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- Saboteur
Multi-player card game for up to 10 (!) on gold
mining by Frederic Moyersoen, previously known for Gouda! Gouda!. Sabotage is
attempted by the one or more players who have been dealt
saboteur cards. They will receive a fixed number of points if
the expedition doesn't find gold and honest miners will get
nothing. Otherwise, players will draft gold cards, starting with
the player who reached the gold and continuing counter-clockwise.
Cards come in two basic types -- "take
thats" and cards used to construct (rarely, destroy) mining
tunnels on the map. It's difficult to reach gold as it can only
be found in one of three locations and only those who draw a map
card may peek and have a chance of finding out. The actions of
such a player are closely scrutinized thereafter, even though it
can be difficult to divine what they mean. The practical import
of this scrutiny is to know which player to hit with a card so
that he can't affect the map or rescue an already hit ally so
that he can. This seems to work sporadically: a saboteur may
try to lead players to the wrong goal (fortunately they are not
widely separated), but on the other hand an honest miner just
might not have the cards or information he needs to advance his
cause. The same twenty minute game is played three times over
to proved the eventual winner. Somehow it seems this could have
been made more interesting by saving more context than just the
scores. Playing with more than about seven can seem slow and
rather random as one gets very few cards. Randomness is already
too prevalent as the map and fall-in cards are rather crucial. The
feeling is one of good fundamentals inadequately realized. With Shadows Over Camelot appearing
around the same time, there seems to be a zeitgeist
of hidden traitor
games. This could be considered a lighter version, but it is much less rich and thematic.
[Holiday List 2004]
Strategy: Low; Theme: Low; Tactics: High; Evaluation: Low
- Safari Jack
Interesting system in which players lay cards to build the world as
it goes along. Although fun and challenging, a bit too subject to luck
of the draw to bear many repeat playings. Features a reference to "Reiner"
(Knizia?).
- Safe Return Doubtful
Very atmospheric game simulating expeditions to the North Pole.
Based on cards, the game disappointingly lacks a map, even though
progress toward the goal is recorded. Although
there are some fascinating features including the possibility of
floating home on an iceberg (which actually happened to one expedition
as detailed in the excellent game notes), the game is rather too
unforgiving to earn frequent replays, unless perhaps in solitaire format.
[Simulations Workshop]
- Safeknacker, Die
Very accessible and cute mechanism Stefan Dorra card game about
building gangs and cracking safes. Simple rules, but a lot
of thought needed to win. It's one of those slightly weird
games where at first everyone thinks, "is this a game at all?"
But after a while, or maybe after the first game, only then does
it become clear how the thing hangs together. This is a good
vehicle for surprising your gaming group. Probably not quite as
popular as the inventor's near classic
For Sale,
but apparently rarer, certainly in the USA.
Possible different strategies are to try to get included in
others' gangs or to work more to create one's own. A good
ability to look ahead is rewarded. Title means "safe cracker".
Buccaneer is the revised version and should we be
surprised at the theme change in the wake of two very successful
Pirates of the Caribbean films? The old theme was far
more refreshing, however. A few features have been added such
as the pirates only labeled with a question mark. This gives
them a variable worth which depends on which prize ship they
are being used to take. Also added is a set collection sub-game
built on treasure chits taken when a prize is. The big points
here are for controlling the majority of a type. There also is
now a maximum stacking limit for pirates and a rule permitting
players with tokens in a stack to "mutiny" which forces the
captain to take a prize. All of the additions work well and the
only issue between versions is whether one prefers a spare,
elegant system or one with more flavor, but also more rules
to remember. In this sense neither outdoes the other, but I
certainly preferred the rarer safecracking theme.
Strategy: Low; Theme: Medium; Tactics: High; Evaluation: Medium;
Personal Rating: 6
- Salamanca
Here's a game which was apparently first set in northern
Britain, but has ended up in the heart of 16th
century Spain. Once again the brilliant Stefan Dorra has come
up with a group of innovative ideas. Players seem to represent
the yuppies of their era, buying properties, developing them
and then selling them off in this game of making as much money
as you can. It's how all this happens that is unusual.
Each round a few tiles are turned up. Then there is an unusual
auction in which players take turns revealing a single card
from their hands. The tricky parts are (1) each of these must
differ in value; (2) the card used is added to the hand of the
next player and (3) the turn goes from high card to low (range
1-8), unless a 5 was played in which case it goes first; and
(4) the player of the low card gets an extra action. Thus,
without actual negotiation occurring, as in
Njet!,
this generally allows each player gets something wanted.
Generally each gets just one action which keeps turns fairly
short. What players are doing on the square grid board is
taking over a central building such as a castle, monastery or
farm and then surrounding them with orthogonally-connected
fields, lakes and forests (which conveniently share the same
color). Each such added, and they don't have to be directly
connected but may be chained together, adds value to the
estate. But the danger is that they may also become part of
someone else's estate. At this point it may be a good idea to
sell as a sale removes all of the more valuable properties
if any of these are present. Not only does this remove the
value of these, but it may also remove the connectivity with
other assets. Meanwhile each player also has a creature called
a Conde, a piece that can buy its way into any player's property.
When a sale occurs, this parasitical person also earns a
profit, though not as large a one as the owner. Besides
purchases and Condes, the third action is to afflict a tile
as indicated on the card. This tend to break connectivity or
destroy value of a tile or both. These afflictions can be
gotten rid of, but it takes time and the right cards. It's
often difficult to decide when one needs a capable hand and when
to start using it up. There are also challenges around the
geography of the grid, what and where are the best ways to
make connections, and also blocks. The board changes its state
fairly often so new opportunities and situations appear all
the time. How to play well tends to be opaque at first, but it
appears to be very much about keeping a capable hand, playing
the odds about what will appear and accurately reading
opponent intentions. Thematically one is supposed to be
contending for the position of Duke of Salamanca, but this is
perhaps the weakest element as all the player really feels is
"more money, more money". The publisher may be at fault
here. On the other hand, the artwork is clear and attractively
realized, even if the wooden pieces are nothing special.
Screens obscure player monetary holdings which are
theoretically memorizable. Of course they can be dispensed
with if players wish. English language instructions are in the
box and a better version appears to be available at the
publisher's website.
Strategy: Medium; Theme: Medium; Tactics: High; Evaluation: Medium; Personal Rating: 7
Stefan Dorra;
Zoch Verlag;
2006; 2-5
- Saloon
Card game of saloon brawling is the second in this
publisher's year of Old West games. It follows the model of
Nuclear War and given
that the topic is personal fisticuffs, even more particularly,
that of Lunch Money.
Here too the acting player reveals an attack card and his opponent a defense.
The first uninvolved player to get a gray card to the table can also participate.
But being historical and cartoonish, the mood is much
lighter and, more importantly, the card variety, many of
which "break" the usual rules, is much higher. It would
have been nice if more had been done to convert the card
texts to pictures as there is considerable difficulty for
English-only players. They will be forced to follow along
with a translation sheet. Another problem is that it is possible,
although rare, for a player to be knocked into "Dreamland"
before he's even had a chance to do anything. The main strategy
is probably in deciding when a card is unnecessary and that
it's time to discard it. Try to always have at least one good
attack and one good defense. It won't hurt to save up the good
cards and not appear to be the leader either. Card graphics
are clean, cartoonish fun, including the Doktor, drawn to
resemble Dr. Reiner Knizia. There seem to be some coloring
errors as the Stuhl (chair) cards are colored as Events, but
ought to be Items while the there are four Events which have been
mis-colored as items: Barkeeper, Doktor, Piano-Spieler and Tisch.
Generously supports up to six players. If the language issues
can be solved, a nice, short outing while you start your beer
and await dinner. [Take That! Card
Games] [Krimsus]
- Samarkand
A re-packaging (new graphics) of the second version of
Bazaar although now
players have more freedom of movement. Wheel and deal to
buy the greatest share of goods in the bazaar and become the
wealthiest merchant. The best realization of the Bazaar
system although the vanilla game is a bit dissatisfying.
The simple and elegant Isfahan expansion kit
(German and pictures - English)
makes the game more strategic, tactical and realistic.
Because the players are working with the game system as much
as the other players, is the rare multi-player game which
also works well enough for two, again, especially with the
Isfahan expansion kit. Strategically, it is best to
travel with the caravan as isolated merchants are unable to take
advantage of filled nomad camps. One production complaint:
because the rules require that the jewel cards be re-shuffled
whenever any are turned in, they would have been far better
represented by plastic jewels pulled from a bag, as was the
case for games like Basari
and Silberzwerg. [Traveling Merchant Games]
- Samurai (Reiner Knizia's
Samurai)
Another of Knizia's tile-laying games. This seems to be the one
that most sacrifices strategy for pure opportunism. Much of the
game seems to be in delay — avoiding any placement that lets your
opponent make the decisive strike. Perhaps this is supposed to
tie into the tactics of the time and place depicted. At least it
is one of the few that will work well for three — sometimes it
even seems intended for three. I am not a big fan of the hidden
victory point holdings in this one, particularly as the very
unusual scoring method can have a player think he is helping
himself when actually he is giving it away. Strategically I like
to start with at least one or two water tiles so as to be able
to "churn" the hand if necessary. It might not be a bad idea to
start with the horse tile as well in case the situation arises.
- San Francisco
Auction-oriented game to take over plots of land after the
1906 earthquake. Requires twelve pages of rules to explain,
but features an interesting series of three different types
of auctions. There's an "outguess your opponents" method
à la Basari, a Raj-like method using the identical
cards everyone holds, and a money auction that goes round and
round with no one able to pick up cards (for example to make
change) except to fold. Although there is a nice use of icons to
avoid language barriers on the cards, it probably takes at least
one play to get used to the graphic design. Also reminiscent of
Colorado County with the
shared element being auctions for the right to place something
on the board and to The Merchants
of Amsterdam since the nature of the auction is random
each turn, with the player having some limited control over
it. Strategically, a conservative approach does not pay off as
gaining placements on the board is key. Rather, it is important
to place a rod on the board early (preferably building up an area
near a park) and then bid aggressively whenever an oppotunity
to build on this presents itself. Overall a good romp with a
nice uncertain ending feature, especially
for players who enjoy the chaotic auction mechanisms.
Seems to play best using a variant from a German website: omitting the rule
stating that a new action card is drawn when an action card generates completion
of another block allows the game to take a more strategic shape.
- San Juan
Card game version of
Puerto Rico
supports two to four players. The key difference from its big
brother is that no longer are all the buildings laid out and
available. Instead, roles like the Trader, Mayor and Prospector
generate drawn hand cards which depict buildings. When the Builder
is chosen, one may be built by discarding one card per point of
cost. The Overseer still causes goods to be produced and Silver
Mining has been added, squeezing out Corn. The Trader's prices
change randomly by rotating through a set of cards and players'
sales no longer affect one another. The Captain is gone, but a
number of new buildings have been added with a wide variety of
special effects. Players will enjoy trying out each and making
up their own minds whether each is worthwhile. The game ends
when a player finishes a fixed number of buildings, the win
going to the victory points maximizer. As should be apparent,
this is considerably less scientific than the original. Whereas
before you could choose which strategy you would like to try,
now the strategy must choose you, and too bad if the rest of
the cards you need never appear. It's not clear how possible
it is to catch up to a big lead either. But the disappointment
of master strategists will be the delight of those in favor of
a less analytical endeavor where luck plays a leveling role.
