Spiel 2014 Preview: Neptun
Posted by James (admin) on 4th September 2014
Dirk Henn was probably the first designer that I followed as Alhambra was one of the first euro board games I played and then I found I really liked his next games, such as Eketorp, Colonia, Shogun and Timbuktu.
Over recent years, I’ve been disappointed that his games have been re-themes or re-releases of his previous designs; however, this year sees the release of a completely new game called Neptun which looks like a simple eurogame but with interesting game mechanics and a Roman merchant theme.
The game lasts 3 game rounds and each game round consists of 5 rounds of acquiring contracts followed by 5 rounds of fulfilling contracts.
Acquire Contracts
Cards are laid out in a grid with one row for each type of card (city cards, goods cards and oar cards) and one more column than the number of players. On their turn, a player takes 1 column of cards (one card of each type); however, there’s a neat game mechanic here to make things trickier.
A player can take any 1 of the face-up columns of cards (if there are any), or they can choose to reveal the next face-down column. However, revealing a column means they can no longer take any previous column – so their choice is now to take the newly revealed column, or reveal the next and take that, and so on. This adds an element of push-your-luck, plus the more columns you reveal the more information you give to other players. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: board game news, Board Games, board gaming, Dirk Henn, Essen, Neptun, Queen Games, Spiel 14, Spiel 2014
Posted in Board Games, Essen Spiel 14, Neptun, Preview, Spiel 2014 | No Comments »