Tag Archives: Eurogame

30 April 2013 · 10:21

Out In The Fields – The Castles of Burgundy review

CoBCOVER

So it seems that at the moment, golden boy of boardgaming Stefan Feld can do no wrong. We’ve extolled the merits of a few of his games over the last couple of months here on littlemetaldog.com and – surprise surprise – here’s another glowing write up. This time we’re journeying into medieval era France as we take on the tricksy and delightful The Castles of Burgundy, a game that combines a little bit of chance with more options than a high-end car showroom.

From the start, I’ll say that Castles is not for everybody – if you’re the kind of person who complains that Dominion is nothing more than multiplayer solitaire, I’d avoid even picking up the box. What little interaction there is in the game is limited to someone snatching away a tile that you had your eye on before play managed to get around to you. It’s an exercise in brain burning where you’re constantly having to change your plans depending on what kind of things are available for do.

So, how does it work? Despite the multitude of choices, the way the game is played is simple. Each player has a board comprising of thirty seven hexagonal spaces, themselves formed into a large hexagon that represents the land you’re trying to build on. A central board is filled with tiles that are split into six groups and refreshed at the beginning at each of the game’s five phases. By rolling two dice at the beginning of your turn, you’re given the chance to spend whatever you roll and pick up a tile from that area – so, roll a 5 and you get to choose something from the space marked with the same number.

The Central Board where

The Central Board where the options open to you can be dazzling. Goods everywhere, hexagonal tiles that’ll form your own settlement, bonus points… how did he come up with such an intricate game?

Taking one of those tiles doesn’t mean that you get to add it to your board immediately, though. Three spaces are found at the bottom left of your playmat where you must put a tile first – sort of holding it in transit for a while – before it gets to become a part of your settlement. Again, a dice must be used to ‘build’ the tile, as each space is also numbered. You may think this is limiting in the extreme, and you’d be right in thinking that. Thankfully, players have worker tiles that can be spent to add or subtract from whatever you rolled, allowing for a bit of manipulation.

Those tiles come in many different types, each one offering a little boost or way to skew the rules in your favour. Grey tiles represent mines, giving you an extra silverling (the game’s currency) at the start of each phase that you can spend on a selection of more randomly selected tiles found in the centre of the communal board. Yellows are all about bonuses, screwing with the rules and generally boosting your powers. Greens are farm animals and can prove an immense boost as each time you add one of the same type – sheep next to another sheep for example – the points stack.

The Blue tiles add to your rivers, meaning that you take goods from the central board for you to sell; the more you sell of the same type, the higher the points return. Dark Green tiles are the Castles that give the game its name, and these allow an extra play of… well, whatever you like. They’re incredibly powerful and should be used wisely. Finally, the Brown Building tiles offer the widest variety of options as each type gives you a different ability.

Some bestow money or extra workers on you, while others allow for the immediate grab of another tile from the board or the placement of extra ones to your play area. A true master of Castles of Burgundy will be able to put together a truly impressive chain of these, transforming the two standard actions that you normally get in a turn into a parade of hexes being taken from here and added to there, all of which sending that final score into the stratosphere.

One of the Advanced player boards

One of the Advanced player boards. These are filled with randomised set-ups and everyone will have a different one, but there are Starter boards where each player works with the same spaces. Also, see how everything is language independent!

It can feel that pretty much everything gives you points in Castles; selling goods, finishing off areas of land, getting animals… keeping track of everything that’s going on with your board as well as what’s available (and what’s been taken!) from the central area requires a sharp mind and plenty of focus. Managing to do so is a valuable skill, and it’s that skill that will raise you above other players of this game. As with all of Stefan Feld’s creations, Castles is a game that rewards multiple plays and the investment of your time. While you learn and develop your strategies, you’ll also have to cope with the luck of the dice rolls and the random element of what tiles will actually get pulled out at the start of the phases. Adaptability is key – if something isn’t working for you, a change of plan can often be a better choice than sticking desperately to course.