Hand management is a useful skill, however. It plays quickly and
most will probably want to at least several times before they're
through. Early strategic thoughts: an early Bibliothek/Library
rarely seems to lose a two-player contest -- probably it should
have had a higher cost for this configuration. But try to counter
it with a Schwarzmarkt/Black Market approach. For three, an early
Schmiede/Smithy followed by a slow build up of Zucker/Sugar,
Tabak/Tobacco, Kaffee/Coffee and lots of Selber/Silver with
admixture of Aquädukt/Aqueduct and Schwarzmarkt/Black Market
and topped off by the Zunfthalle/Guild Hall seems very hard
to stop. Watch out for kingmaking in multi-player contests,
especially players who build a lot of cheap buildings fast,
ending the game even though they don't have the points to win.
Like the Gilbert & Sullivan musical The Mikado which
was much more about Britain than it's supposed topic, Imperial
Japan, some items here, like the victory column (a prominent one
stands in Berlin) and triumphal arch, have a lot more to do with
German history than Puerto Rican.
[Holiday List 2004]
Strategy: High; Theme: Medium; Tactics: Medium; Evaluation: Medium; Personal Rating: 6
Andreas Seyfarth; Alea; 2004; 2-4
[Buy it at Amazon]
- San Marco
Alan Moon effort, one of several 2001 season games
set in Renaissance Venice, has echoes of his previous works
Andromeda
and
Wongar.
There is also a hint of
El Grande
(El Canal Grande?)
with the Doge playing the role analogous to the king, but the unique feature
and center of interest is in one player dividing up eight action and
negative point cards into two piles and the other deciding which pile
he prefers. Can be interesting to decide between making the two piles
most nearly equivalent or to try an unbalanced set where one has a great deal
benefit, but also most of the pain. Despite its apparently balanced nature,
there is considerable luck as well, not including that also introduced by
the roll of the die for banishment. Bridges add some special considerations.
An attractive and interesting entry to the "region influence" class.
- Santa Fe
It's controversial whether this is a railroad game or not,
but it does have some "building rails from east to west"
feeling as well as being a challenging exercise. For the most
part, the skill is one of lookahead to see how things will
fall out with the other players, as well as a good amount
of luck depending on what cards are drawn. There is a lot
of difficult decisionmaking in measuring opportunities, thinking
about percentages, and trying to guess opponents' intentions.
Re-made twice in the same year, once as Santa Fe Rails
(below) and once as Clippers.
The concept for this Alan Moon design comes originally from
Wolfgang Kramer's Wildlife
Adventure.
- Santa Fe Rails
The re-make of Santa Fe incorporates some of the ideas
found in Clippers such as
the 3X and the 4X card. Also, some of the eastern routes have
grown directional arrows, the general effect being to prevent some
of the un-thematic circular building that used to be pandemic,
but it is still possible out west, it being only partly allayed
by extra bonuses for certain lines to reach particular cities
like Portland and LA. The Engineer has been eliminated, which
is no loss as it had little effect in any case. The old version
often seemed to boil down to a victory for whoever could draw
the most high point cards -- this seems less the case now,
partly because there are far fewer destinations played in the
first place and partly because of the new building options
and bonuses. What emerges is a game of delicate planning, but
limited control, with some influence of chaos. On the whole,
it is more of a strategic game than its predecessor, but not as
"fair" as Clippers. It has perhaps less luck than Expedition, but does have
more to ponder. There is plenty wrong with the communications
design: the aforementioned arrows are much too small to be
discerned easily; the special cards ought to be more informative;
one of them contains an error; the rule for which cards may be
drafted in combination seems much too arbitrary and inelegant,
especially when not detailed on a player aide.
- Santiago
Game of auctions and irrigation on the Cape
Verde island first visited by Portuguese in 1462 where
perhaps the first tropical European city was established.
In most property development exercises players bid on plots of
land, but here it is for crop tiles which can go in any vacant
space. Bidding is of that annoying, that is, challenging, kind
practiced by New England,
i.e. a bid need not go higher, only be unique. While the high
bidders get the best tiles and plots, the lowest is in charge
of the all-important canal digging on this arid island. He may
accept payment from any one player or outpay them all to place
the latest canal extension as he sees fit. There is cooperation
as well as competition in this as a canal inevitably waters
others' fields as well. The same applies for final scoring
which depends on one's presence in contiguous groups of like
fields. Leftover cash counts in scoring as well in order to hinder
overanalysis. Claudia Hely's (no relation as far as I know) and
Roman Pelek's simple auction-based
system satisfies without bowling over. Production, except for
the flimsy cash (escudoes) is attractively realized. Most of the
skill is either tactical -- figuring out the best placements --
or intuitional -- divining what others will do and how much they
will pay. Not that many players seem good at both so this should
be a challenge for most. One minor suggestion is to avoid the
player on your left amassing too many points else you may well
be blackmailed into making heavy canal payments to stop him.
- Säulen der Erde, Die (Pillars of the Earth)
Multi-player game of allocation and processing connected with
the construction of a medieval English cathedral based on
the thousand page
Ken Follett novel,
Pillars of the Earth.
Compared to others, this one feels like the child of two other games.
Richard Breese's
Keydom/Morgenland/Aladdin's Dragons
is one of them in that players take turns
allocating tokens to various board positions, each of which
confers a different ability. These are then resolved in a known
order. It departs somewhat from Breese by making the allocation
order random and charging a fee for the first, presumably most
valuable, seven selections. This part of game can be maddeningly
frustrating as players can see others choose all of the items they
may have wanted while they are unable to do anything about it. For
this amount of randomness overall duration is actuall too long.
The game's other parent seems to be
Cosmic Encounter
as there are various special power cards
purchased during the game. These mostly involve processing
stone, wood, sand and metal to generate either victory points or
money (though I enjoy the structural engineer card that provides
benefits simply by thinking). One surprising rule
is that there are limits to the amount
of money a player can hold at one time, the track topping out at
thirty. It's an interesting design decision too that the usual,
intuitive way to handle money $ndash; tangible monetary tokens $ndash;
is replaced with a track which makes everyone's total quite
apparent, as are the victory points. There appear to be several
approaches to winning, though it's unclear whether all are equally
viable. Time and collective experience will tell. Production
is very attractive and communication design very good, though
the amount of text on the cards necessitates getting an edition
in a language all players can read. The turns of the game are
marked using wooden blocks to construct a model of a cathedral,
which seems gratuitous and unnecessary, and the resulting cathedral
doesn't look that great anyway. Having read the novel, it's very
nice seeing the character names on the cards, and having
illustrations of them, though their effects don't appear to
correspond all that closely to their functions in the book.
This is all okay for those who are into gamer's games à la
Puerto Rico,
but is not for the novice. At the time of this writing, I am surprised
to see some suggesting it as a Spiel des Jahres winner, though
I've little doubt it will do well in the Deutscher Spiele Preis.
[Buy it at amazon.com]
Strategy: High; Theme: Medium; Tactics: High; Evaluation: High; Personal Rating: 6
- Säulen der Erde Erweiterung, Die (The Pillars of the Earth Expansion Set)
This is the second of two expansion kits (so far) the first
being a few craftsman cards printed in Spielbox
magazine (Gardener, Market Warden, Gold- and Tin-smiths,
Day Laborer, Beggar), all of which have been picked up for
this publication. But the function of this one goes further,
not only adding capacity for a fifth or even sixth player, but
more signficantly providing even more craftsman cards (Tilemaker,
Painter, Woodcarver, Brickmaker, Stonecutter and Apprentice)
as well as rules guaranteeing that only a subset of them
appear during play. In addition to
new pieces (in orange and white), ten more prestige cards, another
gravel pit card and 4 more event cards, there is a new,
smaller map which is placed to the left of the existing one.
Showing the continent, it appears that this map
must be upside-down in the sense that the words on it are
printed as if the viewer is looking from the north rather than
the south. (Such maps are unusual in modern times, but
usefully challenge customary thinking. But more likely the
possibility of such expansion wasn't considered in the original
artistic design). In any case, the sequence of
resolving master builder activities departs from the main map
at 9 to then apply 9a, 9b, 9c, etc. until all sites on the new
board have been visited, then resumes at 10 back on the original.
Besides finally offering an on-board place to store the metal, this
new board offers several new possibilities: tax collector,
four crusades slots for workers (which grant victory points),
a chance to emulate another player's craftsman, an external
market and an additional privilege card. The mantra in
creating the expansion appears to have been consistency for
the experience of adding the new board is for the most part
just like the original, even with six players. The amount of
competition for master builder slots and even for resources
feels just the same. The only area where there is a letdown
and things don't seem quite fair is in craftsman hiring
where it's possible for some players to be consistently locked
out of the opportunity because they are so far down in the turn
order. If such players are unlucky in the master builder draw,
it can be that they're unable to do anything about the situation
either. The other issue to consider is that already the game
can be overlong for the amount of inherent randomness. Adding
two more players only makes that problem worse. Adding players,
then, is not a good reason to get this expansion; the fact
that you're playing the original game all the time and need
the variety that the new craftsman and their variable appearance
provide is. By the way, as it turned out, the original game did win
Deutscher Spiele Preis, but not the Spiel des Jahres (having been
beaten by
Zooloretto).
It was not even on the short list.
Strategy: High; Theme: Medium; Tactics: High; Evaluation: High; Personal Rating: 6
Michael Rieneck & Stefan Stadler; Kosmos/Mayfair; 2007; 3-6
[Buy it at amazon.com]
- Savannah Café
Racing game for children 7 and up, but also of at least some
interest for players older than that. The competitors are lions,
antelope and hippopotami, racing not for survival, but to be the
first to reach the bar and sip a cool one. Antelope usually graze,
but can sometimes leap 9 spaces forward. Lions can move about
half that distance and send back an antelope if they catch one,
but if a slow-moving hippo roars, they have to move back up to
8 spaces. Players each hold three cards whose backs show which
animal they move. On a turn they either draw a fourth and play
one of them or steal a card from someone else who then gets the
deck card. Clearly there is a large influence
of luck, but players can also help their own causes by hoarding
and by making intelligent guesses about what opponents' cards
and intentions must be. Artwork and round wooden counters are
nicely realized. Probably not as much fun as
Igel Ärgern,
but a possible, and shorter, alternative.
[Holiday List 2002]
- Scarab Lords
Proving that you can't go to the well (or Nile) too often,
once again Reiner Knizia makes a return to ancient Egypt for
this two-player affair. Reminiscent of collectible card games
as well as his own
Blue Moon
(which actually only appeared two years later), it's a power
struggle between the red and the blue following the death of
the "Dark Pharaoh". Not an ordinary pharaoh, notice, as the
publisher scrambles to make this appeal to their regular
fantasy buyers. Actually the thematic terms – gods,
minions, leaders – tend to be a drag rather than an aid
to understanding; it's just more to learn without adding any
useful analogs. Play itself is demarcated by a narrow board
dividing the players which is itself divided into two regions,
each of which have military, religious and economic
subsections. Having greater strength in two areas of each
region gives instant victory, but the more common ending is
probably that one player's deck is exhausted. Dominance of
each sector gives a different advantage: military forces an
opponent discard; religious curses an opposing card,
rendering it inoperative; economic permits drawing a new card.
