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| 24/04/01 Merchants of Amsterdam, Africa |
20/11/01 Liberté |
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| 20 November 2001
Present: Sarah, Richard, Judith, Ron & Bill I know, I know – what happened to the gang? Considering it has been about seven months since the last update, most people would be entitled to assume the group was now well and truly defunct. Well, yes and no. We are not meeting regularly (unless you can call once every six weeks or so regular), and we have lost a core member who has returned to Switzerland. Add to this the combination of summer, toddler fatigue, marriage preparations – not me, you understand, once is plenty – and all those other things which serve to make life the chaos monster it is, has simply meant few games played and little time to write them up. Also, and I don’t know if this is a fact or just my opinion, the seemingly steady flow of good new games has dropped off quite markedly recently, meaning that when we have played, it has tended to be the old favourites. From a review point of view it just is not as much fun to write about an old game. On the bright side, however, I have received emails from supporters who want to see more stuff listed on the site so I will keep it going. Although, for the foreseeable future, such updates will be sporadic at best. Anyway, on with the show. And to celebrate the return of the site, we do have a new game to crow about. The Essen release from Warfrog – Liberté. At last, a new game to play. Some new games are on the shop shelves, but none to really capture my imagination or wallet. This drought had to break eventually so I took a punt on this one, even though I had heard absolutely nothing about it. Some games you simply get a good feeling about. First, the subject matter. I love political/election games. Which is a shame, because there are not that many good ones about. And of those which are good (Diplomacy, Die Macher, Junta, Republic of Rome & Mid-East Peace spring to mind) they tend to be too long, too complex and too cutthroat for an evening’s play. Or they require a minimum of six players to play well. When it comes to the French Revolution the only title I have experience of is the Azure Wish Edition game La Revolution Francaise – something which promised much but is probably pretty near unplayable, the rules being long, complicated and poorly translated – more a treatise than a game. And even if this hurdle is overcome I suspect it would take several days to play to a conclusion. As for Warfrog, I have only limited experience of their output, having bought and played Sixteen Thirty Something a few years ago. This was one of those nearly games where an interesting mechanic did not seem to quite click. But I digress. I almost picked up two of their more recent offerings – Empires of the Ancient World and a Wild West game – the name escapes me – but stayed my hand for no reason other than we were not playing many games at the time. To cut this short, Liberté seemed to be the perfect game for our lot. Playable in a couple of hours, shortish rules, room for skulduggery without condemning anyone to a hopeless position in the early stages of the game and scope for skilful play. Liberté is played out on a functional board. Most of the space is taken by a map of France, divided up into colour-coded regions, further sub-divided into provinces. In addition to the map there are several numbered tracks to show: the turn number, the victory point tally for each player, the progress of elections, the player turn order, who has a presence in government, and who is hoping to lead the Revolutionary army in battle. The board is no work of art, but it does the job. Much prettier are the playing cards which drive the game, of which more later. And of course, huge quantities of wooden blocks to mark the influence of the players, the fortunes of the political parties in the provinces and the positions on the numerous mapboard tracks. The aim of the game is for the players to build up influence in the three factions which are vying for control of France – the radicals, the moderates and the royalists. I suppose players represent behind the scenes power brokers trying to ensure they have influence with the most powerful leaders of the day – Think Rupert Murdoch and you won’t be far wrong, although somewhat nauseated. Each of the four turns of the game ends with an election. The players with the most influence in the victorious faction gain victory points (five for most influence, two for second) and the player with the most influence in the faction which comes second gains 3 victory points. The other source of victory points is the battlefield. Three battles occur during the game and each player has the chance to put forward a general to lead the Revolutionary Army to glory. Whichever player is successful in getting their general appointed will pick up the victory points, which vary from three to five. Later in the game, certain provinces also provide victory points for the player who wins the election there. After the four turns are up, the player with the most victory points wins. All perfectly straightforward. At least it would be, were it not for the delightful twists. These are provided by two alternate sudden game endings which, if they occur, change the victory conditions completely. If the radicals gain an overwhelming electoral victory a radical landslide is declared. In this case the game ends immediately, with victory awarded to the player with the most influence in the red party. Meanwhile, should the royalists gain control of seven of the 12 or so provinces marked CR on the map, then a counter-revolution occurs, and the player with the most royalist influence wins the game. This is an excellent mechanism which provides several