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Jamaica | ||||||||||||||||||
| 07.03.08 It is commonly known that pirates have their base in Jamaica, and, being the unrestrained bunch that they are, they love senseless relaxations. At the time we arrive, they are about to organise a boat race around the island; the contestants may rob each other from their possessions but they are also able to dig up bonuses that are hidden along the course. Well, count us in; we put our ships at the starting line that also acts as the finish after the island has been rounded. Each player gets a card board that represents the cargo holds where he can store his gold, food or gun powder. The active player begins his turn with throwing two dice and decides which goes with the morning action, and which with the evening action. All players have their own set of player cards; at game start they have drawn three from this blind stack. From these all simultaniously choose a card, but the active player opens his card first and performs the actions on it. The left symbol is for the morning action, the right symbol for the evening action: moving forward, moving backwards, or taking food, gold or gun powder, as much as the throw of the die for this action. Players do not know what others have chosen; will green be moving and go for the treasure? Or will I play the card that gives me a lot of gold, as the 'evening die' is a '6'? At the treasure locations a blind treasure card may be drawn; these give plus or minus points but also extras such as an extra cargo hold, or two additional points on the die in a sea battle. When a player ends his move with an other ship, a battle is fought and the attacker throws a special battle die. First he could have added gun powder chits wirth each chit counting as an extra point on the die. Doing this makes sense, as the battle die has values ranging from 2 to 10, so the outcome can be very fickle! Luckily the die also shows a star which instanly settles the fight in favour of the thrower. He gets rewarded and may take the contents of one hold of the defeated opponent which goes to an empty hold of his own. If he has no empty hold, he must empty one, but not containing the same kind he just has taken from his opponent. Treasure cards also may be robbed. Food is necessary at most spaces, at some places the crew unexplicably has a greater taste than elsewhere! And the little harbours demand solid transit duties in gold, so gold too is needed to complete the race. When a player lands on a space that he cannot pay the duties for (gold or food), he has to go backwards, one space at a time, until he can pay, or until he lands on a free space (and eventually take the treasure there). Meanwhile possible sea battles also have to be fought. When the first pirate has reached the finish line the game ends, and all players count their gold and the (minus) points from their treasure cards. 'Jamaica' is a very nice and easy accessible family game that also will be to the heart's content of the seasoned player. The atmosphere is good, and the beautiful cartooneque drawn cards in line with the French style of strip drawing contribute to this. The lower limit of thirty minutes playing time is unrealistic; a game takes just over an hour. Either way, short or somewhat longer, with 'Jamaica' you will have a good time! Jamaica, Malcolm Braff, Bruno Cathala & Sebastien Pauchon, Pro Ludo, 2007 - 2 to 6 players, 8 years and up, 30 - 60 minutesxxtop  |
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Im Jahr des Drachen | ||||||||||||||||||
| 01.09.07 It is the Year of the Dragon, therefore the game lasts twelve months. During these twelve rounds you try to score as many points as possible, by building palaces, pleasing the gods and at the same time try to cope with the calamities in this year of the dragon. The gameboard consists of two score tracks, one for the victory points and the other one to keep track of priority. The priority track determines the order in which the players take turns. Also there is space for the workers whom a player can engage in its palaces and a space to put the action-tiles. The events for each month are laid face up. Each player gets two palaces consisting of two levels and some money. A player also gets a set of cards, on which the workers are depicted (one for each type of worker) and two cards with a question sign that act as wild cards. Each round consists of four phases: an action phase, an employ worker phase, an event phase and a scoring phase. In the action phase the players, in order of priority track, choose an action. There are seven actions to choose from: • Collect taxes: you receive two coins plus the amount of coins as represented on the tax-collectors in your palaces. • Books action: you gain one point plus points equal to the books the wise men in your palaces carry with them. • Harvest rice: you receive one rice plus one rise for the number of farmers which are in your palaces. • Produce fireworks: you receive one fire arrow plus one fire arrow for each fireworks maker who is employed in your palaces. • Samurai: increase your influence on priority track equal to the number of samurai that in your palaces. • Privilege: buy a privileges which scores points at the end of each round. • Build: construct palace parts equal to the number of construction workers which are in your palaces. Furthermore a player also can choose not to take an action and refill their money up to three coins. When an action already has been chosen the other players still may choose the action, but have to pay three money. Each turn action tiles are placed on the board. Depending on the number of players some are laid down as a pair. If a player chooses a pair, he can only perform one action but both actions are considered as used. In the worker stage, each player plays a card from his hand and adds the concerning worker to a palace. The card is discarded. Because each card is only represented once beside the two wild cards who can be used for any worker, there is a limit on the number of each worker a player can employ. Beside the aforementioned workers, a player can engage medicine-men to protect his workers from epidemics. He can also employ a geisha, who at the end of each turn scores a victory point, and Mongols who raise the value of palaces at the end of the game. Several workers come in an experienced variety, these experienced workers have more powerful properties, i.e. experienced farmers produce more rice during the harvest action. Each worker also has a number on his card by which a players score on the priority track increases. When he employs this worker, experienced workers have less influence on the priority track. The number of workers a player can accommodate is limited by the space in his palaces: 1 person per palace level, with a maximum of three levels per palace. The number of palaces however is unlimited. In stage three the event takes place. There are six types events, which each take place two times. In the rest event nothing happens. In the emperor event the kings collects taxes, and each player must pay four coins, if he cannot pay the four coins he has to sacrifice one person for each coin he cannot pay. This also goes for famine, where each player must pay rice equal to the palaces he owns. If he does not have enough rice, he must sacrifice one person for each rice he does not have. During the epidemic three workers die, but for each medicine man a player has in his palaces one worker is saved. During the fireworks display the player with most fire arrows gets 6 points, with the second place getting three points. In the samurai event, each player gets points for his samurai. The player with the lowest samurai number must sacrifice one worker. Should palaces become uninhabited by the loss of workers one level erodes of that palace. Finally at the end of each round, players score points. Each palace scores one point, as do the geisha's and the bought privileges. At the end of the year there is a final scoring round, with each person that survived worth two points, and each palace worth one point per level for each Mongol which is employed in that palace. Each set of three coins also is worth one point. Needless to say, the player with the most victory points wins the game. 'Im Jahr des Drachen' is a nice game where you constantly must be aware of your resources, workers and upcoming events. Do I choose the tax action to be able to pay the king, or should I harvest rice to protect my workers from starvation, or must I expand my palaces to be able to employ more workers? Apart from these hard decisions a player must take into account that if he is not the first player to choose an action he has to pay for it. Anticipating the upcoming event is mandatory; e.g. a player has a more effective harvest if he builds the farmer in the previous turn. The events follow each other rapidly and one can only employ one person and take one action each turn. It is therefore inevitable that players will have to sacrifice workers at some point during the game. A player sometimes can sacrifice workers that have become useless: medicine men are useless after the second epidemic has happened. On the other hand: each worker is worth two points at the end of the game… 'Im Jahr des Drachen' offers very interesting choices each turn. As in every good game, you would like to take more actions than you are allowed to. This game leaves you hungry for more! Marijn Vis - based on playing the final prototype Im Jahr des Drachen, Stefan Feld, Alea / Ravensburger, 2007 - 2 to 5 players, 10 years and up, 60 - 100 minutesxxtop |
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Jenseits von Theben | ||||||||||||||||||