Cards themselves are classified, in addition to the above
categories, by the phase in which they can be played: 0, 1 or
2, plus event-style cards. While an unlimited number of "0"
cards can be played each turn, only one "1" and one "2" ar
permitted. But there are hardly any "0" cards so often one
has a turn without much to do. This is somewhat mitigated by
the ability to re-activate already played cards. The most
powerful cards stipulate that they arrive with a curse token
on them; effectively they are slow to arrive, delayed until a
card removing tokens can be played. As cards come out of one's
deck randomly – sometimes being discarded directly from
there – luck is a large factor. On the other hand,
duration is fairly short, so even a playing which doesn't go
well is quickly over (sort of like this review). Curse tokens
are of glossy cardboard while dominance is indicated by six
small plastic pyramids (undecorated). An extra set of cards
enables an advanced version (untried).
As the years following the
introduction of the collectible card game roll by, it has
become apparent that the appeals of this form are all its own.
Those enjoying the form may also like this "lite" form if they
prefer more control on which cards are included and
eliminatino of the collectibility aspect. But as one of the
form's appeals is card artwork – which is plenty
attractive here – it's a bit of a shame that the cards
are so small. Larger ones would have permitted the art to
shine through more. The audience here probably does not extend
far outside CCG fans interested in topics outside straight
fantasy.
Decks from the subsequent Minotaur Lords can also be
used to play this one.
[Ancient Egypt games]
Reiner Knizia; Fantasy Flight; 2002; 2
Strategy: Low; Theme: Medium; Tactics: High; Evaluation: Medium; Personal Rating: 6
[Buy it at Amazon]
- Scattergories
Word game based on Facts in Five. In this
simplified version, players have limited time to come up
with words starting with a randomly-chosen letter in ten
given categories. This will always remain a party game without
a more definitive way of adjudicating near-miss cases.
[Buy it at Amazon]
- Scene It: Disney Edition
Either it's a DVD with trivia board game or a Disney informercial,
I'm not sure which. I don know that there is a board and four
unpainted metal figures resembling Goofy, Mickey, etc. There
is a track along which figures move and two oversized dice,
one determining progress, the other, the type of question.
Some of these come from cards, but what happens most often and is
the most fun, is to answer a question presented from the DVD.
Questions generally involve a still or scene from a Disney film,
recent or old, animated or live action. Sometimes the answer can be
discerned by carefully watching and listening to a clip; others
depend on one having "seen it" before. Some questions are open for
all to participate and these become races to shout out the answer.
The DVD wisely offers a tiebreaker feature should it be needed,
though it can be annoying if the "nearest birthday wins" decider
pops up too often. Hint: just bring this out once a year. It's not
clear why this is a board game at all. Already the DVD explains the
rules (mostly) and handles the lion's share of the questioning.
Apparently the idea was just to let people know it really is a
game -- not just a viewing product -- and probably to get it on
the right store shelves. But it's also true that re-watching the
best scenes from classics like Beauty and the Beast just
makes one want to screen them again, or for the first time. Disney
seems to be both leveraging existing assets as well as advertising
product -- very clever. This can work very well as a family game,
especially if each team is a parent-child pair. Childless adults
are at a distinct disadvantage, however, as they probably have not
"seen it", unless they're lifelong Disney fans. It's clever too the
way that the board can be folded up to provide a shorter track.
Probably this is the better way to play, providing the half
hour game that most party game players expect. The longer version
can stretch to three times that.
[Buy it at amazon.com]
[Spanish edition at amazon.com]
Strategy: Low; Theme: Medium; Tactics: Low; Evaluation: Low; Personal Rating: 5
- Scene It: Friends Deluxe Edition
This DVD trivia game employs a board to track player
success. Perhaps the most important fact to know about this one is
that despite the large amounts of minutiae related to the popular
TV program involved, there's also quite a bit of luck. The
value of a question, for example, is given simply by die roll and
thus has no correspondence to its difficulty level. A
special die determines question type, some of them being presented
on one of two DVDs and some from one of the two hundred cards --
each of which contains three different questions -- and some
from other cards which are not questions at all, but events
causing small track movements or lost or extra turns. Perhaps
most controversial are the card questions labeled "Pop Culture"
as they require knowledge of things never seen on the show, but
of the people who participated in its making. Of the onscreen
questions, there are several types and required skills include
being able to unscramble a name, filling in a name on a crossword
puzzle, identifying a costumed character whose head is blocked
out, identifying a pair of characters who are heavily blurred
or watching a scene and answering based on what you've heard
(shades of third grade!). Notice that only a portion of this
requires detailed Friends knowledge, which provides the
product advantage that even non-aficianadoes have a decent chance
to do well and have fun, but on the other hand, the people most
likely to be buying this for themselves, the hardcore fans, may
well be somewhat disappointed. A nice side benefit of the package
though is that the question cards are useable on their own and
can be a nice way to pass time on road trips. The game comes in
a sturdy tin box. Six metal tokens depict a coffee cup, Joey's
dog sculpture, etc., but they traverse a board which is amazingly
made from cheap, corrugated cardboard. The cards are all right,
but deserved more contrast between text and background colors in
terms of legibility. The onscreen host is James Michael Tyler,
the actor who played Gunther in 78 of the shows 238 episodes,
but we never really see him, only hear his dulcet tones.
[Buy it at amazon.com]
Strategy: Low; Theme: Medium; Tactics: Low; Evaluation: Low;
Personal Rating: 5
- Der Schatz des Pharaos
Note: the original Wolfgang Kramer card game was published in 1996,
but the following only discusses the 2006 version,
Im Bann der Pyramide.
"Under the Spell of the Pyramids" may be the first game from Adlung
to be a re-published one, although there are apparently some
small changes to the rules. Players respresent archaeological
treasure hunters racing through a number of stages to a dead
pharaoh's tomb. Each stage is represented by a card depicting
the obstacle to overcome and each is more difficult than the
last. Succeeding at a stage requires play of tools cards which
come in four types: rope, ladder, pickaxe and torch. The
difficulty is that at any moment only one type is playable and
in general only one card may be played on a turn. But there are
scarab cards permitting play of more than one card,
magic cards that permit changing which type is playable at the
moment, curse cards that destroy a tool of each other player
and guard cards that protect against curses. There is also a
single mummy which adds a minor extra difficulty to the player
holding it. However, a player holding it may buy it off and
cause it to go and scare a leading if the leader has reached
the last stage. Game play is quite clean and generally fair.
All players are likely to still be in the race by its ending
and there can be plenty of tension in the ending. It does not
overstay its welcome either. The main decisions are whether to
draw two cards or trade out several for new cards and when to
change the tool type, and what to change it too. While this is
all right as far as it goes, the amount of decisionmaking is a
bit light. On the other hand, this can work for children and
also for Egypt enthusiasts.
[Ancient Egypt games]
Der Schatz des Pharaos - Wolfgang Kramer; Berliner Spielkarten; 1996; 2-6
Im Bann der Pyramide - Wolfgang Kramer; Adlung; 2006; 2-5
Strategy: Low; Theme: Medium; Tactics: High; Evaluation: Low; Personal Rating: 6
- Schicki Micki
Crowdbreaker game of fast recognition and quick action. Cards show
a silly-looking clothed and umbrella'ed bird with accessories
whose garish colors differ from card to card. The relationship
between them determines which of four actions players should take
as quickly as possible: grab the red pawn, grab one of the 3 blue
pawns, knock on the table or do nothing at all. Doing the right
thing first earns the cards, possibly sharing them with tied
opponents, while doing the wrong costs a card. Germans can
appreciate the humor of this game better than others as a
Schiki Micki, probably derived from chic, describes a
certain kind of woman, always fashionably dressed -- usually in
black -- tending to be superficial, who flock to places just trying
to be seen. Giving this name to the silly bird pictures on the
cards is quite an amusing stretch. For its type, this game is above
above average, featuring generously large pawns which are easy to
grasp and having enough variance in the illustrations and matching
rules that players do not all arrive at the conclusion at exactly
the same time every time.
Strategy: Low; Theme: Low; Tactics: Medium; Evaluation: Low
- Schieber Jass
Trick-taking card game for partners.
Not particularly satisfying rules permit players to break suit
in order to trump, giving all the advantage to the fourth player
on a trick. Thus, the number of trumps rather than the skill with
which they are played becomes paramount. Rules by which the partners
can try to communicate to decide what contract they wish to play are
too primitive to bear interest. The ranking in the trump suit is
annoyingly altered for no particular reason and the point values
are inconvenient to sum at the end of the game. Strategically, the
team which has the most and best trumps are best served to simply
lead them early and flush out all those of the opposition.
[summary]
- Schlangen von Delhi, Die
"The Snakes of Delhi" is of the "pipe connection" variety for
up to four. From a secret hand of five tiles, players build on
one of snakes which come in four colors, seeking to add to a long
snake or terminate one either with a head or in a basket. Beneath
the snake curves and straights there are tunnels leading in
other directions which may be used by snakes not yet placed. The
player's turn tends to be consumed by solving the immediate puzzle
of the highest scoring play and basically never involves and
long term strategy. However, the brightly-depicted snakes and the
play materials are nicely-presented and the puzzles fun to solve,
at least at first, so it can work well when for various reasons
such as company, fatigue, etc. a lighter, less-demanding game
is wanted. It does manage to avoid the strong negative nature
of Iron Horse/Metro,
but features too little of the planning which characterizes
Linie 1/Streetcar.
Rules are not the clearest. While there is some sympathy for
the interpretion that no play may cut a snake off from possible
legal conclusion, repeated play has indicated it that the real
intent was not to have any bar on such.
- Schmuggler an Bord
Ostensibly a game about smuggling, the actual operative expression
is "memory game". Players take turns rolling a die to move
the shared pawn. Should it land on an unclaimed artifact,
it is revealed and the player claims it, face down. But if
contraband associated with the space has already been claimed,
he must identify its current holder. The accused may believe the
item is held elsewhere and make his own accusation. This process
can continue for a while until a loop is achieved, at which point
the truth is revealed. A successful accusation earns the accuser
the item while failure loses a chip. End scoring is based on
both items and chips. The artifacts are well-made and depict a
charmingly diverse set of bric-a-brac one might like to smuggle.
The entire look of the game gives that warm, friendly Ravensburger
feeling that has largely disappeared amid today's more vibrant,
intense products. Some games turn out to be more in the playing
than they would seem in the telling. This is true here as there is
fun in the back and forth of the accusations -- perhaps bluffing
about the level of one's certitude -- and also the challenge,
perhaps, of finding creative mnemonic tricks along the way. This
is true to some extent, anyway, though at the end of the day,
this does not transcend the kids game genre.
Strategy: Low; Theme: Medium; Tactics: Low; Evaluation: Low; Personal Rating: 5
- Schnäppchen Jagd
Along with
Ninety-Nine
one of the best trick-taking card
games for three. The game also works for four, but seems less
satisfying. The ostensible theme is about collecting various
merchandise items, toasters et al. A nice side-effect is that the
totally-unrelated game,
Schotten-Totten,
may be played with
exactly half the deck.
- Schoko & Co. (Ambition)
Features the tasty theme of Schokolade, i.e. chocolate.
Nice presentation – one can almost smell and taste those
bars being made. Players are less involved however with
the details of manufacturing than those of personnel as
one attempts the best way to allocate funds between sales,
manufacturing and administration. Seems to require a
certain amount of cooperation among at least some of the
players. May be a bit too chaotic for some palates, especially
due to the silent bidding for cocoa. Some
complain that the game reminds them too much of real working
life, perhaps a backhanded compliment.
- Schotten-Totten
Two-player Knizia card game with ostensible theme about resetting
border stones in Scotland. Each player is trying to win some of the
nine stones by placing a three-card best poker hand on their side of
it. As hand size is limited and one doesn't know what cards will be
drawn, makes for maddeningly delicious choices. The interesting
strategy decision is whether to go for winning five of the nine
contests by the end or whether to try for the immediate
three-in-a-row knockout win. Considerable discussion
has been waged over which of this game and
Lost Cities
is superior, but it seems rather pointless as both are quite good.
