first impressions

Macao

24.11.09 The disclaimer at the start of the rules states that because of game technical reasons the topological setting could not be fulfilled. This suggests that the rest of the game must be very close to reality! Subsequently a player must take a card and place it on his board; why this is obligatory and what the board depicts, remains unclear. The card on the board cannot be used until it is placed aside - feeling a bit adverse - but still it is not activated; hmm, this sounds exactly how things went back there in Macao...
Six coloured dice are used what and how many AS - which stands for action cubes, probably the local currency - may be taken; with these, cards can be played away from a players board or, when they are already off and next to the board, activated and used according to the text on the card.
There is a penalty for players who have not enough room on their board when a card must be placed, and there is a penalty too for players who at game end still have cards on their board. A player is also punished when he cannot perform an action. Yes, Stefan Rat (Notre Dame, Im Jahr des Drachen) must be fond of some punishment!
With AS cubes and GM chits - Alea has switched to the American habit of using cryptic abbreviations - more things can be done. The game lasts twelve almost identic rounds, and each player is sitting sighing behind his register. The roll of the dice determines the actions, so do not think any strategic intelligence is involved. One merely has to make shift with what one has, and, speaking of which: the wooden ship tokens usually are moved with the AS left overs. Only from the middle of the game the ships begin to arrive on their location and unload their wares that curiously can be loaded even when at full sea, and finally exchange them for PP - prestige points.
Barley dry and little game fun is how you could characterize 'Macao'. Or: very long - four players need an hour or two to complete the game. Or one could compare the players with auditors checking the annual account...
Macao, Stefan Feld, Alea/Ravensburger, 2009 - 2 to 4 players, 12 years and up, approx. 90 minutesxxtop

Montego Bay

11.06.09 Move workers, claim barrels, ship and score points for them; that is what Montego Bay is about. The tokens are moved by playing cards that all players simultaneously choose from their own hand of cards. As a worker can be displaced by other workers and thereby end its move on a less lucrative place, players often will have to estimate what card other players will play in order to still get to the wanted position. When each player has moved his two workers, the positions at the barracks are worked, the barrels claimed and the equivalent in cubes loaded on the ships. When a ship is fully loaded it is scored: the majority gets the most points, the rest less or nothing. Full ships instantly leave the harbour, but at the end of a round the frontmost ship, fully loaded or not, also leaves and is scored before taken away. At the start of a new round already present ships move to the front and the empty spaces are resupplied from a stack of blind ship tiles. When the stack of ships is empty and only three ships are left in the harbour, the game ends.
And? What do we think of it? Well, reactions were lukewarm, even by those who normally like the lighter kind of game. The box states the game can be played by eight year old players, but a child of that age is not able to empathize what other players are up to, so it solely will choose its card on the amount of fields it wants to move, without taking possible disruptive actions into account. An minimum player age of ten years would be more realistic.
The excessively large executed game board wants to impress like a peacock in mating time but cannot hide the fact that it carries yet another 'guess what the other player is up to' or 'get the majority' game. Often such mechanisms are part of a game, and not the entire game. For young players this game is too difficult, for the rest of us too little challenge lies ahead - we say: it falls between two stools.
Montego Bay, Michael Feldkötter, Queen Games, 2009 - 2 to 4 players, 8 years and up, 45 to 60 minutesxxtop xxx

Livingstone

09.03.09 We set sail on the Zambezi river, and meanwhile place a few tents along the shore or further inland. From time to time we grab from a bag in hope to collect valuable gems. Because the player with the most money may win, but the one with the least certainly does not! Well, that was it, there's nothing more, please move on! Oh, you wanted to know more? The long version?
'Livingstone, born poor and already as a child working fourteen hours a day in a cotton mill but full of perseverance and with a strong wish to become a missionary, first wanted to go to China but ended in Africa to bring the word he believed to be the only truth...' Eh, well, the somewhat shorter version maybe?
Livingstone had nothing to do with gems, that was not the reason for him to be were he was. And he only partially sailed the Zambezi as the river was not suitable for boats, so the majority of his expeditions, sometimes as long as 5000 kilometres, he went on foot, adjusting his goals such as finding the source of the Nile which he did not find, by the way. Shall we just discuss the game then?
Each turn the starting player throws twice as much dice as players participating; they are conveniently placed in increasing order. In a turn, a player chooses one; the number indicates in which row he may place a tent; the boat, each turn moved a position to the right, indicates what it costs to place a tent, from one to six money. Higher rows earn more money, but at the end of the game a player scores for each row he has a majority of tents in, so scoring now or later, what difference does it make one would say.
The die also could be used to take some stones from a bag; the number of the die is the amount of stones that may be drawn. Black stones are worthless, but the others are gems and can be exchanged at any time for money, for instance to pay for the placement of a tent in a future turn, or, not unimportant, to put some money aside and put it in a chest.
Regardless of the number of the die, a card can be taken; in fact these are always nice as they can be used for special actions in a turn.
When all players have chosen a die, there is a second round where players may take a die but this has to be of a higher number than the one first chosen. This can become quite nasty if the roll has lots of equal numbers!
The game is over after the round where the boat has reached the last column. Now the final score is done where players may reveal score cards, and after which all chests are opened; the player who has the least money is out of the race; from the remaining players the winner is the one with the highest score. The end. Winner happy; the rest, as usual, murmur something like 'luck of dice'.
'Livingstone' quite obviously falls in the category: 'When The Crisis Hits Us Hard, The Games Come Light'; as its lightness almost makes it fly away! Yet it is a nice game, easy, light-hearted, not asking too much attention making room for the casual table chat. After a hard day of work in the cotton mill this is the diversion many possibly seek; and we don't have to set out for Africa as thanks to men like Livingstone it is known territory by now!
Livingstone, Benjamin Liersch, Schmidt Spiele, 2009 - 2 to 5 players, 8 years and up, 30 - 45 minutesxxtop