strategic approaches, deepens the level of analysis required and allows a player who is far behind on the victory point track to still make a play for the win by pushing for one of the alternate endings. The heart of the game is in the action rounds of each turn, when players use their cards to promote their strategies. The cards come in two types – personality/club cards and special cards. During each round a player may use up to one of each (or alternatively draw cards from the deck to replenish his hand). The personality/club cards are the most common. Personality cards are colour coded to match one of the regions in France and will contain between one to three squares in one of the three parties (red for radicals, blue for the moderates and white for the royalists). The card allows the player to distribute this number of appropriately coloured faction blocks among the provinces of the region which matches the colour of the card. The player then also places one of his personal markers on top of the blocks placed, to show that he controls that particular stack. Each personality also has a name for chrome purposes and, at least to my A-level knowledge of the period, they all seem to be there, from Robespierre to Napoleon. The only pity is that the personalities are basic silhouettes, no real pictures of the people involved – too expensive to produce perhaps? The club cards are slightly different in that they allow only one block to be placed, but it can be placed in any province in France, trading power for flexibility. So, as the action rounds continue, the progress of the individual parties can be monitored as blocks get distributed all over the board. When one party’s set of faction blocks are all placed on the board the final round is completed and the election follows. The party with the highest stack in each province winning one vote in the election (with the exception of Paris, where up to three votes can be won). There are limits of three blocks per stack and three stacks per province, with each player allowed to control only one stack per province. So it can be difficult to judge precisely which party is in the lead, as ties are common, and deliberately so. The player who controls the winning stack takes one of the faction blocks. When the election is over, the player with the most faction blocks in the winning party gets the victory points, with the other victory point positions calculated accordingly. Ties are common, both in the individual provincial elections and between players when calculating victory points. As such the tie breaker method is a crucial part of the game. When a player plays a personality/club card he has the choice to either discard it or to place it in his personal display. Each player can have up to four cards in this display (sometimes five if certain conditions are met). Cards left in the display at the end of the turn are returned to the player’s hand, allowing the recycling of powerful cards and also avoiding the worst excesses of having strategies based on supporting a particular party being dashed by the vagaries of the draw from the deck. Secondly, playing cards from this display is the method used to break ties although using cards in this way will remove them from your display, returning them to the discard pile. At its simplest this involves advancing the card with blocks of the colour of the party in contention, with the card with the most blocks winning the tie break. A similar method is used to break ties between players vying for victory points if tied for influence at the end of an election and for those advancing generals to fight the Revolutionary wars. The other type of card is the special card. These are various events which can be used to remove faction blocks from the board or remove personality cards from the player displays. They range in severity from bread shortages which will see only one block removed form a province, through the guillotine which permanently removes a personality card from a player display to the awful consequences of the Terror card, which both removes a complete stack of faction blocks from a province and also allows the player to execute a personality – vicious. The limit on the terror card is that it can be played only if the present government is radical, which tones down its effect. The other nice touch is that players need a presence in government to play certain cards – gained by winning at least one provincial election for the dominant party – something else to think about. There are other things going on as well which all add to the flavour. The fight for the appointment as general can be nasty and battles can also be lost, which makes a counter revolution more likely. Different parties are favoured as the game moves on – the moderates and royalists to begin with, the radicals later. Except when ties occur, many faction blocks remain on the provinces from one turn to the next, allowing parties to build up ‘heartland’ areas during the game. And all the time you have got one eye on the potential alternate endings, particularly in the third and fourth turns. There are also some good balancing mechanisms. The alternate endings, as already discussed and, in particular, the vulnerability of powerful cards once they are played on the personal display. Tall Poppy Syndrome is a common experience in this game, once a personality’s neck has been stretched out… well, is there any need to prolong the wordplay? The rules seem complete and are certainly manageable. The systems are all pretty elegant but since they are also unusual it does take a while to get your head round them. I think it took us about half an hour to get started, but, like most things, once you start playing it soon falls into place. And it does play well. The first turn saw the moderates pinning back the forces of radicalism