The only real problem here is for the color-blind as the suits are
differentiated by that means alone.
Later re-done as
Battleline
with a new theme and a few additional rules.
Strategy: Medium; Theme: Low; Tactics: Medium; Evaluation: Medium; Personal Rating: 8
- Schrille Stille
Amusing game of top 40 pop music radio hits.
It has a strong element of trying to outguess one's opponents
that is reminiscent of Basari. Two great assets of the
game are a fancy wood and metal vote tabulator gadget and the
amusing, parodic rock group names.
The title ironically means "Strident Silence" and is also one of the
group names in the game.
- Schwarzarbeit
Friedemann Friese and Andrea Meyer game of memory and logical
deduction. The two inventors continue to explore the seamy
undersides of modern life, here the practice of "black work",
the employment of moonlighting workers whose paychecks are hidden
from tax authorities. This means each player is dealt two illegal
workers whose identities he attempts to keep secret while divining
those of his opponents. Each character, whose names are composites
of well known game industry figures such as Maureen Moon (Maureen
Hiron and Alan Moon), appears in the deck three times. Six of
these cards are revealed and the player to the right must state
how many of them are not his secret ones. By carefully paying
attention to the answers and straining their memories to the
utmost, players can eventually figure things out. If there is no
character to thus identify, players can supplement their scores
by choosing characters that they feel are innocent. The cards
are fun to see and identify and the rules have been kept simply
elegant. The memory element in games is objectionable to some,
including me, but here is not so onerous to be discouraging. The
most important factor for enjoyment are the personalities,
not those on the cards, but the ones sitting at your table.
If they're close-thinking concentrators, all should go well,
but if your players are apt to leave the table for snacks, tell
long stories and distract with jokes, this simply won't work at
all. But logical deduction fans should be happy with this kind of
Arbeit. [Bewitched
Spiele]
- Schwarze Pirat, Der: Das Duell (Pirates' Blast)
This expansion kit for the children's game
Der Schwarze Pirat (The Black Pirate)
can also be played standalone by ages 5 and up.
Included are two cardboard islands on which are placed two
cannon pieces (wooden cylinders held horizontally on platforms).
In the bay of each island is placed the owner's ship, a wooden
platform with a cloth sail. Each player also has a rubber
bellows which he blows behind the ship a number of times equal
to the roll of a die. The goal is to reach the opponent's
island, at which point a random treasure token is claimed. To
prevent this, the opponent places a small cube at the end of
his cannon and then uses the bellows to propel it out, aiming
to hit the opponent's ship. Success in this sends the ship
back to its starting point. All of the components are rather
attractive and this action game can provide at least a little
fun for all ages, even if tailing off rather quickly for most
adults. While at first it seems the bellows should be directed
at the sail, it seems to work better directed at the hull.
[Pirate Games]
Strategy: Low; Theme: Low; Tactics: Medium; Evaluation: Low; Personal Rating: 5
Guido Hoffmann; HABA; 2007; 2
[Buy it at Amazon]
- Schwarzmarkt
Stefan Dorra-designed game about the black market following World
War II. A card demanding particular commodities such as coffee,
butter, sugar, potatoes, etc. is played. Players in turn may
satisfy these demands by playing goods
cards from their hands, receiving cash payouts. The interesting
dimension is that until a card is completely satisfied,
a payout increases the size of a potential payout for the next player.
Actually, if a player does not turn in any goods, he may increase
the payout by an even larger amount, hoping that there will still be
demand when it is again his turn. Thus there is a definite
element of chicken and a need to calculate how well one is doing
compared to others. Light and yet challenging fun. Probably works
best for three good card counters. Title means "black market".
Stefan Dorra; Amigo Spiele; 1996; 3-5
- Schweinsgalopp (Galloping Pigs)
A game for children 6 and up on a rare topic: pig racing.
What is the goal of this race? Winning the most food of course.
Not at all strenuous and sometimes subject to luck of the draw,
but definitely containing challenging strategic considerations
regardless of one's age. Rounded out by very cute and fairly large
plastic pigs in various colors.
- Scotland Yard
Several players are cooperating to capture the villainous Mr. X who
is traveling around London via underground, boat, bus and subway.
Essentially a two-player situation, there is still some interest
for the team side in that they must put their heads together to solve
a common problem in this game of logical deduction. They also need to
consider the issue of what transportation modes they use as they are
handed over to their opponent for his use.
Mr. X is a very challenging position to play as well. As a rule, it
appears that he escapes if there are three or fewer detectives and is
caught if there are five. Overall enjoyable as a light outing.
Re-published with a new map and slightly different rules as
New York Chase (not described here).
Strategically, players should find and pay careful attention to the
various bottlenecks distributed around the board -- the route through
the park is only the most obvious one -- as they become valuable escape
routes which cannot be easily cut off.
- Scrabble
Probably the classic word game is actually not only about vocabulary,
but strategy since the board has a definite geography in terms of
double and triple letter and word spaces. Most expert players actually
only form very short words which are limit severely the choices of
opponents. Beware fanatics who have memorized every obscure two- and
three-letter word in the
Official Scrabble Player's Dictionary,
an artifact of the game which tends to be a polarizing factor in its popularity.
Invented 1931-2 by laid-off architect Alfred Butts who called it Lexico,
its story is a salutory example of persistence in game development.
The original had no board, tile racks were wall moldings
and the original tile distribution was
based on letter frequencies from the front page of the
New York Times.
The concept of connecting words to one another was only added half a dozen
years later when Butts noticed the popularity of newspaper crossword puzzles.
This version was called Criss-Cross and later Criss-Cross Words.
In 1948 he worked with a venture capitalist who self-published it as Scrabble.
By 1953 he could no longer keep up with demand and contracted with Selchow &
Righter to manufacture the game boards, which eventually bought the property
outright in 1971. Later the company was acquired by Coleco which was acquired
by Hasbro.
An interesting-looking book on the culture of the game is
Word Freak: Heartbreak, Triumph, Genius, and Obsession in the World of
Competitive Scrabble
by NPR commentator Stefan Fatsis.
A
- Scrabble For Juniors
Version for players aged 6-12 features a double-sided board.
The introductory version resembles more a crossword puzzle in which
all the possible words have already been spelled out. This is an aid
to learning about spelling. Points are earned by completing words.
The reverse side is an entirely blank grid, leaving players to come
up with their own words. A point is earned for each letter placed.
Letters are formed from cardboard tiles and do not have values.
- Scream Machine
Delightful card game of competing American amusement park operators. Take turns
building up your park in up to seven different areas from rollercoasters and
kiddie ries to nostalgia and gourmanderie. Or build down to bring in the
cheapskate crowd. About half the customers are willing to travel anywhere
while the rest will only visit nearby parks, thus giving each player a unique
problem to synthesize into the general picture. Completes quite quickly --
twenty minutes should suffice -- but far from mindlessly. Artwork by
Nodwick illustrator Aaron Williams tries to bridge the art-functionality
gap, but ends a bit more on the former. The made-in-Europe cards are nice and
sturdy. Fans of quick, yet perplexing vehicles like
For Sale
should enjoy this one.
Congratulations to Joe Huber on his first publication and kudos to
Jolly Roger Games
for going in this direction are in order. Includes German instructions.
[Holiday List 2003]
- Scripts and Scribes
While the ostensible theme is of medieval monks competing to
assemble the best collection of books, this is easily summed
up as a draft-plus-auction-with-majority-control card affair.
In the first half players take turns drawing cards from the deck.
One card may be claimed, one placed in the auction for later and
the rest put into the pool which the others will draft from. When
the deck runs out, one by one the cards in the auction pile are
auctioned off using the gold cards that players have acquired.
The aim is to collect majorities in some of the five
categories of other cards. The value of each majority is given
by a die each, which can be incremented or decremented by one
via a sixth type of card, the bishop. With so few rules, play
is clean and fast, with interesting decisionmaking in the
first half. The second half can be a bit of a blind affair,
however, as no one knows who has acquired what in their
private draws. For example, in one game no red cards showed
up in the draft pool, most of them having been claimed privately.
Without any idea of how the cards had been distributed, bidding
became rather senseless. Physically, the cards are of very good
quality, but their artwork appears to be deliberately ugly, presumably
to reflect the medieval era. There is an art to
achieving this effect, of being ugly and beautiful at the same
time. It was a success in
Njet,,
but less so here. More seriously perhaps, two of the card types
resemble one another too much and several of them are hard to
match up with their dice places on the small board. Actually
it's not clear why there is a board as its function could easily
have been served by just adding five more cards. The dice are
not really needed either as these cards could have had
different numbers at each edge and just been rotated to show
the current values. By employing corners as well as sides,
eight different values could have been indicated instead of
just six. Another oddity is that some of the suits have only
very small card values while the rest have relatively larger ones.
Other than mess up first time players, it's not clear what
purpose this serves. If variability is desireable, then why not
take it all the way. Let one suit be all the same
values, another all different values, another all medium-sized
with one large one, another pairs of values (1,1,2,2,3,3), etc.
Though play is quick and smooth, the system isn't very rich
and there aren't really any new features here. With better
artwork this could be a reasonable gateway effort. Originally
published as Scriptorium, but changed when another game with
this title was discovered, the components still bear the original
title.
Strategy: Low; Theme: Medium; Tactics: Medium; Evaluation: High; Personal Rating: 5
Steve Finn;
Doctor Finn's Card Company; 2008; 2-4
- 6 Nimmt! (Take 6)
Card game by Wolfgang Kramer and Klaus Palesch.
The literal translation of the title is "Six Takes" which describes
what happens in this game of avoiding cards, especially cards which
have a lot of bulls on them (why bulls?): the sixth player on a pile
takes them all. Although the game can take up to ten players does not
mean it plays well that way. For a non-random game with some interesting
strategy and prediction, play with four or fewer. Very light,
the ideas in this game were taken further in
Hornochsen.
- 6 Tage Rennen
"6 Days Race" is another bicycle racing depiction, a theme
more popular than one might expect, although perhaps not from
a European perspective. Other titles include
Breaking Away
and
Um Reifenbreite.
Here players begin with identical decks of
movement cards. The interesting mechanism is that if one
can move so that exact count lands on the same space as another player,
the number of movement points are doubled. This leads to a number of
interesting mathematical possibilities. Players may cooperate, for
example. Or if they do not wish to, must consider not only getting
ahead, but what opportunity to get ahead they are giving away. This
is a game which really needs a lot of players to work well. I have
even played with seven which worked quite well.
- Sechsstädtebund (League of Six)
In the scary medieval days of war and robber barons six Polish
towns banded together for their mutual protection and
commercial benefit. A century later tax collectors are sent
to these towns to get as much as they can and thereby earn
influence. This is the role the players accept. In the first
half of play they participate in a multi-multi auction (as in
Vegas Showdown),
but with a double twist. First, a player who outbids another
refunds the loser's outlay. Second, travel to another city,
i.e. another auction, must be paid for. What's available at
each town is more or less random since its profits are
arranged around six sides of a hexagon. Each round a hexagonal
tile is drawn for each of these spots. The tile's illustration
shows anywhere from two to five sides that are activated. The
player winning the auction orients the tile as he likes to
earn horses, jewels in various colors, bidding cards and cards
which form a set collection contest for the end (serving
mainly to cloud the identity of the leader). In the second
half of a round players act in most horses to least horses
order. On offer are what are essentially ten contracts. Half
provide victory points, the rest cards for the set collection
game. A player chooses a contract and then places on it any of
the jewels its calls for from his own supply. This is a good
idea since these placements give points in and of themselves.