If I were to have any criticism, it’d be the downtime you get with three or four player games. It’s far from a dealbreaker, of course, but I much prefer to break out Castles of Burgundy as a two-player effort. Not only does it mean that you’re almost always engaged, it gets the play time down to a very manageable thirty to forty minutes – ideal if you’re filling time while waiting for others to arrive. That’s not to say that I don’t enjoy playing with more than two though – it’s still an excellent game with three or four around the table, but for a speedy yet deep experience, Castles of Burgundy is hard to beat.

The Castles of Burgundy was originally released in 2011 by Ravensburger / Alea and is designed by Stefan Feld. Between two and four can play with games taking between 30 – 60 minutes.  Copies from Gameslore are a bargainous £24.99, so head on over and grab yourself a truly great game.

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1 March 2013 · 13:32

Island in the Sun – Bora Bora review

Bora COVER

Stefan Feld is currently on an insane run of producing excellent games. Today, The Judge steps up to check out his latest release, Bora Bora. Will the streak continue?

In Feld we trust…

Specifically, I am talking about Stefan Feld, the current wunderkind of Eurogames who has quickly developed a reputation for combining established mechanisms and innovative ideas into deep and satisfying ‘Euro’ style board games – with the lightest smattering of theme dusted on top. Now, these games aren’t for everyone – but from Notre Dame, through Macao to Castles of Burgundy and Trajan, Feld has demonstrated a unique talent for creating interesting, memorable and replayable games that stand out in an increasingly dense sea of mediocrity. Even Luna, which I don’t love, is a curious misstep but never less than memorable and worthy of discussion.

That brings us to 2013 and his new opus – Bora Bora! And it’s fantastic.

Let’s kick the elephant out of the room to begin with – yes, this game is set on the island of Bora Bora. Yes, you are building huts on the board and utilising the skills of tribes folk to expand your influence. Yes, you could even say that the priests you send to the temples are providing you with the glory of the gods. All this is, obviously, poppycock (which, as an editorial aside, is the first time I have ever written that word. It is fun and I recommend you all do that same).

Bora Bora is, at its heart, a mechanical exercise in point scoring. Unlike numerous other soulless Euros, though, the game’s tight 6 round structure features clear short, medium and long term goals that force you to tactically adapt to turn-by-turn pressures whilst maintaining a resolute long term strategy for end game scoring.

If that last paragraph left you cold – then move along because this isn’t for you. If there is a glint in your eye like the sun catching the crest of a wave as it lashes the beautiful island shore then please read on… Oh, and seek help. Each round of Bora Bora begins with players rolling three dice which are their ‘workers’. In turn order these are then allocated to action selection spaces – the twist being that you can only take an action if the number on your worker die is LESS than every other die on the space. This allows potential for some blocking and screwage – especially in the last rounds where players need ONE MORE of something to score big bonus points. The flip side is that the HIGHER the number placed, then the better or at least more varied your options are when taking that action.

Feld himself has included dice as a key feature in his games before (think of Burgundy and Macao) but I think Bora Bora perfectly finds the balance between forcing you to adjust your short term strategy mid-stream and having prepared for the possibility of being stuck with a bad roll with the various “Luck Mitigation Mechanisms” (or “God Cards” as the game calls them). Actually, their term is catchier.

With so much going on, you might think that keeping an eye on everything is a struggle...

With so much going on, you might think that keeping an eye on everything is a struggle…

The other genius of Bora Bora is the mission tiles. Each turn you have the opportunity to ‘solve’ one of three personal tiles for points. You then select a new mission from the tableau (which has been open information since the start of the previous round) that you can score in future rounds. Missing an opportunity to complete a mission can be a big deal – no end game bonus for you! – so you have to juggle completing one mission per turn with setting yourself up to be able to meet all of the demands by the end of the game. Very interesting, very cool and very satisfying when it all comes off.

