A player board can be seen at the bottom of the picture. Notice the cubes in the square holes marking the advances gained.

Clash of Cultures is a civilisation building game by the designer of Merchants and Marauders and this sole fact meant it was on my ‘must play’ list as Merchants & Marauders was a superb game.  In Clash of Cultures, players start as rival tribes in corners of the realm with no technology.  Over 6 rounds, the players explore the land, generate resources, build cities, create technologies, trade, potentially fight each other, and do whatever they can to be the most successful.  At the end of the game, victory points (VPs) are scored for building cities (1VP per piece), advances in technology (1/2VP each), completing objective cards (2VP each) and building wonders (5VP each) – the player with the most VPs wins.

GAME
The board/map is made of tiles (each showing 4 hexes) of various types: water, mountains, barren, grassland, forest.  Unexplored regions remain face-down until entered when a player turns the tile over and sometimes gets a choice on its orientation.

Players all start the same with 1 settler, the Farming and Mining advances and 1 basic city.  During the game, cities can be improved by adding a port, academy, temple and/or fortress.  The size of a city is equal to the total number of pieces – the bigger the size, the more resources it collects and influence it has; however, city size is limited by the number of cities you own so you can’t just have one super-city.  A city that is happy functions like a city of 1 larger size; whereas, an angry city functions like a city of size 1. Read the rest of this entry »

Ginkgopolis is by one of the designers I really like – Xavier Georges (Carson City, Royal Palace, Troyes and Tournay).  Ginkgopolis is a game with the theme of futuristic, city building.  As with many of Georges’ games, the game mechanic is a bit unusual (it’s actually relatively simple, although it may not seem so at first).  As a result, I felt it important to explain the gameplay quite clearly (so please excuse the length of this review) because a brief outline would offer little insight.

GAME
At the start of the game, there are 9 building tiles in a 3×3 grid – 3 red, 3 yellow and 3 blue buildings with values 1, 2 and 3 – surrounded by lettered discs A-L.  The initial card deck contains cards for each letter and each of the 9 starting buildings.  Players start with some resources (cubes) of their own colour and some building tiles.  During the game, the players will add building tiles to the 3×3 grid (on the outside as well as laying new tiles on top of existing ones).  Players score victory points (VPs) when placing some tiles, and at game end for controlling areas plus bonus VPs based on cards they own. The player with the most VPs at the end of the game wins. Read the rest of this entry »

When someone suggests a game about queuing and shortages in Poland in the 1980’s, your first thought is probably to avoid eye contact and back away.  However, Kolejka (which is Polish for ‘Queue’ and pronounced col-aay-ka) is actually a gem of a game which I hope gets the attention it deserves as it actually contains a great Eurogame as well as an interesting and fitting theme.

Players are each trying to obtain 10 goods listed on their objective cards – for example,  4 luxury goods, 3 pieces of clothing, 2 food and 1 electrical.  The first player to collect all of their items wins, or the player that collects the most of their items by the end of the game.

Each round a few goods will arrive at some of the 5 stores.  First, before knowing what will arrive where, players take turns adding any of their people (meeple) who are not in queues to the queues.  Then, goods cards are revealed which determine how many goods arrive at which stores, e.g. 2 electrical items at the electrical store, 3 foods at the food store, etc. Read the rest of this entry »

‘Robinson Crusoe: Adventure on the Cursed Island’ is a co-operative game where players are on a desert island and must fight for their survival whilst trying to achieve a goal (depending upon the scenario being played).

Good co-operative games need two very important  components.  First, the players need to be given interesting/difficult choices so they feel they have input and are playing the game, not merely a passenger.  Second, the game must create some  random elements (like events) which aren’t too random that they don’t make sense or are overpowered, but also aren’t too predictable or small that they don’t make any difference.  Back in the 80’s, Games Workshop released a solo-play game called Chainsaw Warrior which I always hold up as an example of how a game where you play against the game can be done badly.  A card deck determined random events but you had little choice and was so random that you could just look through the deck  and see if the card order meant you’s almost certainly win or lose. Read the rest of this entry »

In Tokaido, players are travelling along a road visiting villages, seeing great vistas, visiting temples, staying at inns,etc. in order to earn victory points (VPs).  The player with the most VPs at the end of the game wins.