Then, going around the table, the other players must fill in
the remainder of the contract as well as they can. If the
contract is thus completed, the initiating player receives
the main reward. This is a game which looks attractive, has
plenty of bits and plays cleanly without annoying exceptions.
But who is playing, the players or the game? Considering the
random nature of the second half, e.g. the number of jewels
and horses players will have, how can any sensible evaluation
be made at the auction? It's only the most important type of
decision in the game. There's also little to no telling where
one will be seated during the second half and since far from the
fast horses is a blessing and close to them a curse, it matters
not a little. Finally, despite the elaborate thematic build up
recounted at the start, at no point do the player activities feel
anything like what they're meant to represent.
Strategy: Low; Theme: Low; Tactics: Medium; Evaluation: Low; Personal Rating: 5
Vladimír Suchý Czech Games Edition; 2007; 3-5
- Seidenstraße, Die
Game about a medieval Silk Road journey from China to Venice
driven by cardplay. Interesting idea around benefits of
cooperating caravans does not seem fully-developed as the feature
cannot be used consistently. Luck of the draw also plays a larger
role than one might wish, especially as the number of players
grows. For example, in a five player game, the deck is only about
one and a quarter used. Dimensions of strategy and lookahead
are present however, particularly in hand management. Components,
artwork and flavor are noticeably better than average.
- Sequence
In this one you hold a hand of 4-5 normal playing cards and
use them to try to be the first to construct a line of 5
in tic-tac-toe fashion on the board where all the cards are
represented twice. There are rules which allow you to play on
your own or in teams. Jacks are wild and so can be very useful.
Jacks may have some other special function as well – I
don't quite recall. Holding only 5 cards, it's quite difficult
to plan any kind of long-term strategy that will get you to your
goal as no doubt the 5 you have won't come anywhere near making a
line (or sequence). It may be useful for stopping other players'
sequences though, but of course stopping a sequence is not trivial
since even though you've blocked one end of it, they can build
on the other end, unless they've built on the edge of the board.
So one gets a lot of cooperative stopping. It seems like
the winner is eventually someone who gets lucky by having
just the right card or gets enough Jacks, although you
might hope to be building a line which nobody else notices
– maybe a play which looked like a stop was actually a
crucial link in tricky-to-see diagonal sequence for which
you or your partner just happen to have the necessary final
card. The game requires some attention to what is going
on, but not all that much thinking.
[Buy it at Amazon]
- Shadows Over Camelot
Cooperative game with a twist for up to seven in an Arthurian
setting. The twist is that one of the players might secretly
be a traitor, hoping to undermine all the tasks others strive
for and thus become sole winner. The tension and considerations
implicit in this simple rule at last realize the potential
inherent in Knizia's
The Lord of the Rings.
Here also players hold private cards. They are slightly less
forced together as they try to complete various quests, some
solo. Either they quest for artifacts such as Excalibur or the
Holy Grail or they defeat foes as varied as the black knight,
Lancelot, Saxons, Picts or a dragon. (Despite Monty Python's
famous movie and musical, it's all played straight -- we need
James Ernest to supply the satirical version. Nor is it the more
historical Sarmatian version as seen in the most recent film.)
Each character takes his name from the mythos and has a special
power, as well as life points. If enough tasks are achieved,
all, save the traitor, win. There are several very fine balancing
acts in the design, e.g. the "good" deck vs. the "bad" deck, the
difficulty of a task vs. its reward, and even the typical choice
offered by many special cards: play for yourself to big advantage
or play on others to only their benefit. Most importantly of
all, enough latitude is given the traitor -- not every playing
will necessarily even have one -- to secretly subvert matters
without necessarily appearing to do so. Everything tends to work
quite well as far as it goes, although it would have been nice
to see a greater departure from the Knizian system. Although
it doesn't happen too often, it doesn't seem right that a
character's dying knocks that player out of the game and out
of the fun. Similarly, a revealed traitor doesn't have many
interesting choices. Circumstances might have become even more
exciting and challenging if all players had more reason to behave
as a traitor sometimes, and if there were only a single winner
in all cases. It's also possible for some boredom to ensue when
the traitor is revealed and the best remaining strategy is to
deliberately let tasks fail. The seriousness of these complaints
may depend on how much of The Lord of
the Rings you've played ... It is all done in gorgeous
Days of Wonder artwork, complete with individual plastic figures
of each knight, plus the grail, Excalibur and plenty of Saxons
and Picts. A separate Sir Bedivere expansion ("Tell me again,
Sir Bedivere how sheep bladders may be employed to ...") is
also available -- he seems to make a very good traitor by the
way. Check this out if theme is important to you and less so
otherwise. But I suspect most will enjoy at least one or two
playings, even if some will miss the heavy calculating other
games require. My only question is to wonder what happened to
the fair ladies? Morgan le Fay, Vivien and an evil Guinevere are
present, but strangely there aren't even cards for the damsels who
probably inspired these heavy metal artists in the first place.
Bruno Cathala & Serge Laget; Days of Wonder; 2005; 3-8
Strategy: High; Theme: High; Tactics: Medium; Evaluation: Low; Personal Rating: 7
- Shadows Over Camelot: Merlin's Company (Schatten über Camelot: Merlins Macht; Les Chevaliers de la Table Ronde - La compagnie de Merlin)(
The first true expansion kit for the Shadows Over Camelot
does not add any boards, but has plenty else to offer.
First of all there's Merlin himself, a new plastic figure and
one who decides on his own whether to accompany a knight on a
quest or return home. This occurs by means of new cards
which must now be drawn every time a knight travels. Good or
bad things can also occur on these cards, even becoming
entrapped until a friend is willing to rescue. Merlin helps by
giving his companions white cards from the deck, which helps
to offset the nasty travel cards and also the new black cards
which can seriously hamstring the knights. The most
interesting and dramatic addition is the possibility of having
two traitors at once; the problem of their detection being
added to that of their having to detect one another. Also fun
are alternate versions for seven knights and the Sir Bedivere
figure for any who might have missed him in the previous
expansion. Those who already have him can now use both orange
knights in one playing. This expansion is not intended to
change your mind about the original, but is rather more of the
same, and as beautifully produced as ever.
Bruno Cathala & Serge Laget; Days of Wonder; 2008; 3-8
Strategy: High; Theme: High; Tactics: Medium; Evaluation: Low; Personal Rating: 7
[Buy it at Amazon]
- Shanghaien
This two-player game by Michael Schacht and Roman Pelek
(Santiago)
covers an unusual topic which nevertheless has been visited
before in the game
Halunken und Spelunken:
the shanghaiing of sailors. This is another of those games
featuring a line drawn between the players
(Schotten-totten,
Babel,
Roma,
etc.), here formed by six randomly drawn cards. Each shows a
sailor having one of the various values in one of several colors,
or a special "dirty tricks" card. A player rolls two of his six
dice and assigns one to the correspondingly numbered position.
Then the opponent does the same. Any time a player has at
least two dice assigned, he may call "shanghai" instead of
rolling and end the round. When he is down to just one die, he
must do so. At this time players receive the cards where they
have the most pips. Tied cards are resolved by the pips on
neighboring cards which can create cascading situations and
tricky placement decisions. Once claimed, dirty tricks cards
offer special abilities such as re-rolling, adjusting a result
by 1 or use of a card as a low-valued wild card sailor.
Scoring itself is a chancy business. What one wants is a
monopoly in a particular color as then all of its points
score. However, if the opponent has even one point in a color,
the player having fewer points gets nothing, but the winner
gets only the points that had been held by the loser. Thus,
attention then should turn to colors where the opponents are
closely matched. Obviously this is a highly tactical
situation, but there are some strategic considerations as
well, particularly over the question of whether or not to
pursue the dirty tricks cards early. Thematically it's unclear
why scoring works the way that it does, but on the other hand
an entire playing lasts just twenty minutes which doesn't give
enough time to worry about such matters. At the time of this
writing two small expansions to add more cards have been
web-published at
www.michaelshacht.net
Instructions are published in multiple languages as usual with
games by Abacus.
Strategy: Medium; Theme: Low; Tactics: High; Evaluation: High; Personal Rating: 7
Michael Schacht & Roman Pelek; Abacus; 2008;
2
- Shark [Flying Turtle]
Stock manipulation and speculation game similar to Acquire. Each turn the player
rolls a pair of dice which tell which color stock gets a pawn
placed on a grid and in which region the pawn must be placed.
A stock is worth the number of pawns on the board, except that
isolated ones don't count. There is strong incentive to increase
the value of stocks because for doing this you receive money
equal to the new value. But shareholders get money equal to
the increment times the number of shares owned, which can be
a disincentive. This is a bit unrealistic, but seems to work
well as a game anyway. Selling shares is the third way to earn
money. Like sharks, corporations can eat one another and another
unrealism emerges: holders of the losing stock must pay instead of
being paid and in fact their shares are worth less now. Perhaps
the game should have chosen a different theme, but as a game it
works quite well with a lot of back and forth unpredictability.
Interestingly, Sid Sackson, the designer of Acquire reviewed this game
and suggested variants: (1) change the bonus to 3 times the
amount of the rise in the stock's price; (2) throw two numbered
dice instead of one and if doubles are thrown, any zone can be
chosen; (3) allow a player to place a marker connected to its own
color and to another color so that each group has the same number
of markers; the player can then choose which color to remove;
(4) limit the size of a group to 5.
Second edition:
The biggest change in the Ravensburger edition is the new board
which creates a central area surrounded by just four others. The
corresponding placement die has faces matching each of thse areas
plus a wild card. The result is that it's far more likely that a
player have a valid placement each turn, but in a way it's too bad
as one can miss those weird, unwanted plays which somehow,
sometimes surprisingly turn into significant developments. The
stock market now is rather more predictable and large, monolithic
stocks more likely, usually just one of them. This in turn can lead
to an uncatchable leader if players are not careful or a little
unlucky. Overall, the new edition appears to be a step backward
except in two areas: clearer instructions and the fact that there
is no shortage of play money. Unfortunately the second edition
board is difficult to retrofit.
Strategy: Medium; Theme: High; Tactics: High; Evaluation: High
- Shear Panic
-
Innovative multi-player game about sheep(!), who are arranged in a
grid which players have the ability to affect in various ways once
per turn, usually by shifting a row, column or diagonal. Their
goal is to get points for achieving particular positions of their
own sheep, the goal changing through the four stages of play.
Some positions relate to the relative locations of one's sheep to
one another while others relate to their positions relative to
the sheep dog or the shearer. Each player has an identical set
of options, each of which can be used just once. Certain point
levels on the scoring track, if hit exactly, trigger roll of a
special die. These results usually instruct the current player to
modify the grid in some restricted way. Players wishing to avoid
too much randomness can usually avoid these spots, but usually
it's not particularly draconian and does provide something of a
catch-up mechanism. There are some concerns in this area -- can
initial setup and moves be too decisive? -- but probably once
players become sufficiently familiar they can easily work together
to haul back a leader, especially when four are playing. The
physical production is extremely attractive featuring the cutest
possible three-dimensional plastic sheep mounted on square
boards. There are similar pieces for the dog and shearer too. The
options board is admirably internationalized, i.e. pictorial only,
but unfortunately too cryptically so, which is really worse than
having text. And it's a minor point, but I wonder that the sheep
bases weren't made round as it would be easier when they all
need to rotate. (Squares could be painted on the bases if it was
necessary to make the grid more recognizable). Overall though,
this is innovative, hits a great spot on the
length/complexity/challenge scale and should be pretty accessible
to most audiences.
