First Impressions by Pevans
Pevans takes a first look at FOUR new games
[Pevans is the pen name of Paul Evans (well, a Paul Evans – hence the
pseudonym). This Paul Evans is a British gamer who has been writing about games
for well over 20 years. He was founding editor of Games
Games Games magazine and edited it for 12 years. He has
contributed to Games
& Puzzles, Games
International and Counter
and is a regular board games reviewer and columnist in Flagship
magazine. Paul has his own games/PBM ’zine, To
Win Just Once, publishes the En
Garde! RPG and runs UK distributor, JKLMnP Distribution. You can find
out more about Pevans at www.pevans.co.uk.]
John
Silver is a new card game from Eggertspiele and they’ve taken the step of
producing it with English rules as well as German – there’s
no text on the
cards to worry monoglots. Designed by Martin Schlegel, this is a neat tactical
game. Players take it in turns to play a card
from their hand into a grid on the table. Each player has a column and each type
of card has a row. When a row is complete, the player whose column has the
highest value card in it gets that card and the second highest card. The player
whose column has the lowest value card gets that and the second lowest card. So
far, so tactical.
There are three types of card. Treasure cards are good: you get points for them. Black spots are bad: the players with the most of these get minus points at the end of the hand. Apple cards (spot the Treasure Island theme) are good for the player on your left – they get the points for them! So the trick is to pick up lots of treasure and few black spots and give apples to the player on your right. It’s clever and quick – it actually plays faster than the 30 minutes on the box – and not too demanding. 8/10 on my highly subjective scale. (Suggested retail price: about $10)
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Published by Asmodée, Mission:
Red Planet was designed by the two Brunos – Messrs Cathala and
Faidutti. This is an attractive game with 
the
race to Mars illustrated in a steampunk style. The central board shows the red
planet, divided into regions. There is also a little board on which the
rocketship pieces are laid. Players bid for turn order using one of their set of
characters. Each character provides a special ability and allows the player to
add pieces to one of the rocketships available – the earlier they take their
turn, the fewer pieces they can place. When everybody’s done that any full
ships launch and land on the designated section of Mars, delivering the
players’ pieces.
Every 3-4 turns players score for control (most pieces) of each area of Mars. This is when you realize just how useful some of those characters’ abilities can be. For example, moving a few pieces around Mars can make a huge difference. Similarly, swapping someone else’s piece for one of yours can shift the balance of power. So the heart of the game is making the best tactical use of those special abilities – one of which is picking up the cards you’ve used so that you can use them again! This is a typically clever, medium-weight game from the Brunos. It’s been nicely produced by Asmodée and gets 8/10 on my highly subjective scale. (Suggested retail price: $44.95)
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Thurn
& Taxis (Hans im Glück/Rio Grande) was designed by Andreas
and Karen Seyfarth and is about the beginnings of the German postal service. The
board shows a map of Germany divided into regions and showing the major cities
and the roads between them. Each turn players get a couple of actions, the most
common of which are picking up and playing a card. Cards refer to a specific
city. They are drafted
from those displayed or unseen off the top of the deck. Cards are played to
start or add to a route, following the roads on the board.
There are all sorts of ways to score points – and the most points wins the
game, of course. First off, players score for the size of their wagon! These are
gained by completing a route of the minimum length for the wagon – and one way
the game ends is when someone gets a ‘7’ wagon. There are points for
achieving specific lengths of route – the first gets more points. There are
bonuses for having an office in every city in a region, or a group of regions,
or the set of non-central regions and so on. The game can also end if someone
places all their office pieces – and there’s a penalty for unplayed offices,
which encourages expansive play.
Thurn & Taxis plays rather faster than you expect. In this way it reminds me of Web of Power (Summer 2000 GA REPORT). The different ways of scoring points mean that players always have tactical options. But the heart of the game is building routes, which means collecting the right cards. Some of the bonuses are harder to get than others, so don’t repeat my mistake of leaving the hardest until last and ending up stuck! This is an excellent game that I expect to play quite a bit this year: 9/10 on my highly subjective scale. (Suggested retail price: $32.95)
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Alea’s game for 2006 is Um
Ru(h)m und Ehre (called Rum
and Pirates in the Rio Grande edition). Designed by Stefan Feld, this
game has lots of fiddly cardboard bits. There are plastic pirate playing pieces
for the players, too. Plus a board of course. The board shows a pirate
town with streets between significant buildings, each of which does something
different. In a standard turn, a player adds some of their pirates to the board,
filling up a street, and gets the action of the building at the end of this
chain. Generally, these either give them a way of earning some victory points or
improving their position on the board.
Players can also place their remaining pirates against the mast piece
(representing the ship) that’s set to one side. This ends their actions for
the time being. Once everyone’s done that, there’s a brawl (lots of dice
rolling) between the pirates on the mast, with the last three earning the
victory points available (for the ‘sleeping places’). Everybody gets their
pieces back and it’s time for another round. After several rounds, the
game’s over and the player with the most points wins.
Putting it like this misses the fact that the game is actually quite fun. Yes, each turn is pretty much the same and there’s a lot of dice rolling, but it’s a decent tactical game. There are always options and almost everything you can do will score you some points. And there are some neat touches – like being able to pay a coin to miss a turn. My biggest issue is that you have to know what all the symbols on the board mean and how they are resolved in order to know what you’re doing. There’s a definite learning curve for this one. Once I’d got through that, I enjoyed the game. 7/10 on my highly subjective scale. (Suggested retail price: $39.95)
AQUADUKT BLUE MOON CITY CLEOPATRA AND THE SOCIETY OF ARCHITECTS
GAME CLASSICS: CITADEL OF BLOOD JERICHO MASONS MYKERINOS