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Vinci
Players 3-6
A product of the French school, Vinci has already won many plaudits since its release last year, including the award of the Sim D'Or from its native game industry. Of the three games mentioned above, Vinci is closest in feel to History of the World, although the resemblance is largely superficial. Vinci is played over a map of Europe, with all place names removed and divided into forty odd provinces. Each province is distinguished by one of five strong colours to represent different terrain and a scattering of symbols denoting the presence of mines and ports (see the illustration). The board has everything you need to play the game, but it is quite a bold statement. Some people will hate its colour combination and/or its deliberate minimalism, others will see it as a style accessory. It does not really bother me one way or another. The purpose of the game is a familiar one. You guide a collection of civilisations, one at a time, through a period of expansion and decline. Through occupying provinces and grabbing the specific resources sought after by your people you will score victory points. These are recorded on the ubiquitous board edge track. Once someone reaches the agreed point limit, the round continues until everyone has had the same number of turns and the person with the most points wins. The empire expansion method is straightforward and diceless. Each civilisation comes with a set number of pawns, which will usually enter the board on one of the provinces on the outer edge. To conquer a province a player simply has to have the requisite number of pawns; a number determined by a simple calculation that takes into account both terrain and the number of defending pawns. Once one province has been conquered, the player can continue the invasion with the pawns he has left, marching through provinces until he runs out of steam. A pretty simple game then? Well, yes, I suppose it is. But there are some nice tweaks to give Vinci a unique flavour, particularly in the methods used to handle civilisations. Vinci makes no attempt to impose history on the players. Rather, the civilisations available are randomly generated from set of tiles. Each tile will indicate a particular ability or scoring bonus and a number of pawns. A civilisation is made up of a pair of these tiles, drawn from a bag. Six pairs will always be displayed face-up on the board, available to be selected by the players. This is an excellent piece of design which seems to work really well. With over twenty different types of civilisation tile there are many combinations which can appear, all with their own strengths and weaknesses. There is plenty of scope for an expansion set here, I suspect. My one quibble is on the production front. Why did the manufacturers only include two reference cards outlining the meaning of each tile? The cards are an essential reference and, in a game that can accommodate up to six people, it seems pretty tight-fisted to insist that cards are passed around all the time when it would have been simple to include one for each player. After all, this is not a cheap game. Some of the civilisation tiles are stronger than others. Some combinations seem guaranteed to generate a bucketful of points whereas others are destined for an appendix in the history books. There are, however, several ways in which the powerful tiles and combos are balanced. To start with, the tiles bestowing the greatest advantages usually grant a player only a small number of starting pawns, limiting expansion. Also, to get your hands on an attractive tile pairing will often mean sacrificing victory points to do so, while the less powerful civilisations may also carry victory point bonuses for the player who takes them on. This is one of the central mechanisms, and is worth explaining in more detail. At the beginning of the game the six random pairings are laid on the board in the spaces provided, labelled one to six from left to right. As civilisations are picked the tiles are moved to the left to fill up the space and a new pair is added to the number six spot. When it is a player’s turn to pick a new civilisation he can grab the tiles in position one at no cost. If, however, he fancies something further down the line he can have it, but at the cost of two victory points per space passed over. So it will cost ten VPs to grab the tiles in space number six, for example. Also, each pair of tiles passed over in this way gains a token. This token will be worth two victory points to the player who plays the civilisation. These tokens accumulate according to the number of times the civilisation is skipped. It is a simple mechanic, and it works. In a game where victory point totals tend to be pretty tight the decision on how much to pay out for a potentially powerful civilisation is a crucial one. Even the crap tiles will become attractive eventually. It is pretty difficult to imagine any combination that will not be worth playing if it grants an automatic six victory points, for example. The choice of civilisation is one crucial decision the player makes during a game of Vinci, the other – I would argue there are only two – is judging when to stop promoting one civilisation and start afresh with a new one. This is known as putting an empire into decline and the winner of the game will generally be the one who has best timed these decisions. Put simply, a player will usually declare his empire to be in decline at the beginning of his turn. In doing so, he forgoes a turn of expansion while being able to choose a new civilisation to bring on to the board in his next turn. As for his declining empire, this stays on the board, weakly defending its provinces and usually providing a prime target for other players’ more vigorous nations. Until they are conquered, however, a declining empire will still score for its owner. If left alone, these declining empires become an important source of points. The decision on when to go into decline is not always an obvious one and a player can be tempted to go on too long with an active empire due to a reluctance to give up a turn’s expansion. That is pretty much it. There are a couple of other rules such as keeping an empire together and not moving your new empire next to your old one, and these will have an impact on the shape of an active empire’s progress. Generally, however, the tactical play is pretty straightforward, although mistakes can be hard to recover from, so care is required. The areas your civilisation will need to conquer to maximise point revenues are not difficult to spot and empires will usually expand along paths of least resistance, unless other concerns get in the way, such as your old empires, revenge, or the call to knobble the leader. The Kingmaker syndrome is certainly alive in Vinci. It is usually pretty easy to spot who is in the best position and it is possible to haul them back through concentrating attacks on them. Even a player who is doomed to the also-rans can have a crucial say in who goes on to win the game. It is rarely a game winning tactic, however, as attacks against a leader will often mean ignoring the most efficient use of your pawns in scoring points. So, a pretty straightforward game with enough novelty, flavour and decision making to keep it interesting. At least, up to a point Lord Copper. I am still to remove the uncomfortably positioned fence post on this game. There is no doubt it works, it is balanced and it is a useful addition to this particular family of games. Yet, after three plays, I have to say it has hardly grabbed me by the throat, demanding I play it again. Its basic problem was the drag factor. With five and six players there was just a little too much downtime between turns and it went on for a bit too long for what is a pretty light game. The jury remains out, however. Perhaps four players, rather than five, might be its optimum number. Even with the drag, Vinci still plays in less than half the time it would take to get through History of the World and is a smoother design to boot. I have to admit that the earlier game’s use of real civilisations still gives it a substantial flavour edge. Try as hard as you like, but Vinci will never make you feel you have surpassed Alexander’s achievements or kept the Roman Empire alive long enough for its citizens to enjoy Monty Python on the television. Provisional rating 7.5
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Risk,
Civililisation, History of the World: three seminal games from different
eras, each with its own spin on the sweep of empires across the board.
While very different games, they all provide a dynamic visual effect as
nations expand and contract alongside player’s fortunes. Vinci is the
latest addition to this family, and, appropriately, brings some
streamlined abstract elegance to the table. A reminder, as if any were
needed, of the current direction of game design.