Strategy: Low; Theme: Medium; Tactics: High; Evaluation: Low; Personal Rating: 7
- Sherlock Holmes Card Game, The
-
Card game in which players attempt to get rid of their hands
one card at a time, the model pioneered by
Crazy Eights
or
Uno.
Masterfully layered atop are the elements of a Holmesian story
complete with Watson, Mycroft, Baker Street, Scotland Yard, hansom
cabs, trips to the country, inspections, arrests, alibis, etc. The
innovative rule for which cards may be played replaces the idea
that cards must match by forcing play of a different type of card,
in fact those displayed at the card bottom. The effect of this
is to tell a story. For example, the investigation may start at
Baker Street, take a train to the country, make an inspection,
return to London, take a cab, or something like that, depending
on what players choose to play. Meanwhile, there are villains
about. Anytime one cannot play, a deck draw may yield one of
the four evildoers. Since use of an alibi card forces everyone
to pass a card to the left, it is likely that the location
of one or more will be known which may permit someone to make
a definitive accusation, if holding the right cards, and end
the round. As one's card play choices may be one or even zero,
play is sometimes lacking in options. At other times there
are intelligent choices to be made such as which of several
transportation modes to play depending on which locations
are held or even more significantly, as players get close to
going out, when to take a big chance on arresting someone, and
which one. Card artwork is passable, but surpassed by the story
element which is very well crafted. Fans of experience games
will appreciate this one even if it lacks some of the strategic
scope that will make others want to avoid it entirely.
[variant]
- Sherlock Holmes, Consulting Detective
(Sherlock Holmes Criminal Cabinet)
-
Ultimate deduction game places players in Holmes' London attempting to
solve cases. Play is both very free form and
analytical with a strong story element. The players read background
information on the case as well as having available to them London
telephone book and newspaper facsimiles. They then must decide what is
the wisest angle to investigate, choosing from options like visit the
coroner, the crime scene, talk to a possible suspect, etc. which is
implemented by going to a specific book page and reading the results.
When the detectives feel that they have answered all of the questions
raised by the case, they check the answer and see how they did compared
to Holmes, who is always extremely efficient. The level of information and
historicity is quite amazing. The only downside is that
once played cases are probably used up. This is addressed by a number of
Holmesian supplements:
The Mansion Murders,
The Queen's Park Affair, Adventures by Gaslight (not
standalone), West End Adventures. The system was also
followed-on by Gumshoe and its expansion The Chinatown
Caper which render the hardboiled mystery genre and are a
bit more chaotic (sudden attacks from baddies can crop up) to
reflect that. This system of games is very different. A typical
game presents a finite series of options and the main challenge
for the player is selecting the optimal one or ones. However,
here the large number of options and resources and ways of
using them can even mean that there are options the players do
not even realize. For example, there is included a facsimile
telephone book packed with information and it may depend on the
player's ability to realize that one of these individual records
leads to the information the player needs. Overall the result
is a situation closer to real life than just about any other
game described here.
- Shipwrecked
Card game ostensibly about being shipwrecked on a deserted island
is in reality more of a standard card auction game. Players use
an invariable hand of three Pass cards, two Stop cards and one
Lightning Bolt to bid on a variety of weird items with differing
victory point values and incomes. The innovative bidding system
features players secretly making bids one card at a time. The
more cards down the cheaper the item is. However, only players
who have played a stop card may halt the bidding. At this time,
any player whose last bid was the Lightning Bolt wins the card
(and pays for it with nice amber-colored glass pieces). But if
more than one player is showing the Bolt, then the auction winner
is anyone who has played the Stop. But if there is more than one
of these, than the other cards are examined and whoever has played
the most Pass cards on the previous rounds wins. In a nice touch,
players who are out of gold may re-use purchased cards as bidding
material, a necessary rule as you may sometimes find yourself
winning auctions without expecting it. The game goes until one
player reaches a fixed number of victory points. Essentially
this is Rock-Paper-Scissors made more interesting, but
it's not all that clear that there is enough planning, or even
meaningful bluffing, to make it worthwhile.
- Shit!
Light card game by Reinhard Staupe reminiscent
of Take 6 and Hornochsen. By this point
it's too easy to stoop to the old saws that "it stinks", etc.
Actually, it's not bad. Here the entire deck of cards is
ordered. A card is turned up. Players simultaneously place
a card face down hoping to be the nearest card further in the
sequence, scoring points equal to the distance. Or they play their
"Shit!" card to draw a new card for their hand. Easy to explain,
but not so easy to win. Does one try for small points here and
there and try to build a strong hand? Or is one more tactical
and attempt to get a few big scores when others are likely to
be replenishing? Americans may not realize that such a title
is not nearly as offensive in German culture where four-letter
words do not have the same ability to shock.
- Shogi
The Japanese version of Chess has a few important
differences such as that almost all pieces can promote and that
captured pieces join the other side. A decent change of pace
for abstract fans.
- Shuó Míng
Although the ostensible theme is launching and landing
aircraft, this is essentially yet another version of
Pachisi. A little extra strategy is added by the
addition of special movement between spaces of the same color.
[rules]
- Sieben Siegel, Die
Stefan Dorra's variant of the Oh
Hell trick-taking card game employs the theme of the
Seven Seals, although nowhere does the exact number of seven
seals ever pertain to play. The idea is to constrict player
freedom even more by forcing forecasts of not only the number
of tricks to be taken, but also their color (the color of the
card led or trump if it is used). Alternatively, one player
can take the Saboteur and gain by forcing others to take tricks
they did not subscribe. Ambiguous in the instructions is whether
a zero bid may be made -- my inference is that apart from the
Saboteur they may not. Inventor and publisher are also unclear
about whether the Saboteur should be worth 4 or 5 points as both
rules are presented, one as a variant. Perhaps they should have
simply settled on 4.5. The original Oh Hell, still a
very good game, is characterized by large amounts of freedom and
flexibility in achieving one's goal. Removing that freedom leads
to play which consists mostly of rebellion against it, meager as
the means may be. All one can really do is use trumps to fudge
how a trick is counted or take the Saboteur and attempt to
foil, or else take all of the tricks if others are sufficiently
subscribed. On the other hand, if things go wrong for an early
bidder who has no information to go on, they can go very wrong
indeed without remedy. Maybe this Saboteur was meant to be the
crowning joy of play, but as it really needs a special type of
hand and choosing late in the round,
it is not provided very reliably. This variant does not really supplant the
original and neither is as much fun as Doris and Frank's
Wimmüln,
which diabolically forces hand cards to be used as bids.
- Sieben Weisen, Die
The fantastical world of "The Seven Sages" features the
witch, lady healer, priestess, mage, druid, seer and sage. As in
Verräter,
each round features a player drafting a role, in this case
publicly. Then ensues a vague negotiation round in which each
player must choose one side or the other so that they are more or
less equal, followed by the competition in which players reveal
cards appropriate to their role, or special cards which have
unusual effects. The higher the card's point value, the more it
swings the competition to the team's side, but playing two "1"
cards is worth 10. The winning side take turns claiming crystal
tokens on which are printed various amounts of victory points
while the losers receive special cards. The first player to drop
out draws five cards and passes three of them to the second player
to drop out, etc. with the last player discarding three cards.
Then the entire process is repeated. Intelligent considerations
are present around choosing the role, the partners and which cards
to pass. Formation of alliances, being out of the individual's
complete control, can be problematic, especially when players
are of unequal abilities as it's rather easy to unwittingly
help a player who is doing well enough already. In the end the
negotiation phase can come down to a real-time race which is
not exactly conducive to reasoned play. Players who do not have
German will need a cheat sheet to translate the special cards --
fortunately there are only a few types (named in Latin). Overall,
this is probably too much trouble for most to appreciate, but
may appeal to RPG fans as a quickish romp.
- Siedler Kartenspiel, Die (The Settlers of Catan Card Game)
The two-player card game version of Die Siedler von Catan
is of some interest, but despite
my being lucky enough to usually win, fails on the whole because of the
deck-diving feature. Not only does this require a good memory, but
while a player is trying to scrutinize for the best card in one of the five
decks, the play experience stops completely dead for the opponent.
A
- Siedler von Catan, Die (The Settlers of Catan, Les Colons de Katan, De Kolonisten van Catan)
Brilliant, breakthrough Klaus Teuber design about the settlement
and development of a new island. By use of randomly placed
hex tiles, every game board and thus every game is different.
Has at least three different strategies to pursue (roads and
settlements, cities, cards). In addition, unless a player
has placed poorly at the outset, no one is ever really out of
the contest until the ending. The most frequent choice for
introducing new players or for those times when no one can
agree on what to play, the sheer elegance, intuitiveness and
interactivity are simply not to be topped, at least not so far.
Many of the published variants are quite entertaining as well,
even better than many other standalone games, but the original
remains the best overall, another proof of the perfect nature
of the design. Try to tweak it in any direction at all and
its ideal balance is disturbed. Regarding its inspirations,
for centuries the German race have been colonizing from the
south and west where it touched the Roman empire to the east,
starting with development of the wild and inaccessible Black
Forest and the continuing to the East. It seems like there is
some kind of memory of this Drang Nach Osten process represented
in this breakthrough design that always remains challenging.
But whence comes this name "Catan" which has adorned so many
different products and boxes? Strangely enough, it may have
its genesis in a place as unexpected as television's Star
Trek. In an episode of The Next Generation called
"The Inner Light", Captain Picard is struck by a mysterious
beam and wakes up to find himself on a planet called Catan. The
episode premiered in 1992 while the game only in 1995 so the
chronology does work. Ever wonder why the sun depicted on
the Catan box is so huge? In the episode Catan is destroyed
when its sun goes supernova. Moreover, in the episode (which
happens to be one of the best in the series), Catan is a lost
planet preserved only in dreams. What better way to describe the
fictional world of the game could there be? On the other hand,
in a February 28, 2001 interview, Teuber stated that the
name came not from Star Trek, which he has not much seen (he prefers
Star Wars), but from a list of twenty names from partner
Reiner Müler. Of course the origins of this list are still unknown.
[Holiday List 2002]
A
Strategy: High; Theme: High; Tactics: High; Evaluation: High; Personal Rating: 10
Klaus Teuber;
Frankh-Kosmos/Kosmos;
1995; 3-4
- Siedler von Catan, Die - Burgbau auf Chaffenberch
The Burgbau auf Chaffenberch expansion for the
The Settlers of Catan,
referring to the construction of a castle in Chaffenberch
(today
Kapfenberg,
Styria, Austria),
includes a pre-printed board on a poster-sized sheet and a number of
counters to be mounted on cardboard. The game is
fundamentally the same, meaning not much relief for those
who dislike the original, but includes a few additions and
subtractions. Ports are gone and so is the largest army
award. Instead of the former, each time a player builds a
road he receives a traveling merchant chit which may be used
on one subsequent turn to make as many 2-for-1 trades as
desired in any resources desired (leading to some staggered
building behavior). The other two additions are tournaments and
castle-building. Tourneys occur whenever a knight (soldier)
card is played. Each player strives to roll the highest die,
adding in his shields, two of which are given to each player at
the outset, and knights. The winner gives up a knight or shield
(a balancing mechanism) and earns a victory point. Castle building
confers a point for every three wall additions where an addition
costs one hard resource (wood, brick or stone) and one soft
(wool or wheat). Pictorially the castle wall is divided into
three levels with costs increasing as it is filled. The player
with the most additions earns one victory point. The scenario
is slightly more fiddly because of the need to adjust points on
a track, but because of the carefully-balanced board appears to
be unusually fair, with games ending in very close scores. Of
course, replay value is relatively restricted by the pre-printed
map, but as one must own a copy of the original game anyway, it
should be easy to randomly create new maps of twenty-three hexes.