| 19.04.07 If there are treasures to excavate, we are first in line! Ofcourse this is done for honour and glory only - we are no grave robbers, or closer at home, art-dealers looking as if butter wouldn't melt in their mouths. Some infamous inheritors additionally throw in their ethnical past persecuted background into the unethical battle, but ultimately it all is about money, and not about rights or rehabilitation. Besides: if everything in the world went fair, the pyramids never would have been built if it were not for the slaves that carried the bricks, or at the cost of devoutly souls the most splendid cathedrals would not have been erected, or, more contemporary and on our own farmyard, we could not enjoy our daily cup of coffee that cheap! So, it serves them right! Well, the levelling and lazyness encouraging socialism does not work, the unscrupulous capitalism has its transgressing downside too - shall we try the sharia for a change then? Fame, it is a nice concept, but ultimately we want to convert it into cash or get better from it! This is possible after we have done between two and three years of research and excavating in the game; the collected items are then transferred into points. On a map of Europe we start in Warsaw, and move from there to various other European cities to make our knowledge of old cultures more profound. This takes time, each move to a city takes a certain amount of weeks, as does the reading of the books in the libraries. How much time the study takes is stated on each book card. The book card, or other helpful resources, is put in front of us, and this leads to growing information on Greece or Mesopotamia, for instance. When satisfied with enough information, we travel to the site and put our shovel into the ground. On an 'excavation disc' we rotate the window towards the amount of knowledge; after that we decide how many weeks we would like to stay at the site to excavate. Cross indexing this gives a number of times that we may try our luck in a cloth bag of the site, where the treasures of the site are hidden under the sand. The more knowledge we have collected in advance, the less time it takes to grabble a greater amount of times in the bag. The player who is researching or does an excavation advances his marker on the calender and takes his turn again when he takes the last position on it. This way it could happen that a player takes his turn more than once after another, or, the opposite, that he leads and has to wait several turns until the others catched up with him and he is the last on the calender again. It seems as if it matters much: the collecting of knowledge through collecting books, to consequently start excavating. But this tactical element is blown away completely by the totally random disc grabbing from the bags. One player may have luck and draws three out of five treasures, while another player just before him, with the same amount of draws, draws five sand discs. This all seems very hilarious at first, but gets very coincidental and frustrating in the end. Because of this, the game falls apart into two styles: in the first part of the game there is a tactical element of where to go and what to collect regarding knowledge, and for what site a player would like to emphasize his knowledge; whilst in the second part, the excavation, the game deteriorates into a lottery where in fact it does not matter that much how much knowledge a player has collected. These two parts: tactics versus lottery, do not match together. This soon ends all of the fun, and this is a real, real pity. Because 'Jenseits von Theben' is a beautiful and with much attention produced game: the illustrations are moody, the excavation disc is a nice gadget, and the excavation sites all have their own colour cloth bag with a silk screen illustration on it. For the art interested there is a full colour leaflet enclosed with information on the treasures. The conditions are good and the expectations made; it is only that the built up tension during the game deflates like a sudden flat tire. What stays is the frustration: it appeared to become such a wonderful day at the beach, I nearly made it, but instead I have to walk the whole way home with sand between my toes... Jenseits von Theben, Peter Prinz, Queen Games, 2007 - 2 to 4 players, 8 years and up, 60 minutesxxtop |
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Imperial | ||||||||||||||||||
| 06.03.07 In Imperial, we all take the role of a country and try to earn money, right? Well, this is only partly true. We rule one or more countries in order to make the most money with them, but we should not hang too emotionally on England, France, Germany, or one of the other four countries in the pre-Great War era. If they perform bad, we try to invest in other countries. We act more as unscrupulous investors than as leaders of a nation. In this regard we do not differ from contemporaneous companies such as Google, McDonald's or other large industries that invest in China; they are not for nothing very aptly named multinationals. As it’s not the government that rules a country, it’s the money - and it seeks the largest profit for investment, human rights or not! At the start of the game, which player will take which country is randomly determined and the ‘owner’ pays the necessary money for it to take interest in it in the form of bonds. This entitles him to act for this country, taking decisions such as raise taxes, build factories or armies, move armies, and so on, but only as long as he is the greatest investor for this country. As soon