The missions are just part of it though – You need to get all the expensive jewellery don’t you? Each round you can buy ONE victory-point-awarding trinket for Shells (an in-game resource.) This is resolved in turn order – so you need to keep an eye on what other people have got, what they can generate and make sure you are high enough on the turn order track (modified each round) to get what you need.

Oh, and you need priests in the temple! These give you free points every round. And you need to construct your buildings! They score huge if built at the start of the game and progressively less from each round you wait. Not to mention erecting huts… getting resources… recruiting tribesmen…

So, there’s a great deal going on – and you cannot possibly hit ALL of the end game scoring, and that is the beauty of the game. Even though there are a huge amount of different elements to consider, the missions provide a focus and a guide to your strategy (customisable beyond the first three tiles as you are selecting them each round.) The game is very tightly designed. Despite the diversity of strategies, final scores are often only a few points apart and in a game where final four player totals are around 160 points – this is no mean feat.

Any negatives? Well the lack of anything resembling a thematic connection will disappoint some, though not me. The art style is fresh and bright, but unapologetically busy. To someone trying to learn straight from the rulebook, the graphic design and iconography could baffle as much as it delights – though this is 200 times better than Burgundy which really needed a reference sheet just to make it playable. I was generally impressed with the straightforward nature of the rulebook and the summary text in a side-column makes reference much easier. The decision to include an idiot board as the left hand side of the thick cardboard player mats is also a good call – making what could be a dense rules teach far more straightforward.

Bora Bora is my favourite game of 2013 thus far. Having played several times, I am still really excited about the next opportunity to get it to the table and the many new strategies to explore and exploit. So get hold of a copy (perhaps from those excellent folks at Gameslore where I bought mine) and enjoy my prediction for this year’s Kennerspiel des Jahres.

So, pretty positive then…! Bora Bora is indeed available from Gameslore and will set you back £32.99. Released in 2013 by Ravensburger, between two and four can play, with games taking around 90 to 120 minutes. Don’t forget to follow Stuart on Twitter – you can find him there as @Judge1979!

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9 July 2012 · 10:00

Angel Interceptor – Ragami review

I find the idea of a guardian angel a bit odd, it must be said. The concept of some ethereal being constantly watching over you to stop you from being hit by a bus weirds me out a bit – if I screw up, I screw up. It happens a lot, mostly when I’m playing Agricola online. Where was that bloody angel when I played all those occupations instead of focusing on building a decent food engine, huh?

Ragami, a new release from Mesaboardgames (the folks who brought you the rather splendid Vintage last year) sees between two and four players take control of these winged protectors who – after a couple of plays – really aren’t as virtuous as you might expect. The story of the game is simple; these angels (known in the game as Ragami, surprisingly enough) patrol a city where dissent is rife on every street and trouble can explode at any moment. Ably assisted by saints, they travel about, quashing conflicts and smushing demons that spring up on a regular basis.

What this really means is that you’re pushing pieces around a board in what’s a pretty solid Euro. At the beginning of each round, a set of black Conflict dice are randomly positioned while those already on the table have their values increased by one. The player who is last in turn order then rolls three Action dice, potentially having the chance to add demons to the situation should they roll a 1. They then allocate the three dice to the available actions – a nice idea which means you get to have an element of control over what your opponents can do, as every time an action is chosen the appropriate dice value is decreased. If that runs down to zero, tough… time for Plan B.

Arty shot is arty.

The actions are as follows:

- move any player’s saint up to four spaces around the board, then move or add a demon into the mix

- take three power cards off the draw deck, keeping only one (up to a maximum hand limit of three) and discard the other two

- have your Ragami deal with a conflict, potentially scoring you some victory points

Each of the action selections can also be used to move your Ragami about, hopefully getting them into position sort out trouble next time play comes round to you. This is done primarily by spending Power Cubes that you collect throughout the game (mostly by pushing saints into conflict zones or having your Ragami in a space when someone tries to sort out some trouble) – match the amount shown on the conflict die and it’s removed from the board, gaining you that amount of Victory Points. The amount of cubes you need to spend can be altered however; another player’s Ragami removes two from the target, while any saint gets rid of a further one. Virtue Dice also help get the number down, but only affect certain areas depending on where you choose to position them. Demons in that space add one to the number, so the game can become something of a masterclass in the manipulation of pieces around the board when you’re trying to stop an opponent from getting a big points haul.

