The rules of Strasbourg immediately caught my attention as the game has an unusual but simple bidding mechanic as well as some placement too.  During the game, players use their influence to affect the guilds and score victory points (VPs).  At the start of the game, each player can keep 1 to 5 secret objective cards which earn VPs at the end (or -3 VPs if not fulfilled).

Each player starts with a deck of 24 influence cards (4 x values 1-6) which they will use over the game’s 5 rounds.  Each round, players draw as many cards as they like (one at at a time) from their deck into their hand.  Then, each player arranges their cards into any number of face-down stacks of their choosing.

Next, players bid for various items.  During each auction, the first player chooses whether to bid by turning over 1 of their card stacks and the rest of the players have the same choice.  The player with the highest total bid wins the benefit of the auction plus the 2nd and 3rd placed bidders may also win benefits too.

There are 7 auctions each round which fall into 3 types:

1 x Influence nobility & church: 1st place becomes king (1VP), 2nd place becomes head of church (1VP).
3 x Influence a guild: 1st place gets to (a) become that guild master (1VP), (b) receive goods and (c) place meeple in city (at a cost); 2nd place gets to do (b) and (c), 3rd place gets to do (b) or (c).
3 x Influence merchant: Winner can sell goods for cash.

Finally in the round, the king places a building into the city (which can earn a lot of VPs for any meeple stood next to it) and the head of the church places a church in the city (also adding VPs to nearby meeple).

At the end of the game, players get VPs for the meeple they have placed in the city (plus bonuses for buildings and churches), as well as VPs for fulfilled objective cards (and -3 VPs for each unfulfilled objective).

Overall, Strasbourg is a simple game but there’s lots of interaction and the auction mechanic is fresh and works really well.  Some players may not like the blind assembly of your bidding stacks but you know what you’ll be bidding for even if you don’t know what values the other players are bidding with this round, so it’s not done blindly.  Also, you do feel like you have a lot of control 0ver your bids (even though you already chose their total values) and can alter your plans as you go.

Players must manage their cards so they through the game but are also effective in each round.  There’s a definite push-your-luck element when you draw them from the deck, plus you need to find a way to cope when you get a majority of high or low cards all in the same round.  An interesting mechanic is that if a player doesn’t win anything when they made a bid, they get to place one of the cards they bid at the bottom of their draw deck.  As a result, it’s possible to use this system to recycle cards back into your draw deck in some cases.

Each player gets one chance to bid (so can’t increase their bid later) which keeps the game flowing.  The extra twist to bidding is that players can earn privileges during the game which can be spent to pass on their bid so they get to bid after everyone else and this is an interesting element.

Whilst you’re under pressure to win auctions, gain goods and place meeple all the time, you also need to manage your cash well too.  You need to bid well to win goods that can be sold but you also need to bid at the right time so you get to sell your goods for cash too.  There are limited city spaces (and many secret objective cards rely on meeple placement in the city) so competition for the city locations is high, but without cash you can place almost no meeple in the city.

I thoroughly enjoyed Strasbourg.  It has a simple, central game mechanic but with lots of things to consider and the players are always interacting.  The board is colourful and well-designed, plus the order of what gets auctioned when is dictated by changeable parts of the board so the game will play in a different order each time.

I really enjoyed my first game and I think the next games will be even more interesting now I see how the gameplay operates.  I think as players get more familiar with the game, denial play will emerge as players try to block what they think are their opponents objectives.

James.

[Played with 4 players]

WIN a copy of Strasbourg
20 June 2011 – To celebrate reaching 500 Twitter followers, Metagames is giving away a copy of Pegasus Spiele’s SdJ-nominated Strasbourg.

27th June 2011 – The competition is now closed.  The person from those who entered the competition via this page is Ernie Lai was one of the 4 finalists and also was thw overall winner.  Thanks to everyone who entered.