as another player takes a greater interest in bonds, that player takes over the country and decides which action to take for it. Players get income by raising taxes: for every neutral territory (land and sea) and each unoccupied factory they collect income. The country itself increases its power points on a track that shows if the countries marker on the score track is advanced; if a countries marker on this score track reaches ‘25’ the game ends and all bonds are converted to money. Countries that have advanced further on this track may multiply the revenue for their bonds up to 5 times, so it is obvious that players will keep an eye on this track when they buy additional bonds. When it is a country’s turn, the player decides which action to take from a circle divided into action segments. The country’s marker may be freely moved up to three spaces, each of them depicting a different action, and this is why the game makes so much fun; players are more or less unrestricted in picking their action. Going to war is not very wise in this game, as other players will benefit from it by growing ‘their’ country, in unopposed taken territory, raising taxes, and taking even more bonds in it. The game comes with plenty wooden pieces, representing factories, fleets and armies, as well as the various markers. At first glance it might appear as a complex game which is not, but one should constantly be aware that it might be better to switch strategy than to hang on to a country’s health or wealth where it is obvious that this is useless. With a gameplay of about two and a half hours however, this is not a short game, so it will still be played by the dedicated gamer. Eggertspiele has in more than one way delivered a great game! Imperial, Mac Gerdts, Eggertspiele, 2006 - 3 to 6 players, 12 years and up, 120 to 180 minutes xxtop |
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Justinian | ||||||||||||||||||
| 20.10.06 Never satisfied with what you have, that is the flaw of all times and less sympathic people. Hard labour, under biblical transpiring conditions, yes it happens, but only by those at the bottom of the social ladder where status, look and wealth are valued more than the more introvert human virtues as compassion, friendliness and altruism. Be it so, it is not our fault that the world is the way it is, so we play ball, this time at the court of emperor Justinian where we try to persuade the people around the emperor that matter to recommend us. Payment is in Never Cashable Imperial Victory Points, so there is no need to treat our temporary business as a major issue. The court of the emperor consists of twelve people, among whom the famous generals Belisarius and the euneuch Narsus who fought their battle against the Ostrogoths; but in fact the ever distrusting Justinian replaced the first with the latter so in fact they never served at the same time. The numbered favorites initially are placed in increasing order but this may and will change during the course of the game, dependant on the played chits by the players who start initially with ten of these, in negative or postive values, to change the order in such a way that it will benefit them most during one of the three scoring phases of the game. Which favorite to manipulate is dependant of a player's hand of eight cards in four colours, each colour ranging from 1 to 12. By changing a favorites position, the score for that card changes as can be read from one of the three tiny windows that each figure has. When the first scoring takes place, the lowest number (upper window) is scored as points if the corresponding card is played. Scoring only takes place if at least one player has collected enough chits (positive or negative) in the scoring pool for that round. After three scoring rounds the game ends. 'Justinian' is a beautiful and sturdy executed game that catches the atmosphere of the mosaics very well. The illustrator however failed to interpret the meaning of the classical iconography and transferred it somewhat altoenthousiastic to modern times ('Èveryone is a giant!') by supplying all the worldly favorites with a halo and in doing so upgrading them to an unjust holy status. To be seen however is how long this game will be attractive as candidate for a playing session; it must be feared that it will have lost its appeal within a few plays. This is partly due to the blind guessing of who wants what where to place. So a player puts a chit at a favorite; will he want it to go backwards or forwards? And if I already placed one at that favorite, did he place a negative number, or does he just has a different coloured card (but the same number) with a positive one, trying to score for that colour? Yes, one can get dizzy from these possibilities! This is only fun for a short time, but it swiftly bogs down resulting in ignorant play. We would like to know where we stand; this game unfortunately keeps us guessing too much. Justinian, Alessandro Saragosa & Leo Colovini, Phalanx Games, 2006 - 2 to 4 players, 10 years and up, 45 minutesxxtop |
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