The arena in which we make our scene. Roam the streets looking for bad stuff!

At its heart Ragami is a race for Victory Points, with the game end triggered when some reaches 30 VPs or the location tokens (used to say where conflicts flare up) run out. Bonuses are handed out depending on how many conflicts have been solved, so the tension does actually run all the way to the end of play, and barring disaster I’ve found it to generally be a pretty close run thing as to who takes the crown. Or halo, I suppose.

A four player game takes about 90 minutes, even with a rules explanation, and I reckon it sits firmly in the light to middleweight division. It’s not until you get a few plays under your belt that you realise the possibilities for stomping all over your opponents’ plans (the fact that the same coloured saint and Ragami can’t end up in the same space gives plenty of opportunity for messing up other people’s ideas, for example). It’s definitely a game that rewards multiple plays, and infinitely more accessible than the mildly terrifying Vintage…

I’ve got a couple of gripes with the game but nothing major, both centred around the Ragami pieces themselves: while everything else is lovely and wooden, these bits are cardboard standees that look a bit incongruous. It would have been great to have had some slightly larger meeples to represent the Ragami instead of these out-of-place bits. Something like the megameeples you find in Carcassonne: Inns and Cathedrals, perhaps? The art for the Ragami themselves is also pretty strange, curious besuited, sunglasses-wearing enforcer types with massive wings sprouting out of their backs – it just feels a bit odd, strangely dated, like something out of a heavenly version of The Matrix.

Aside from that, production throughout is of a pretty high standard, with everything from the cards to the board having that built to last feeling. Aside from the Ragami issue, the art is grand with clear iconography and a well laid out map where you will battle against the dark forces. Or wee red meeples and black dice, anyway.

As you can tell, the theme didn’t grab be that much, but looking beyond that I honestly reckon Ragami is a solidly entertaining game that is worth checking out. Saints and angels do nothing for me, but then again, that allowed me to look past the theme and see the game itself in a much clearer fashion. It’s well worth giving it a try, so why not give it a got?

Ragami is published by Mesaboardgames and will be officially released at GenCon in August this year. Designed by Gil d’Orey with art by Pedro Soto and Gil d’Orey. The game plays with between two and four people and will take ninety minutes at most. For more information, check out the Mesaboardgames site.

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21 September 2011 · 20:50

She’s In Fashion – Prêt-à-Porter review

I’m sitting here thinking about theme. Looking through my collection I see plenty of science-fiction stuff, lots of fantasy games and – Tom from The Dice Tower will kill me for this – even a couple of trading in the Mediterranean affairs. Us gamers like to stick with what we know and designers are often happy to give us what we like. Sometimes though? They love to surprise us.

Ignacy Trzewiczek is one such chap. You may recall the interview we did with him on the Little Metal Dog site recently where he mentioned a game that he developed in conjunction with the National Bank of Poland that would hopefully give players an insight into how finance works. And the setting for this game? Why, the high-flying world of fashion, of course!

Theme, as we all know, is important. A game may be as solid as anything but if the theme doesn’t grab players a game may well flounder. With Prêt-à-Porter proudly fashion based it may well lose a few players from the start – but if you disregard this game just because you think it’s about making clothes? More fool you because Prêt-à-Porter is pretty damn good.

You’re actually running fashion houses over the course of a year in this cut-throat industry. The game is divided into four phases, each one representing a three month period that culminates in one or more fashion shows. By opening new offices, taking on better staff and establishing new brands and outlets, you’re able to take on contracts to bump up your short term profits to keep you going.

During the first two months of each phase, you need to concentrate on a two pronged attack. Yes, improving the status of your company is important, but so is developing your staff and buildings. The down side is that these will cost you more and as you have to pay wages and bills at the end of each month it can become quite the battle to balance your books. Thankfully you have the option to take out a loan as an action during your turn – if you screw up though, you’ll be forced to take one at a higher rate.