and holding off a royalist surge. A position they managed to hold on to in the second turn as the royalists fell away. In the third turn the radicals came out in force, almost engineering a landslide. The radical government ushered in a period of terror in the fourth turn as the personality head count accelerated. The radical grip continued into the last election when the last provincial vote triggered the red landslide. This played into my hands as I had managed to hold back enough red cards to get the majority influence in red and, therefore, the game. There is a lot going on in this game and it took a while before some the strategies became apparent, and I am sure there are still more depths to discover. Particularly in reference the use of the Personal display. There are plenty of decision points and the pace of the game seems excellent, with all players involved all the time. We finished it in two hours which is pretty good for a first run through. Ratings Sarah 9; Richard 8, Judith 7, Ron 8, Bill 8 Sarah rarely gives such praise, Judith was pretty sure her rating would increase the next time it was played and even Ron declared her 8 to be a ‘solid’ one so high praise indeed. High enough for it to be judged necessary to play it again the next time we meet. Of course I have to attach the usual caveat that one playing is not enough to judge whether a game works or not. It is possible there may be a killer strategy or that the result is too dependent on the draw of the cards but I have to say I doubt it. To me it seems an excellent ‘German’ style game with enough in it to make the theme more than just an add-on. The use of the guillotine, the counter-revolution and Radical landslide possibilities, the use of the terror and the Revolutionary army are all important game concepts that have a historical counterpart. But it is not a game trying to simulate history – which is no bad thing at all. Anyway, more on this the next time. Finally, a brief mention for some of the games which have been played since the last update. First off, Wyatt Earp had an airing earlier in the year. This is the Rummy variant which comes off the Mystery Rummy production line. Basically each player is trying to round up outlaws and collect the rewards. These vary according to how successful the outlaw has been in avoiding capture. We had a great time with it. Lots of flavour, plenty of chance elements and a bit of skill. It reminded me in some ways of an old favourite – Grass – where the critical game play comes in collecting a decent combination of cards and timing the play to the point where it will benefit all the other players least (rather than necessarily benefiting you the most). If you like lightish card games, get this one. As for other stuff, well, bought the Friends and Foes expansion for Lord of the Rings, as yet unplayed but looks interesting. The rest of my gaming time has been pretty much dominated by ASL. If you know what this is, then I do not need to tell you any more; if you don’t know, then it is probably best that it stays that way – believe me, you really do not have the time to play this game! 24 April 2001 Merchants of Amsterdam, Africa Present: Alex, Ron, Federico, Bill The Lost Report A bit of a bonus for you lucky punters with this week’s update: the return of the scrap of paper – once thought to be lost forever – with the details of our crack at Merchants of Amsterdam. It is only fair that this game gets a reasonable write-up, it went down like the national dish smothering a belly-full of top quality ale. (Which, for those of you not au fait with our national dish, is a chicken tikka masala.) Anyway, Merchants is Reiner Knizia’s latest take on an auction game, following up on several other of his big hits which use some form of bidding system to drive things along. Again, like these previous efforts – Ra, Modern Art, Medici spring immediately to mind – there is a twist. In this case it is the use of the Dutch auction. This is the seller friendly system where the price starts high and falls, stopping when the first bidder jumps in. To facilitate this system we finally have a Knizia game with a mechanical gimmick, an auction clock. This is a plastic spring-loaded device with a range of prices on its face, from 200 to 0. When it is started the clock hand runs down noisily from high to low, and is stopped when the centre of the dial is pressed down (or smashed down as will happen with a group of particularly excitable types). The clock is a bit fiddly, and feels a little lightweight, but it has survived the first game so worries over its durability might be unfounded. Whatever, I recommend that only one player is given the job of stopping the clock, with the others banging the table when they want to bid. This seems more likely to prolong the device’s lifetime than the method recommended in the rules which suggests everyone sticks their hand over it and presses down when they want to make the price. I don’t know about other groups, but with some of the people I play with this method is just as likely to result in a broken wrist as a knackered clock. Our method also solves the tricky problem of where to place the machine. The ideal position – the centre of the table – is usually occupied by the game board, covered in delicately positioned bits of cardboard which would not survive the first bid without scattering. Still, a gimmick does not a good game make, and fortunately the clock does not overwhelm proceedings but fits in nicely with a game requiring sound judgement, forward planning and the ability to know when a price is simply not worth paying. I would like to discover the genesis of the game. Was Uncle Reiner presented with a job lot of faulty egg timers and told to make a game out of it? Did the idea of a Dutch auction came before the idea of setting a trading