In terms of strategy, just as with virtually every other Catan
variant, the new rules alter the means of scoring and not those
of production. Although it's tempting to try the new methods
right away, nothing succeeds like first improving the economic
engine by making more settlements and cities. This game has
been packaged together with
Die Siedler von Catan - Renaissance in der Steiermark,
which has a different map display on the poster's reverse side and was
given away by the Austrian Game Museum at Essen 2007 to commemorate
the inauguration of the the 2007 Settlers of Catan
Championship in Kapfenberg.
It is not an official scenario of Catan
GmbH or Kosmos Verlag although these bodies did give permission
for publication. It's
unfortunate for Catan fans that no more are available –
perhaps Kosmos will pick this up for re-publication.
Strategy: High; Theme: High; Tactics: High; Evaluation: High; Personal Rating: 10
Heike Risthaus; Österreichische Spiele Museum; 2007; 3-4
- Siedler von Catan, Die. Das Buch
The "Settlers Book" is half a book of fifteen scenarios plus
additional variants and half a box of attractive special
components. Overall, a treasure trove of various delights for
Siedler fans. More games should try this format because
it gets them into the bookstores and noticed by a wider audience.
Below some notes on specific scenarios tried:
"Bermuda Dreieck":
Unique features of the Bermuda Triangle scenario are the
constantly sinking ships, the fact that ore is limited to
the central island upon which no player begins and the
ability to build costly bridges. As a result the scenario may go on
rather long without anyone being able to achieve victory. Players
may like to fix by granting 1 or 2 victory points for bridge
construction.
"Die Sturmflut":
The Flood scenario includes several special rounds at the end of the
game during which players may for one brick and one wool build a dike
to protect a tile from being flooded. The winner, with a lot of tension
along the way, is the player with the most victory points after all the
flooding has finished. The scenario seems quite balanced although
the strategy of acquiring victory point cards which are never
destroyed by flood is quite enhanced. Interesting dilemma in
choosing build sites because those which will produce best are
also most likely to be flooded.
"Die Kolonien":
Interesting to speculate whether this Teuber-designed scenario with
its quite different handling of ships represents his original conception
of the way
Die Siedler von Catan Seefahrer
would have worked.
It certainly helps make the Pirate more sensible and a nice additional
feature is that even if one has no cards to trade, at least there are
your ships to move. May have a bit of a runaway leader problem.
Strategically, players should not allow the glamor of overseas
exploration to cause neglect in the development of the home
island. The best of the scenarios in this book, at least so far.
"Catan-Express":
While fun to have railroading going on, the scenario seems a bit
underdeveloped, at least for five players. Cities are almost never
built until the very end and yet everyone is stuck with plenty of
clay which is nearly useless.
"Westwärts":
Besides being potentially offensive to red Indians, doesn't really
seem to work out very well as the accent shifts too strongly
to luck. The nature of the setup and building must lead to
feast or famine production whether the player wants it or not.
Players are often wielding huge hands of cards by the end and for
several turns. It seems that it may often come down to whichever
one of them is able to most avoid having half of it discarded.
The robber, here the Indian, is also denuded of much of its
power and so there is a critically unfortunate reduction in ability
to slow down the leader. All in the name of historicity I suppose,
but historicity is not interesting enough to make up for such serious
misfeatures.
"Das Grosse Rennen":
In English, "The Great Race" is the only Kosmos-produced scenario
recommended for two players (or more as well, of course). As there
should probably be no trading, there is a great deal of mostly luck
of the dice, although there are some interesting decisions to make
along the way, particularly with respect to timing one's builds.
In particular a bottleneck along the center of the course must be
played judiciously. Contains unknown tiles to be discovered as well.
Back to the problem side, the two-player setup has some labeling errors
in the board collar and it is unclear from the rules whether opposing
roads should be able to cross over one another.
"Die Spezialisten":
"The Specialists" tends to lock players into a particular strategy
and then leaves it to Fortuna to determine a winner. At least it can
be a good training scenario for new players who may not be familiar
with all the strategic paths available in the basic game. In the
three-player scenario, it seems that the third player has too nice an
advantage in placing two settlements on productive locations.
"Das Atoll":
Another scenario heavily dominated by luck, particularly as there are
almost no good building sites. Leavened only slightly by innovative
clock-like movement for the pirate.
[Balloon Aviation Games]
["Ballonfahrer" translation]
["Das Grosse Rennen" translation]
["Die Kolonien" translation]
A
- Siedler von Catan Ergänzgungs-Set, Die (The Settlers of Catan - 5&6 Player Expansion)
The expansion kit for 5-6 players provides pieces for two more players
and extra tiles. Playing this way is still just as good as long as the
following rule is used: players are permitted to build at
the end of each player's turn, but only if the active player
builds. And these extra builds do not include port trades.
A situation to be aware of is that this expansion contains extra
cards for the raw materials and development decks. These cards ought to only be added
when playing with 5-6 players and should be removed again when there
are only 3 or 4. This situation is exacerbated in the Mayfair edition
where the cards from this expansion have already been added to the basic game deck.
For those wishing to properly remove these cards when playing only with 3 or 4,
the cards to remove are five of each type of raw material, six Knights and one
each of Monopoly, Breakthrough and Road Building.
- Siedler von Catan Historische Szenarien, Die
This is actually two specialized scenarios in one. "Cheops",
set in Ancient Egypt complete with pyramid building, is flawed
because in most games all players will lose to the game's ticking clock.
To fix this, don't start building the pyramid until the first player
does so. Strategically, it is vital that each player have a special
trading port at the start of the game as unlike every other game of
this series, a trading port is absolutely vital.
"Alexandersschlacht" is possibly the most dramatic revision of
all the series. Since players must bid for locations along the conquest
route of Alexander the Great, this is actually an auction game. Be sure
to note that the rules were meant to state that players begin with extra
gold. Both scenarios are interesting changes of pace, but neither comes
up to the level of the vanilla game,
The Seafarers of Catan
or even
Die Siedler von Nürnberg
versions.
[Ancient Egypt games]
A
- Siedler von Catan Historische Szenarien II, Die
Two more historical scenarios, this time from China and
ancient Troy.
"The Great Wall" casts each player as a
guardian of a segment of the wall, trying to prevent the raids of
steppe nomads. Because nomads inevitably seem to cross the wall
somewhere, placing the other settlements far away from it seems
a good idea. Interesting dilemma about whether to deliberately
let them in just so that they deprive opponents of production.
There is a lot of ore available on the fixed map, making the
development card strategy look
attractive, but this can be a trap because the value of the largest
army award has been cut down to just one victory point and three victory
point cards have been removed. One problem is that without the robber
-- the pirate only affects players with ports -- it becomes
a little too difficult to haul back a leader.
"Troy"
spotlights the war of the Greeks and Trojans, each player
secretly supporting one side or the other. While there are a
number of interesting new twists such as special ships which
confer points and advantages as well as the ongoing war to which
each player contributes, players intending to win should never
lose sight of the original game precepts they have learned over
the years. The ability to block the expansion of others fleets
offers additional challenges.
Overall, both scenarios constitute a very
well-realized addition to the series, the main downside being that
exactly either 4 or 6 players are required. Otherwise, both are so good
that it is difficult to even prefer one over the other.
[Great Wall translation]
[Troja errata]
A
- Siedler von Catan Seefahrer, Die (The Seafarers of Catan, De Zeevaarders van Catan)
The Seafarers addition to Die Siedler von Catan adds
ships, gold tiles, more board layouts and the possibility of
playing with undiscovered hexes, creating a fun exploration game.
While a bit more chaotic than the original game,
makes for a nice change of pace and a good deal of fun for
exploration game fans. Unfortunately the pirate rules are ambiguously
written and at least four different possible interpretations of
what it steals are possible, requiring a discussion before every
game. To make the pirate as significant as the robber, who after all
totally shuts down production of a hex,
I suggest that the pirate be allowed to steal one card per ship touching
his hex.
Since publication, Kosmos and also Mayfair have web-published an
additional scenario including desert riders, volcanoes and jungles.
While an interesting variation, the lack of the robber and general
rather than specific dampening effects of the riders makes it more
rather than less a game of luck as it is very difficult to do anything
to hamper the person in the lead.
"Vier Inseln":
The Four Islands scenario is fun for the chance to race first to
the other islands, but also problematic in that each player's
production is concentrated on just one hex tile. This means
feast or famine depending on whether the robber happens be in
the neighborhood, which given the difficulty in producing the
right combination for development cards, becomes a matter of
whoever is lucky enough to roll 7 most.
[translation]
[Pirate Games]
[Holiday List 2002]
A
- Siedler von Catan Seefahrer Erweiterung, Die
The Seafarers expansion kit for 5-6 players provides rules
for two more players and extra ship pieces. Playing this way
is still just as good as long as the following rule is used:
players are permitted to build at the end of each player's turn,
but only if the active player builds. And these extra builds
do not include port trades.
- Siedler von Catan Städte und Ritter
(Settlers of Catan Cities and Knights, Kolonisten van Catan Steden en
Ridders)
The Cities and Knights addition to Die Siedler von Catan
adds quite a lot of time and complication, but not much more
interest. The fact that barbarian attacks can ruin everyone's
day should add an extra Republic
of Rome-esque dimension of the players needing to pull
together, but the downside is that should they happen to fail,
the entire game suffers, adding thirty to sixty minutes of
desultory playing time. Also there are too many event cards
with effects which are too strong and more importantly,
too involved for players to know them all and this takes
up a lot of unnecessary time as well. Unbelievably, there
is even a 5-6 player expansion kit for this, meaning that
players can become unbelievably bored waiting to do anything. A
- Siedler von Catan Travel-Box, Die (The Compact Settlers of Catan)
Virtually identical to the original Die Siedler von Catan,
except in a small edition. Apart from the robber, cards and
dice, all of the plastic components are secured to the small
board. Actually, the robber pawn could have been secured also
had its base only been slighly wider. The bottom of the box is
a handy tray which also provides a dice rolling area. Because
the locations of the numbers are painted on fixed, protruding
columns around which the hex tiles fit, one minor play change is
that the desert must always be located in the center. The only
real objection to the set, however, is that it hasn't appeared
sooner. Akin to the paperback edition of the latest populular
novel, this lower-cost version should help a lot with the problem
of getting more folks introduced and addicted to this hobby. Let's
hope that an English-language version is not long in coming.
- Siedler von Hessen, Die
This
Settlers of Catan
expansion kit is simply an illustrated poster. Shown is a
more-or-less accurate rendering of the German region of Hesse
(which includes Frankfurt) in the Catan style. There are
about three minor departures from the usual system. One is
that settlements may only be constructed on the named city
sites. Another is that it's not allowed to build past one of these
sites without first constructing the settlement. The third is that
there are no trading ports, but building on specially marked road
sites at the board edges provides the same functionality. The
board features 23 number chits rather than the usual 18, but is
longer and narrower. In addition in several places the usual
adjacency rule is abandoned. While ore is plentiful, wood is
a bit rare, which tends to lengthen duration as road building
is important for sufficient expansion. Each city site shows
a significant historical building – usually a castle or
cathedral – and around the map are short paragraphs (in
German) describing the population, history of the city and history
of the building. It seems unfortunate that this scenario has
been played so straight. Perhaps trade in the region developed in
certain ways and there are particular historic thoroughfares which
players might have gotten advantages for building? Without any
new systems and with the fixed board's replayability so much less,
there is really no point in having this unless one has a special
interest in Hesse. Apparently similar posters are planned for
other German regions; it remains to be seen whether they will be
similarly unambitious.