Players move along the road from left to right.  On their turn, they can go to any empty space ahead of them (up to the next inn where they must wait for any other travelers to catch-up).  Spaces at each location are limited (usually one or two spaces) so a player may not be able to visit a location if it is currently full of other travelers.  This is very important because a player can never move backwards along the road.

So, you can rush ahead to ensure you land at a location you want to, but at the cost of never being able to visit any of the skipped locations on your way there.  However, moving slowly means opponents may move into the locations you will want to so they could be full when it is your turn and you have to pass them by. The player who is furthest back is the player who moves next – so it’s not wise to move too far ahead of this last player as it will allow them to land on every location between themselves and the next player. Read the rest of this entry »

Tzolk’in is a worker placement game with a difference.  In this Mayan-themed game, players have around 26 turns in which to impress the gods the most, i.e. earn the most victory points (VPs).

Each turn, players either place any amount of their workers or remove any amount of their workers.  Players spend corn to place their workers on the cog(s) they desire taking the cheapest available slot (and the more workers you place in one turn, the more extra corn you must pay too). The unique part of this game is that workers are placed on small cogs which are located around a large central cog.  Each turn, the large cog is turned and this turns all the small cogs which moves all of the workers on them along one step.  When a player removes a worker, they get the benefit that the worker is next to and the longer a worker remains on a cog, the better the benefit when they are removed. Read the rest of this entry »

Well, Spiel is over for yet another year.  I managed to play 23 games this year over the 3 days I was there.  Usually, I expect to play some games that don’t live up to expectations but this year it was great that there were only a couple that didn’t tick the boxes for me.

I’m always pleased to see how games still find ways to deliver new ideas and innovative designs and these were in evidence this year as usual.  This year also continued to prove that, no matter your research beforehand, there are always games you will discover that are pleasant surprises.  Kolejka was definitely the most pleasant surprise out of the games I played, and cheap too.

Below is a list of the games played (in chronological order) as well as those yet to play.  This year, I was unable to purchase a lot of the Euro games I would usually have done (such as Venise du Nord, Il Vecchio, Taschkent, Castles of Carrara, Spectaculum, etc.) but I hope to get to play these some time soon too. Read the rest of this entry »

With so many games to review from Spiel, I have added a poll on the right-hand side where you can vote for which review you would like to see first – the list is a sub-set of the 23 games I played.  I will do my best to review the most popular first and I will update the options with more games when I add reviews.  If there are other games not listed you would like reviewed with greater priority, please add them in the comments for this post.

James.

I am very pleased to announce that the winner of 4th annual game giveaway is: Suzan from the Netherlands!  Congratulations to Suzan who will soon receive the copy of Xavier Georges’ Ginkgopolis by Z-Man Games.

If you want to see the answers to the quiz, these are now on the competition page.  Commiserations to all the other entrants who did not win.

The competition may have finished, but I have some exciting news of a new competition coming in the next week or two, so stay tuned.

In the meantime, reviews of the latest Spiel releases will begin in the next day or two.

James.

Emanuele Ornella has designed some great games over the last few years (Il Principe, Charon Inc, Assyria).  La Loire is his new game this year which looks like a solid euro game.   The game is set along the River Loire and players aim to earn as many VPs as possible.  Each player has a merchant and a messenger which they move along the roads on both sides of the river – once they start in a direction, they can not go back in the other direction until they reach one of the two cities.

On each turn, the players move their merchant and messenger (in either order) and can take an action at the location each lands on.  Players move the number of spaces equal to the number of horses that the piece being moved is on top of (plus 1).  The number of horses can change as a player can leave behind any horses they want (any players can use them) or can add one if there are any horses on the space they start from.  This sounds like a very interesting game mechanic as you’ll want to help yourself but also hinder others in the taking and leaving of horses.

The core of the game is that the merchant earns the money so that the player can buy messages for the messenger to deliver (or buy boat movement).  The merchant’s actions are primarily about buying goods (wood, grain, cheese, wine, beer) and buying buildings.  The village location determines what good is available to buy there.  Some villages will have farms, monasteries, or castles on them – these are built by the players during the game – and these give discounts (plus beer is only available from monasteries). Read the rest of this entry »