game in Holland? Whatever, the theme fits nicely with both the clock and the wider game. In short, each player represents a merchant family trying to trade its way to riches during the 17th Century, the period which charts Amsterdam’s rise to one of the world’s leading mercantile cities. The aim is to become the richest player, and to do this requires building up strong positions in distinct but cleverly interrelated areas. These involve establishing a collection of warehouses in Amsterdam; building a network of foreign trade offices throughout the world and cornering the markets in four commodities – gems, spices, sugar and silk. Fortunately the game ends in 1666, so we are not dealing in the commodities which account for much of Amsterdam’s visible trade in the 21st Century! The game is driven by cards, and it is by grabbing these that the players get to place their tokens on the board in either the warehouse section, the colonies section, or to progress along the commodity tracks. In a turn the player draws cards from the face-down deck, one at a time, deciding the card’s fate after he draws it. He gets to keep one, throw away one and auction one. This can be a tense mechanic as you are often forced to decide whether to keep a card that is only partially useful, or hang tough and hope that the next card is even more useful, but risking winding up with nothing of value. The cards come in four basic varieties. Each one will either allow you to build a warehouse in one of four regions in Amsterdam while moving your token along a commodity track one space; build a trade office in one of the world’s four regions, again, also allowing a one space move along a commodity track; or make three moves in the commodity market. The other type interrupts this process. It is the egg timer card, which moves the dobber around the timeline printed around the edge of the board. Each space on the track will either trigger an event or a scoring round in one of the three areas (warehouses, trade offices or commodity market). When the dobber reaches the final square, the game ends. Players earn money during the intermediate scoring rounds and the final scoring round (which is worth double the value of the intermediates). The twist in the scoring is that the areas which have had the most invested in them (tokens further along the commodity track, areas with most warehouses built, regions with most trade offices) will reap the greatest rewards. Also, because of the links between the three areas and due to various bonuses which are on offer, there is also an element of tactical play when placing tokens on the board. So there is quite a lot to think about. But, best of all, there are the auctions. The mechanics of the game are a perfect background for the Dutch style of bidding. Players want to invest in the most profitable areas, but it is often difficult to gauge how much it is worth spending in order to still end up with a profit. The more areas you want to influence, the more you pay, and, best of all, it is all too easy to get trigger happy and end up bidding far too much for a card which will never repay your investment. Most of the cards which are auctioned will be useful to at least two people, while the others will be keen to talk up the value and put a few wrist twitches in just to get someone to bid too much. And, because of the opaque relationship between investment and results, it is often difficult to assess who is winning the game. Just because a player is ahead on the board, he may well have spent far too much money in getting there. It took about 20 minutes to get the rules down and it didn’t take long before we were in the swing of it. Alex was by far the most aggressive bidder, and seemed to be running away with the game, building up strong positions in commodities and trade offices. I managed to get a lead in the warehouse war, although I was being pushed hard by Federico, while I saw a lot of my investments in the commodity market being edged out by the others. Before the money was counted we were all pretty confident that Alex had walked it, which made the final result a bit of a surprise: Alex 1,120,000; Federico 990,000; Ron 1,170,000; Bill 1,530,000 Well, I wish I could say I had my winning strategy worked out from the start, but it was more by luck than judgement that I stumbled upon it. Basically, I was being outbid by Alex on nearly everything, so I was forced to adopt a more conservative and focused approach, concentrating all of my efforts on one commodity and one warehouse region and keeping out of the bidding on other items. In effect, I won by resisting the lure of the auction clock, which drew the others in. Ratings; Alex 8; Federico 8; Ron 8; Bill 8 It is rare indeed for a game to provoke such unanimous praise. But it is a good game, and definitely deserves it. It comes in at a good time (around 90 minutes), it gives you plenty to think about and works well at disguising the identity of the winner. Tension comes from both the auction clock and the timer cards, which can make a huge difference to the players who are trying to time their acquisitions with the arrival of the intermediate scoring rounds. If you miss the boat here, investments can go well and truly south. Obviously, as in any auction game worth its salt, evaluation is the key to the game. The beauty of the Dutch auction is that it constantly tempts players to pay a high price for an item. It is rare that you will see a card go for a truly bargain price here, something that can disturb the balance in other auction games. A right little cracker then, and deserving of a much higher profile than it seems to have. Will Knizia now call it a day on auction games? Or at least games where the auction is the central feature? I suspect not. But I think he will be hard pressed to exceed this effort.
