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29.03.07 What about the rats? A not very common, but in ‘Notre Dame’ not unusual question, as our acting is severely determined by it. The health of our quarters are at stake, but it is more that the rats are a spin-off off the masses of people that perform all sorts of little tasks within the city walls such as driving around in little carriages, searching for victory points, bringing the children to scholl or have treatment in the hospital. Who shows up in the park, or equips the sanatorium well, can be reassured of good health and does not have to fear illness that our little nightly friends spread out. The ones who exceeds the Paris Rat Standard, have to hand in two victory points at the end of each round, as well as an influence cube, it does not come any more realistic.
With four of these cubes a player starts the game; during the game more can be collected. Each player has his private blind deck of nine action cards, of which he takes three in his hand at the start of a round. A game lasts three rounds of, ehrm, three rounds - so nine rounds actually, with only short interruptions at the end of each third round for the scoring of the Notre Dame quarter where also points can be earned. A player deck thus is played three times in a game, shuffled at the end of each third round. From the drawn three cards, a player may keep one; the other two are given to his lefthand neighbour. At the same time he gets two cards from his righthand neighbour, keeping one card, passing the other. This way each player starts each round with three cards, of which he may play only two; the third card is discarded with the playing of the second card.
On his player board each player has the same buildings at his disposal. If he plays an action card for a building, he first places a cube on the corresponding quarter, and then receives the revenues from it; with every additional cube, the revenues get higher, be it money, victory points, cubes from the stock or movement for the carriage.
At the beginning of each round, three character cards are revealed that may bring extras but have to be bribed for money in order to receive them. Unfortunately these characters also are responsible for the rats in the gaem: the bottom of each card may have zero to three rats, the sum is the amount that has to be controlled for that round. By putting a cube in the sanatorium, each time a rat can be controlled; this also goes for the park - a player may put his black pest stone one space back on the water/rat track just outside the quarters of the city. At the end of a round all players put their pest stone forward the sum of the rats on the character cards, with personal substractions for the amount of cubes a player has in the sanatorium. The pest stone never may exceed the ‘9’ on the track, otherwise the abovementioned sanctions take effect.
Each player more or less has his own fate in his hands; he chooses which card to keep and play, and hopes for a matching second card from one of his righthand neighbours. What to do: bring the sanatorium at full strength, thereby keeping the rats away, or start right away with collecting points with the carriage that reminds a bit of a Volkswagen Beetle?
Running out of money is not good either; this way it will not be possible to buy a participation in the Notre Dame quarter, or bribe one of the characters. It will be clear that there are many ways that can lead to victory, but there is no clear path. This also comes from the fact that the action cards are presented and available for play in a random way. And how much a player would like to keep not one, but rather two cards he just drew from his deck, he may only keep one. Sometimes however, your neighbour happens to have other priorities, and passes the card you had to pass yourself but would like to have kept. You have to have a bit of this kind of luck then, in ‘Notre Dame’, but does it matter? Well, no, we are quite enjoyable busy trying to optimise our moves, and sometimes this works out better than on other occasions. Despite the fact that each player has to fight therats individually, there is a feeling of solidarity when the character cards are revealed - what ? eight rats! Or: oh, only three rats, no problem! We do a little of this, and a little of that, and hope that this will bring us more points than the other players. Because of this there is a sligthly gnawing (!) feeling that we fail to have a clear direction; there is no grande finale either where we have to work towards. This is no necessity, not at all, ‘Notre Dame’ is a nice game to play; however, players who hoped to expect a second ‘Puerto Rico’ or ‘Die Fürsten von Florenz’ will have to continue their prayers.
Notre Dame, Stefan Feld, Alea/Ravensburger, 2007 - 2 to 5 players, 10 years and up, 45 to 75 minutesxxtop
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21.10.06 O no, not yet another route game! Nevertheless this is exactly what we have here. In the wake of the success of 'Ticket To Ride' and its German nephew 'Thurn und Taxis' it is the London Underground that serves as platform for this route building game. Technically everything goes along the same lines: laying track and scoring points. The assignment cards have been replaced by destination cards from which four are laid open. A general token travels each player turn to the nearest gold coloured location, preferably not on foot and with as little changes on the underground line. Whenever this destination is reached, another location is picked from up to four blank locations, under the prerequisite that these colored destinations are available among the four cards, that are resupplied to four after each player turn in which or two destinations have been reached. The travelled route scores points: one point for each continuous chain of track of each player that the token has used in reaching the destination. In a turn a player may build up to four track in one of his player colours; dependent on the amount of players he has two, three or four colours available to him. Once started with a colour, all track of the same colour must be connected to this track. Bonuses may be earned by reaching terminals, important junctions, or the joining of two similar symbols. Twines may be used but these must first be earned in other actions. When the card pile is depleted and all locations have been visited, the game ends and the player with the most points has won.
'On The Underground' has more than one resemblance with 'Ticket To Ride', Clippers' and 'Santa Fé Rails', all by Alan Moon, that this almost makes it plagiarism. It must be said, however, that with the series of route games that Alan Moon published he has copied himself numerous times. 'On The Underground' plays somewhat more grinding in a way, as there is more finding out how the token will travel within the system of the underground. It is not that inventing and publishing games of this type solely is the territory of Alan Moon; it's just that enough of these games already have been published. Despite the fact that this game is quite enjoyable to play, we expect smaller publishers to be more inventive in the kind of games they publish, making a difference from the larger publishers. Instead we are treated with the same middle of the road game we have seen many times before. Reasons enough to nominate this game for a 'Toodle-A-Dokey' award!
On The Underground, Sebastian Bleasdale, Rio Grande Games / JKLM Games, 2006 - 2 to 5 players, 7 years and up, 75 minutesxxtop |
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