The Polish edition of Prêt-à-Porter - very stylish, of course.

The fashions shows are what you’re really aiming for, though. The choices from your collection that you decide to show at the end of each of the four phases will be graded and hopefully awarded stars – and these are what you’ll fight your opponents for. Stars will gain you more money than the opposition, allowing you to improve your company and leave the others in your wake. As the year moves on, your company grows, hopefully earning more money and expanding your staff and holdings. At the end of the game the stars you’ve gained are converted into points and added to any special features that you’re able to score – and whoever has the most is the winner. Nice and simple.

Well… I say it’s simple, but Prêt-à-Porter isn’t. Though it’s relatively straightforward, there’s a wealth of options for you to choose from on your turns. As there are so many different ways in which you can expand your company, each one granting bonuses but also causing issues that you’ll need to cope with. It’s very easy to overstretch yourself and spread yourself thin, so you’ll need to give it a couple of plays before you work out the strategies that really work for you.

Prêt-à-Porter may well be set in an industry that some will claim isn’t interesting to them but do not be deceived – this game is hard as nails and will punish anyone who treats it lightly. This is the kind of eurogame that will require concentration from the off and lots of forward planning. You’ll need to have a solid idea of what you want to do for each of the seasons and just go for it – however, on the flip side you’ll have to be adaptable in case your opposition scuppers your plans… and they will. What happens when the other guy gets the building or materials that you wanted? You’ve always got to be ready to change your plans but thankfully the game offers you alternative routes to your ultimate goal – it’s not always easy, but hey! That’s business.

You’ll notice I’ve not talked about the production quality… well, I can’t really. My copy of the game is an English language prototype – the full version will be released at Essen 2011. However, this is 90% of the way there and I can safely say that graphically everything is nice and clear. The board in particular is very well laid out and the whole game has a clean, modern look that really conveys the sense of style. Iconography is clear and crisp throughout which really helps in a game that has a lot going on.

Polish Prêt-à-Porter is ready to roll. It's not as complicated as it looks. Well, perhaps it's a little complicated.

It’s not an easy game to win. In fact, it’s not an easy game at all, but there’s an incredible level of satisfaction when you just manage to plan everything well, hold it together and break even from month to month. Actually winning the game? It’s like being visited by unicorns delivering platinum cupcakes filled with cash.

The unicorns have never come to my house. They will one day, but until then there’s this incredibly challenging game that rewards players who throw themselves headlong into it. Here’s hoping that Portal get the success it deserves from this fantastic game.

Prêt-à-Porter was originally published in Poland in 2010 by Portal. Designed by Ignacy Trzewiczek in conjunction with the National Bank of Poland, the English language version of the game will be available from October 2011 following its official launch at Essen – pre-orders can be placed right now. Work it!

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6 December 2010 · 17:27

Electric Avenue – Power Grid review

One of the reasons a lot of people shy away from playing certain games is theme. It’s often pretty easy to convince people to get involved in a game where a bunch of you are questing to defeat a monstrous demon or play as astronauts colonising a distant planet, but look a little further away from these standards and you’d be surprised at what some games are based on. I recently played and reviewed 1960: The Making of The President and loved it, even though I never thought that I’d be into such a theme. The survival of the fittest may not be the first thing you think of when picking something off the shelf, but GMT’s Dominant Species is incredible. With a decent enough mechanic, you could probably make a game based on anything – even setting up a national energy grid. Or you could, if it hadn’t already been done – Power Grid has already beaten you to it.

Designed by the prolific Friedemann Friese, the game does indeed see you and your opponents attempting to build up a network of cities while collecting and upgrading power plants. You also need to make sure you have enough resources to fire these plants at the end of each turn (which earns you more money), and the game ends when a set amount of cities have been connected by one of the players. They may not necessarily end up being the winner, however – the glory goes to whoever is able to power the most cities on that final turn… but how do you get there?