Moving on to the featured game of the session – Africa. This comes to the table as a result of an impulse purchase – a rare event in the world of instant internet reaction. I hadn’t bought a new game for months when this arrived in the shop, along with Medina, which also looked nice. However, Africa had the much nicer box, it looked weighty, the theme of exploration is one which has a lot of mileage left in it and, best of all, it is designed by none other than the good Doctor himself. The first edition game Source of the Nile holds pride of place in my collection; it is probably the only one actually worth more now than I paid for it back in the late seventies. Although it is pretty clunky in comparison with the sleek design systems of modern German games, it did capture an excellent feel for its subject. Players would mount expeditions to trample blindly through Africa’s interior, negotiating with vicious tribes and crossing vast deserts during the search for the continent’s highest mountain or the source of the longest river. So was this it, one of the World’s greatest designers turning his mind to producing a Source of the Nile for the 21st Century? Sadly, no. And for those of you who might be thinking I must be Reiner Knizia’s love child considering how much praise he gets on this site, I also have to report I ended up a bit disappointed. The game components are sound, consisting of nice plastic explorer figures, little blue plastic tents which act as base camps and loads of circular cardboard discs picturing a variety of animals, nomads, gems, gold, trade goods and monuments. These discs are shuffled and placed face down on the playing board, which shows a hexagonal grid superimposed over a large map of Africa. The scoring track runs around the outside of the map. The game looks good when it is set up and fits the exploration bill nicely, with each player’s explorer figure standing on the brink of a vast uncharted landscape, eager to get going and find out what is under those discs.
The rules are pretty straightforward, although there is one unfortunate error which does not make it clear whether a space with a base camp in it constitutes an empty space or not (perhaps someone could help me out here?). It is soon apparent that what we have is another one of those Knizia games based on different types of scoring systems. And why not use it again? It is an approach which worked really well in games like Ra and Stephensons Rocket – I like quoting the latter game purely on the grounds that it really annoys people who cannot abide the absence of the possessive apostrophe. The aim of the game is to score points through exploration. During a player’s turn he will usually move his explorer 0,1 or 2 spaces, and then undertake an action. Often this will mean flipping over a face down token. Depending on the type of token, points can be scored. A player does this twice per turn. Alternatively he can sacrifice these actions to move his explorer to any other previously explored space on the map.