Strategy: High; Theme: High; Tactics: High; Evaluation: High; Personal Rating: 7
Klaus Teuber;
Kosmos;
2007; 3-4
- Siedler von Nürnberg, Die
Problem: what does one do with a design that almost, but not
quite works? Solution: tie it in with something that will make
a niche market want it, e.g. fans of a novel, a movie or even
better because there is no royalty, a city. The Settlers of
Nuremberg version of Die Siedler von Catan commemorates the
950-year anniversary of its establishment as an Imperial City. It
changes the road competition to five roads and adds an entirely
new level of purchasing via the operations within the city of
Nuremberg itself. It uses a card deck rather than dice for all
of those players who have wailed about dice for all these years.
Personally the dice have never bothered me and they could still
be employed here if desired. There is considerable interest,
but with the downside that if one is unlucky with the robber
baron sitting on animportant location for a long time, there is
no longer the possibility of purchasing a Knight to drive him
off. There is also the problem with falling behind early as the
handling of the office cards makes it impossible to catch up.
- Siena
Multi-player game set in the Renaissance city of Siena,
Italy. The extra long board depicts a period painting now
hanging in the city hall under the title "The Effects of Good
Government". Therein are seen peasants, merchants and bankers
behaving in happy prosperity. Not included at all is its
companion piece in what was originally a political statement:
"The
Effects of Bad Government", in which can be seen poverty,
voiolence and deviltry in a dramatic form that even the illiterate
could read. Anyway, there is a slight role-playing feel to
the proceedings as a player begins a peasant, decides when to
become a merchant and later when to become a banker. All steps
are explicitly necessary -- only a banker can secure victory. A
turn is conducted primarily in common, but in its last stage
the player performs actions particular to his role. The peasant
plays cards to generate agricultural produce in four types,
for which he is paid if the amount reaches a certain threshhold.
The merchant does similar things with one of two types of luxury
goods and also has the option of buying victory points in the form
of two randomly-drawn cards, one of which he decides to keep. A banker
moves his pawn around the city portion of hte painting, trying to
gain money and points and avoiding the things that cost him. A
couple of strange things stand out. They are more odd than
wrong, but raise the question of whether more game development was
warranted. First, from turn 1 players often draft cards which are
in no way useful to them until the banker phase, much later. They
either hold these, if they can afford to do so, or play them,
leading to, for example, a large buildup of courtesans in the city.
Is all of this activity really able to be meaningful or is it just
lengthening an already long outing? By fixing it, could often
meaninginles draft rounds be made more interesting as well? The
second odditity is around the rule that the player with the least
money gets to go first. The theory is good, but in practice the
context makes it a shambles. Early on the value of going first is
so much greater than the actual cards that players should take
whatever is costliest to ensure this -- clearly a case of a "catch
up rule" gone wild. Later players are in different roles which have
totally different cash situations. It's rare for a banker to have
much cash, for example, because he has it invested in points. Yet
his advanced status is rewarded against others who are yet
trailing. Since usually such players want to draft different kinds
of cards, it's not a major problem, but remains odd and may
represent an untapped opportunity. It's hard to find any definite
strategy to the game apart from the advice "timing is important so
be flexible and always prepared. But even this may over shoot the
mark as what seems most important is to become a wealthy merchant
as soon as possible, buy all the victory point cards one can and
then get in on the victory point auctions. Without doing this,
other strategies, e.g. staying a wealthy peasant and winning the
card auctions, don't seem to have a chance of earning enough
points. The game looks great and makes for a pleasant feeling --
well there is a bit of "take that!" in the banking area. However,
it can also stretch into three or more hours. Nor are the
instructions easy to comprehend at first glance. It manages to be
just pretty and mysterious enough to invite replays, but for most
these will probably terminate with the conclusion that the most
important skill is luck of the draw with the victory point cards
and this is too long for a game that's only that.
Strategy: Low; Theme: High; Tactics: High; Evaluation: High
- Siesta
Interesting abstract for up to four players. Since the game is
about sunshine, roofs and lengthening shadows, not entirely devoid
of theme either! I like this more than most abstracts. The English rules
can be a bit confusing and our first game was played with the wrong
rules. Strangely, I ended liking the wrong rules better.
- Silberzwerg
Fans of Basari will probably find something to like here from
perspective of gameplay and art/components in this game about mining
("Silver Dwarf"). The rest of the game feels essentially like a train
or railroad game as players struggle to fulfill contracts as quickly
as possible to earn large profits. There is also a rock-paper-scissors
mechanism going on as players make allocations behind a screen, including
some which can significantly harm the fortunes of their opponents.
Luck of the draw in private contracts seems to play a very large role,
particularly since the high point contracts are all one color and
probably easier to satisfy (just allocate everything to one color).
I would suggest making all contracts public, but to borrow from the
world of Empire Builder games, lock in up to two which they are going
for in advance, i.e before the secret allocations. Even without these
changes, the game flows quite smoothly, if a tad bit long. Even though
the game is really won by efficiently fulfilling contracts,
don't miss the final game turn tactic of selling off your remaining
gems for big profits.
- Silverton
Railroading and mining in the Colorado Territory of the 19th century.
Very historical and realistic without ever becoming drab.
The original self-published edition by Two Wolf also had the very good
Silverton New Mexico Expansion.
The Mayfair edition looks nicer and includes all of the expansion material.
but may be a bit less balanced as
Cripple Creek (and other productive gold
mines) have become even more powerful.
Prices to acquire passenger routes are no longer tied to
length of track, but are flat fees. This game vs. simulation issue
is probably all right since building a longer track already incurs a penalty
and there is no particular need for an additional one.
Either edition still has plenty of decisionmaking in three main areas:
when to sell in light of what others will do, how quickly and in which
directions to expand and whether to pursue mostly mines or passengers.
Because cash is tight, all three factors impinge on one another.
Graphically, the Mayfair board is a rather crowded situation. The single
best improvement is that the mine cards contain guides to their corresponding
map locations (rendering unnecessary four of the links below).
The new price chart appears to be little more than
a photocopied piece of paper which is only strange if one cares about this
sort of thing.
Overall, one of the best available for railroading fans, but needs players
with the stomach for a longer game and plenty of dice rolling (for mine
productivity). Recommend that players conduct most phases simultaneously
in order to save time.
[scenario summary]
[variant]
[accounting chart]
[mines by value]
[mines alphabetically]
[mines by region]
[combined list of mines]
- Simon
Gadget game/toy in which the player is shown an apparently random sequence
of sounds and lights. To win the player presses these lights in the exact
same sequence. The reward for success is a more difficult sequence, and so on.
Perhaps a means of improving memory, but obviouly entirely devoid of strategy
considerations.
- Sindbad
The game is set in the world of the seven voyages of Sindbad from
A Thousand Nights and a Night.
Each player
plays an incarnation of Sindbad and by way of sea voyages
tries to amass a fortune of one million miskhals by way of
trade, treasure, and adventure and return safely to Basra.
Included are illustrations of exotic creatures, characters
and settings, exotic valuable trade goods and the concept
of telling stories reminiscent of the classic A Thousand
Nights and One Night. The game has more strategy and
tactics than its artwork and reputation would seem to
indicate. Can be a fun romp for a gaming group when it is
not taking itself too seriously.
By the way, research indicates that the real Sindbad may have been a
Chinese sailor.
[Traveling Merchant Games]
- Sisimizi
Alex Randolph invention on the unusual topic of ant life is actually a pure
abstract in which luck plays no part. It is one of building a continuous chain of
markers and a few connected anthills. As in Quoridor or Twixt,
the players are at immediate cross purposes as the chains they need to build
are in the way of one another, although some limited intersection ability
is permitted.
It is difficult to convey the feeling of one's first game which may become
quite frustrating as one's moves are immediately countered over and over by
competitors, but by the eventual outcome, things will no longer
seem quite so impossible and players will be able to open up their appreciation
for this system.
Pieces are small plastic caps with painted-on ants while hills are nice
mushroom-shaped objects.
Title is an African term for a type of ant hill
that has come to stand in for the word in a German context.
Offhand thought: this board would make a nice play area for
another Randolph production,
Würmeln,
which in play it also sometimes resembles.
- 6 Billion
"Third generation" game which deserves high marks for
incorporating both the ideas of simulation and German-style
play mechanics. Kudos are also deserved for taking on a
topic which is entirely sui generis, the Earth's
population bomb and possible near future colonization of
the solar system. As a third generation effort, some
sacrifices are made on either side. Some on the simulation
side include that populations require holding the right
card to migrate; war is extremely abstracted; there is an
arbitrary turn order (not simultaneous); hidden agendas
(in reality they would be quite public); etc. On the game
side, compromises include that the existing solar system
is preserved even though it may not be an ideal set up
(distant Pluto should be worth more rather than less for
example); realistic rather than balanced planetary distances
are used; players begin not from the center, but from Sol-3;
planets pay off based on size rather than difficulty; etc.
Overall it makes for a very interesting offering, but be
warned, like the perfect planet, it will take some finding.
Given that the outer planets do not have room to fit the
orbital scheme anyway, I would have done the
graphic design
differently. The cards
need to have less small print and explain better what they
do. It is particularly easy to not notice that a card is
to be removed from the game after play. Or make such cards
not part of the hand proper. The rules, even in the second
edition, constitute the second major obstacle for new
players. Instead of motivating up front some general idea
of what the player should be trying to do, they discuss
background material for quite a while, which is interesting
but would be better left to the end. Once players manage
to understand what is going on, gameplay works well in
general, turns being fairly short, although some may object
to the nature of cancellation cards. Such cards in any
game are problematic because of determining who is first
to play such a card when more than one wishes to, because
of difficulty deciding when the time to play such a card
has expired, the possibility that some player is not paying
attention, etc. It might have been preferable to create a
definite sequence à la
Kill Dr. Lucky
for the play of such cards, or even better, jettison the idea
of cancellation and instead turn them into "reversal" cards
to be played instead on the cancelling player's turn. There
is a quite a bit of luck in the game, perhaps a bit much
for one which lasts two hours. In particular, there is luck
in the all-important turn order which is only partly
addressable (I might have preferred a more explicit auction
for this) and in drawing doubling cards during the first
third of the game (sometimes addressable by a player churning
his hand as rapidly as possible). Strategically there
appear to be at least a couple strategies, one to try to
expand as far and fast as possible, the other not to do
so, but to gain points by playing cards for others and also
retain control of the neutrals and use them to bollix the
plans of opponents. Most likely to be successful is a
judicious combination with special concentration on one's
agenda and discoveries. Overall, as in
Die Macher,
is very much rewarded by having at the table a group of
experienced players who are used to the board and all
capable of divining what opponents are up to and making
the right, precise moves to counteract them. Optional
rules are probably a bit much for the first playing as they
add even more uncertainty, but on the other hand may be a
good idea anyway lest some players feel there are too few
trade-offs in the game and not wish to play again.
[Board Not Bored]
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