they’re very likely to lose. After all, they have to take all the magnets into their hand, have no opportunity to play more than one during their turn, AND their opponents now have a wide open space to play into. That said, when you place your next magnet, you can slide it against the string to stretch the play area to force some more interaction between players.

Kluster is exciting when the end of the game is nigh, and placing a magnet on the table causes others to wobble ever so slightly. When they collide, the chaos cascades into other magnets in a very exciting way. In Kluster, with the big, chunky magnets, the rocks zoom together with speed and force, crashing, and bouncing across the table, causing more of that chaos. It’s just fun to play. Magnetic on the other hand, with their pea sized magnets, are just so much less effective. They slip together with a tiny click, and that’s the end. All the tension of a limp noodle.

Magnetic is sold on Temu and Amazon for less than $15. This cheap knock off version of the game is not worth your money. It’s listed under a dozen different names, such as Magnetic Chess or Battle Chess, but it’s really not. You cannot trust the pictures on the selling page, as the product you’ll receive is so inferior to Kluster. If any part of what I wrote above sounds appealing to you, pick up Kluster from your friendly local game store. But stay away from Magnetic.