Archive for the 'Essen Spiel 10' Category

Era of Inventions has a potentially dull sounding theme – patenting inventions and manufacturing patented items.  However, do not be fooled, Era of Inventions is a great placement and resource management game.

Over 8-10 rounds, players gather resources (materials, money and development cogs) so that they can build factories, invent devices, take out patents, and build inventions.  Doing this scores victory points and the player with the most VPs at the end of the game wins.

Each round, players take turns placing their 2 or 3 action markers on any the 6 different actions they wish to perform that round.  There are only 2 spaces for action markers next to each action so players must try to secure the actions they want before opponents fill up the spaces.  Read the rest of this entry »

In 20th Century, players try to make the largest and best nation by the end of the century to score the most victory points (VPs).  The game lasts 6 rounds and uses 2 main currencies: money and science.

Each round starts with the players bidding for landscape tiles which each show a number of cities and railway lines.  Each city has icons showing what they produce (money, science, VPs and recycling) but cities will only produce these resources if they are populated.  Regardless of how many cities are on a tile, a player only receives 1 population marker for each tile they buy. Read the rest of this entry »

In Navegador, players are Portuguese explorers discovering new lands and making money from trading or processing the resources from the new colonies.

The core game mechanic is the rondel – if you’ve played any of Mac Gerdts’ other rondel games (Antike, Imperial, Hamburgum) then you’ll know the deal.  If you’ve yet to play a rondel game, the rondel is a circle split into 8 sections.  On their turn, a player moves their piece 1 to 3 spaces clockwise around the rondel.  The space that they land on determines what action they can perform that turn.  A player can move more than 3 spaces but, in Navegador, each extra space costs 1 ship (which isn’t cheap but can be invaluable). Read the rest of this entry »

In Fürstenfeld, players are trying to build their palace.  To do this, they build buildings so they can harvest hops, barley and water to sell to the breweries for cash.  Each round players draw buildings cards, produce goods, sell goods, build buildings, and discard cards.  It sounds, and is, simple but there are several interesting game mechanics at work.

First, each player has a board with spaces for 6 buildings and, once they have built 6 buildings, any new buildings must be built over an existing one.  Second, each player has their own deck of building cards and they draw a few cards each turn; however, they can only keep one card (sometimes more with certain buildings) into the next round.  Any discarded cards get placed under their draw pile so may appear again later in the game.  Read the rest of this entry »

The original Tikal is a classic game of archaeological discover where players spend action points to send their explorers into the jungle to excavate temples and collect treasure.  Tikal II has a similar premise but this time the players explore a single temple revealing its rooms and grab treasures using coloured keys and secret passages.

Each turn, a player moves their boat around the temple and picks up one of the remaining action tiles.  The action tiles dictate what a player does that turn – adding a new room to the temple, gaining a coloured key, gaining treasure (to sell later), taking a card (special abilities or end of game points), secret passages (to use later), and so on.  Each time a player’s boat starts a new lap of the temple, they must discard a key (or lose points).  Read the rest of this entry »

Mord im Arosa is a very unusual game.  If you like pure tactics with zero luck then I doubt this is a game for you; however, if you just want a fun game that anyone can play then this will be of interest.  Two murders have occurred in the Hotel Arosa and the player with the least evidence against them will win the game.

During the game, players drop wooden cubes (evidence) into the pyramid of card boxes that make up the hotel.  There is a hole in each floor so the cubes may end up on any floor and players need to listen to them as they fall as they will need to predict which colour cubes are on which floors.  At the start of the game, two  red cubes get discovered showing the floors where the murders took place.  These are placed on the board (showing the hotel’s floors) which will also be used to record where any evidence is found.

On a player’s turn, a player can try to incriminate other players by announcing which colours they think are on a specific floor.  When revealed, any players guessed correctly place cubes from their supply equal to those revealed onto the corresponding floor of the board.  Read the rest of this entry »

I played Merchants and Marauders again yesterday and, once again, we all thoroughly enjoyed it.  As I mentioned in my review, it contains all the cool pirate actions you could want as well as lots of variety.  The naval vessels and non-player pirate ships (NPCs) moved a lot more than our last game which also added more variety and action, especially for me as I had bounties on my head so I spent time avoiding the stronger ships.

Merchants & Marauders really is a first-class game and one I’m really pleased I bought.  I know we will play it a lot more too.  Below are some further thoughts:

Battles at Sea
The players were still quite pleasant to each other so there were very few player-versus-player combats.  I tried but just couldn’t succeed at my scouting roll when it mattered so my “easy prey” human opponent managed to slip by me; however, we did have a couple of fights.  First, one player totally destroyed my already very badly damaged ship as I’d just completed a couple of merchant raids.  Their seamanship skill of 3 versus my 1 made it an easy win (I couldn’t use my seamanship of 2 because they had a bounty on them).  Read the rest of this entry »

Dakota is an area-control game of settlers and natives in the Wild West.  The game mechanics are simple but their combination creates a very clever game which forces players to co-operate with their opponents in uneasy alliances.  At the start of the game, each player secretly chooses if they will play as a settler or as a native.  Any combination is acceptable so long as all players aren’t on the same side.  Each player starts with 3 pawns (representing their natives or settlers).  Depending upon the number of players on each side, some neutral native and settler pawns are also placed each round ensuring there are equal total numbers of native and settler pawns.  There are always at least 4 neutral pawns of each side.

During the game, players will gain resources and they can use these resources to gain extra or stronger pawns, plus they can be used to build buildings/totem poles and gain equipment which give the player extra abilities as well as score victory points (VPs).  Resources can also be sold for cash which can buy VPs too.  The game ends after a fixed number of rounds and the player with most VPs wins.  This may all sound fairly straight-forwards; however, it’s the area control part of the game which gives Dakota its identity and great gameplay. Read the rest of this entry »

THE GAME
In Cadwallon: City of Thieves, each player has a team of 4 thieves and they attempt to steal as much treasure as possible from around the city and from each other.  The board shows the corridors and rooms of an area of the city – a treasure tile is placed on each room, the players place their thieves on the board edges and 2 militiamen are placed on the board too.  Before the game begins, one of the 8 adventure boards is selected which sets special rules.  Players take turns comprised of moving a militia man, drawing an arcana card and spend 7 action points (APs) to move/use their thieves.

Militiamen
The militiamen are neutral city guards who block player movement and can attack other player’s thieves.  The current player rolls a dice to see how far the militiaman they choose moves.  The loser of a fight with a militiaman is moved (by the winner) 3 spaces and pays 2 ducats (cash) to the bank too. Read the rest of this entry »

Basilica is a fast, relatively simple and tight 2-player only game where players are building a cathedral and trying to score the most points. It may start out as a nice amiable building game but, don’t be deceived, soon you’ll be obstructing your opponent as much as assisting your own building.

THE GAME
The main game components are the double-sided game tiles – coloured vault floor on one side and an order (special action) on the other.  Each player has 5 builders (cubes) as well as one coin.  On the game board are 2 rows of 3 tiles – the bottom row are vault side up and the top row are order side up.  The game board also shows the current scores and the king’s progress. Read the rest of this entry »