The point systems vary with the type of counter. The animal token, once flipped, will score one point and can be moved to any empty space on the board where it can be placed adjacent to a number of like animals, creating a herd. For each adjacent animal of the same type, an extra point is scored. Also, a player may choose to move an already face-up animal token to another empty space where it will become adjacent to more of its type than previously, scoring the difference. For example, in moving an elephant from a space where it was adjacent to one elephant to a space where it is adjacent to four, three points would be scored. Nomad tokens use a similar scoring method. In this case, it is getting adjacent to empty spaces which scores the points. Also, turning over a nomad does not score an automatic point. It is only worth something if it moves – cute. Trade goods are a different system entirely. The five different types of goods come in sets of five counters. When a trade good is flipped over, the player grabs it and places it in front of him. He can then immediately swap this good (along with any similar goods he has) with another player who has the same number of a different good. These trades are forced, with the victim unable to stop the exchange. Sets of trade goods are scored at the end of the game. If you can get all five of a set you get 12 points, with a sliding scale down from there for lesser numbers. Gold and gem discs are different again. These can score twice. The player who flips a disc will score one or two points, according to how many gold and gem symbols there are on the disc. The discs can also be mined, allowing the discs to be collected. At the end of the game the players with the most gems and the most gold score 10 points, the second-placed players in the categories rake in 6 points, as for the rest – nada. Finally we have monuments and their associated base camps. Monuments form the game clock. There are 11 monuments in all, and when the last one is drawn, the game ends. On their own, monuments do not score (except the final one, which nets 3 points). When a monument is flipped the player gains a base camp, to add to the two he starts with. Subsequent placement of the base camps scores points in two different ways. At the cost of an action, a base camp is placed in the explorer’s hex. At this point he can either score one point for each adjacent hex which contains a face up token, or he can mine all adjacent gem or gold tokens. And that is the game. The rules take about ten minutes to learn, and each game comes in under the hour. We played two four-player games in around 50 minutes each. So definitely a reliable filler-length game. The two games we played were close. I managed to edge out a win in the first game, largely on the back of my mining exploits, while Ron won the second with a total buoyed with some impressive collections of trade goods. Scores; Game 1: Bill 60, Federico 56, Ron 46, Alex 43 Game 2: Bill 65, Federico 63, Ron 68, Alex 56 So far, so good. ‘What is he moaning about?’, you might ask. Lots of scoring systems, lots of avenues to pursue. Do you go for the merchant option and collect trade goods? Do you try the Sierra Madre Gambit and base your tilt at fame on the use of a shovel? Or can the Meunchenbakker Zoo Opening hold its own against the Wandering nomad power play? If only this were so. The fundamental weakness of the game, for me at least, is that that you do not pursue a strategy, rather the strategy pursues you. You have no control over the type of disc you flip over and the game becomes a race to maximise the scoring opportunities you get. Most of these are obvious. Ahh, a zebra, shall I put it here where I will score 2 points, or here where I will score 5? Doh. Also, the continental playing field is not a level one. Not all scoring potential is created equal and if a player happens to flip over the higher scoring discs, well, there is sod all you can do about it. It would not be fair to say that there is no strategy to the game. There are some tricks you can pull against other players to stymie their progress, particularly where the placement of base camps is concerned, and sometimes the optimum placement of a disc is not obvious. The choice between flipping a token, building a base camp or sliding off to some other part of the continent can sometimes require a little thought. There was even some claim-jumping activity in our second game. In all honesty, however, as hard as I try to find its hidden depths, there really is not much to it. I would be chuffed to bits to be proved wrong, but I suspect this wilI be a wish unfulfilled. The only reason it was played twice was because Ron realised after the first play it was unlikely we would call on its services in future sessions, so she wanted another play out of it just to ease the impact it has had on the joint bank account. Ratings Bill 6; Federico 6.5, Ron 7, Alex 7 These ratings are not that bad, and nor should they be. Africa is not a bad game per se. It is a solid design with no flaws, it moves along quickly, it looks good and it fits well with the theme. It is, however, a true family game, as opposed to a gamer’s game. I should have taken more notice of the ’10 and up’ age range listed on the box. If anything, it reminds me quite a lot of Carcassone in the lack of control the players have. I think the latter game edges the verdict because it makes a better fist of at least making you feel that you have some influence over your destiny, even though this too is a ‘luck of the draw’ type of game. Hopefully I’ll get my money’s worth out of Africa (it has taken a long time to get that one in!) when the nippers have grown up a bit and they are introduced to the horrors of daddy’s games cabinet. |