Despite looking quite daunting initially, the game is pretty simple once you break it down into the different parts. Each round has five actions that each player gets involved in. They’re not all mandatory, but miss out on too much and you’ll find yourself lagging behind pretty quickly. The round starts by determining the player order, followed by bidding on one of four available plants (and keeping an eye of the futures market – a row of plants that are potentially for sale soon). These produce their electricity by using resources which happen to be picked up in the next round – coal and oil begin the game as the cheapest, but there are also plants that burn garbage or use uranium. Next up, you need to develop your network of cities, then finally spend your previously purchased resources to generate the electricity to power as many as possible. This generates you the necessary income to do the whole thing all over again, eventually building up as large a network as possible.

The early stages of the game are always tentative, not only down to you having a lack of funding but also that only one player is allowed to be in each city. Things get a little more confrontational as soon as the first network of seven cities is created – Step 2 of the game kicks in, allowing shared ownership of cities. The second player to set up in a city has to pay a little extra, but if you want to expand enough to win the game you have to become the embodiment of “speculate to accumulate”. You’ll get nowhere in Power Grid without spending money, and as the game progresses you’ll find yourself needing to pay out more and more to improve your power plants. Cheaper ones may well only generate enough electricity for one or two cities, meaning that after a few turns they’ll become somewhat redundant – remember that the more cities you supply, the more money you’ll get at the end of each round, meaning a greater chance for investing in more efficient power stations. Believe me, you’ll need them.

As well as thinking about your ever expanding network and keeping on top of the power plant situation, you need to consider what you’re going to use to keep them going – the previously mentioned resources. At the end of each round the resources are replenished to a limited degree, hopefully meaning they’ll become more affordable. The market constantly fluctuates depending on what is in demand – for example, if no-one is buying garbage the price slowly drops, while if coal or oil are in high demand they’ll be hard to get limited and expensive to boot! It’s an ingenious method that really demonstrates how supply and demand works, forcing players to adapt their plans dependent on what others are doing and what they can afford. If you can pay for it, you can also buy up extra resources and store them on your power plants, meaning that your opponents have to lay out more to even be able to fire up their generators. A mean strategy, but all’s fair in business!

So very pretty.

Power Grid is a game of multitasking. You need to keep on top of many things, but after getting a couple of rounds under your belt you’ll find that it’s not as difficult a task as you may have originally thought. Being able to see the plants that are available in future allows you to come up with potential strategies, but you need to make sure that you don’t rely on them actually showing up – more often than not, they won’t, especially if they’re of a high value and they appear early! With a little concentration, you’ll find it easy enough to balance your purchases and expansion plans without running out of cash. Runaway leaders will often find that they get caught within a few rounds, and as the winner is decided by who can power the most cities on the final round, it’s always in your interest to fight for every last uranium rod.

Having been around for a little while, Power Grid has a pile of expansions available in the form of extra boards (generally double-sided, like the USA/Germany map included in the original game) or new sets of power station cards. There’s also a few promotional items available, of which I’m lucky enough to have a couple including the Flux Capacitor and Generator cards – if you fancy getting your hands on these, you’ll have to chance your arm on eBay or Board Game Geek! This is a wonderful game and a great step up from your Euro gateways – there’s a little more thought required in comparison to releases such as Carcassonne and Settlers of Catan, and despite the slightly curious theme I’d really recommend you give it a whirl. One of the best mid-level Euro games out there and, in my opinion, Friedemann Friese’s greatest design.

Power Grid was first released in 2004 and is – of course – still available today. Designed by Friedemann Friese with artwork by Maura Kalusky, it originally came out through the 2-F imprint, but is now produced by many companies worldwide (though mine is from Rio Grande Games). Between two and six players can get involved, though I find it’s best with four – however, it scales incredibly well, limiting areas of the board dependent on how many are playing. Available from your local game store and online (Amazon often have it for less that £20, a total bargain!), you need a copy of this in your collection.

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