Monuments

23.01.09 The cover shows a writing youngster; at first glance we think he is wearing a pyama and is making his homework for the other day with the help of some lamplight. But he is not writing at all and we don’t see any homework; he is drawing and the subject is old civilisations and their monuments. The two to four players are going to collect these monuments that come in cards, and similar to the cover illustration they are going to do something with it as well, write a paper about it or something, to bring these monuments under the attention of mankind and in this way increase their regard - but in the game more important to the players: their value.
Each monument is on display on the table and has two sides - the amount of possible builds. Players have a hand of cards which in their turn can be increased from a deck or window of three open cards as one of four possible actions; they have three actions but may choose a specific action more times in a row.
Building a monument is another action: a player plays a minimum of two cards of a monument and places these in front of him; a third possible action is to add one or more cards to an already built monument. And the fourth action, well, we keep it for ourselves as we don’t have to give all of the show away, do we?
O.K., we have some monuments on the table, so what happens with the points? Well, players get points for them only until the end of the game - when the card deck is depleted. At this point, the scoring board gets important. From this is read how famous all monuments have become and how much has been written about them. Players are awarded points for each of the monuments they have built and because each monument could have been built a second time, these points will have to be divided between the owners with more points for the player who has a larger - more cards - monument, fair is fair.
In able to raise the value of the monuments, another type of turn has to be chosen; so far we only mentioned the socalled monuments turn with all its possible actions but now the writer turn gets its, eh, turn. At the start of the game, each of the players have been dealt a number of writer discs that they can play in such a turn, one at a time. When doing so, one card of all other players monuments is taken if such a monument consists at least of two or more cards; all assembled cards make the corresponding monument shift one column to the right on the abacus, one per card. The writer disc of the player is put on a separate score track, with as many spaces forward as all assembled cards in the writer action. The position of all writers are also worth points at the end of the game, so a player will want to wait with his writer turn until many monuments have two or more cards, but if he waits too long, another player is ahead of him. On top of it, not played writer discs are minus points!
The problem of each player is that he mainly can increase the value of monuments that are not his own; secondly built monuments with other players do not always carry the necessary minimum of two cards, a requirement for increasing the value of a monument. Diverging therefore is important, but also taking care to always try to have two cards in your own monuments stack when another player chooses to take a writer turn. With only nine cards per monument, this restricts the tactical possibilities; besides this the deck of cards is depleted sooner than wished.
At the end of the game an unfair bonus is awarded to already succesfull writers: the writer with his disc in front gets his casual points, and after that bonus points for being first (second, third)! The scoring board is very dull and unattractive; the colours sometimes do not match the card colours and some colours are too close to each other. The printing quality of the board is below standard; it looks like a blurry copy on wood-pulp paper.
'Monuments' can be best narrated as: 'A player does a little this, a player does a little that, and also gets to score somewhat.' - O.K., did I say I could rhyme?
In doing all this, he has had little influence or controlling power, while the atmosphere also wasn't exactly cheerful. Technically 'Monuments’ is sufficient, but it is lacking in the pleasure department.
Monuments, Stefan Risthaus, Abacusspiele / Mayfair Games, 2008 - 2 to 4 players, 10 years and up, 45 to 60 minutesxxtop

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Medici vs. Strozzi

21.10.06 Playing boardgames has the side effect that it gives you a nice insight in the different cultures of various social positions. In this two player game for instance we may call ourselves relatives of the patrician dynasty Medici or Strozzi, with our contestor temporary member of the other house. Our goal is to acquire goods at a reasonable price and to deliver them in three different harbours, hopefully with profitable revenues. Each of the three harbours has a different demand in type of goods, but some of the goods can be unloaded in two harbours. Each player has three ships of varying size that, once loaded with one or more goods, must be dedicated to one of the harbours.
At the start of a round the starting player draws from one to three goods, and calls a price. The other player may take the goods for this price or passes, after which the first player must take these goods for the called price, the money being paid in the bank. The goods are loaded onto one single ship, divide them over more ships is not allowed. The player that took the goods may draw up to three new goods, but never more than the maximum that will fit on one of his own ships. When the ships are fully loaded or when the goods have been used up a round has ended and scoring takes place. In each of the three harbours the goods of both players are counted, the larger number in value (not chits) gets the bonus of 20 money. Then, for each good, a central marker is adjusted one space. When a marker is on a player's side, he gets 10 additional money. When the marker hits the bonus zones '10' and '20', these extras are also paid out. After this the goods are cleared away, the ships leave the harbour, and a new round begins, but the markers stay in their adjusted position. This may make some goods more attractive to a player. After a third round and consecutive scoring the player with the most money has won.
In general, bidding games for two players do not work, but here we find an interesting mechanism that we also know as 'I cut the pie, and you decide which slide to take'. If the amount called is too high, that player must take the goods himself. Not bad if he can use them - throwing them away is possible but not effectively adding to the revenues! But sometimes it is advisable to pay the price, if only to become the starting player and have a say on how many goods will be drawn. When the other player only has space for one good, of course you will draw two or three! It is all this that makes 'Medici vs. Strozzi' a very enjoyable little game.
Medici vs. Strozzi, Reiner Knizia, Rio Grande Games / Abacusspiele, 2006 - 2 players, 10 years and up, 30 minutesxxtop