Archive for the 'Istanbul' Category

The winners of the Spiel des Jahres and the Kennerspiel des Jahres were announced yesterday.  The winners were Camel Up and Istanbul.  It’s always interesting to try and work out the winners because I know what I like the most (and would vote for) is definitely not the same as what I think will be voted for by the jury, because the SdJ awards are for a more general German game-playing audience (and not a more serious gamer audience).

If it was my choice, it would have been Splendor for the main prize as it’s the one I enjoy the most; however, I guessed Camel Up would be picked as the winner as it’s a more accessible game for a wider audience and the card pyramid offers an appealing, physical element.  So, Camel Up winning wasn’t a surprise to me.

The Kennerspiel was a hard one to call – I had it down to Istanbul and Rokoko.  I really like Istanbul but I wondered if it was slightly too light for the Kennerspiel, even in the context of the SdJs.  However, Rokoko was maybe too far the other way as it’s a tense game with a lot of elements to balance and time correctly.  So, I was happy with either of those being the winner.

I thought this year’s SdJ was a good one as I found all the games to be good quality – whereas, some years I scratch my head wondering how some of the games were picked.  In fact, it’s the first year I’ve found myself playing all the nominees, and playing some of them quite a lot.  I still think Lewis & Clark should have been at least a recommendation though (if not a nominee) for the Kennerspiel.

Links to my reviews of all the SdJ nominees, winners and some recommendations are on my SdJ 2014 page.

James.

At the bottom of the photo, you can see a player’s hand cart which has yet to be upgraded. When it is, the upgrade tile fills-up part of the missing piece.

Istanbul is one of the games nominated for Spiel des Jahres Kennerspiel 2014 (the German complex game of the year) and is designed by Rüdiger Dorn who has designed a wealth of games.  The game is a race to be the first to collect 5 gems with an interesting core game mechanic and a surprisingly dense amount of decision-making.

The board is made up of a 4×4 grid of locations (large tiles) and each player starts with a stack of wooden discs which are their merchant and assistants (with the merchant always on top).  Players take turns moving their merchant (and any assistants currently underneath it) so they can use the actions of the location tiles.  When a player moves to a location that does not contain one of their assistants, they remove an assistant from their stack, place it on the location, and then take the location’s action.  When a player moves to a location that does contain one of their assistants, they add it to the bottom of the stack, and then take the location’s action.  If a merchant moves on his own (without assistants) and lands on a location without assistants, then he can not take the location’s action.

So, players already need to work out which locations to visit, in what order, and how to do this by dropping off and picking up assistants along the way.  The actions at each location are varied allowing players to gain goods (which come in 4 colours), gain money, buy gems, upgrade their cart, gain special abilities, gain special cards, etc.  One location allows the player to gather up any assistants that are elsewhere on the board and place them under their merchant. Read the rest of this entry »

The Spiel des Jahres nominations were announced this week.  I have added a page for the SdJ with the details of the games as well as links to reviews of the games: SdJ 2014 page.

The winners will be announced on July 14th.