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Angkor
Author: Knut Happel
Publisher: Schmidt Spiele
Year: 2005


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Every autumn brings us a large harvest of about 300 games from Essen, making it rather difficult for publishers to attract the public’s attention to their games. With Angkor, the attention is drawn by its pretty graphical design. A game with player screens, ok, we have seen that before. But there is no central game board. Each player has his own little board, made out of plastic. And the slightly bended tiles, which are kept behind the players’ screens, are not only placed on their own, but also on an opponent’s board. An act typically not done to aid this opponent, but indeed an act that raises curiosity about the game play.
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In the game of Angkor the players repeat the building of the Angkor Wat (Cambodia, 12th century) complex. The building site is formed by a nicely formed plastic game board, on which we can build by placing tiles. At the start of the game each of the two to five players draws five of these tiles from the supply, and three (wooden) playing figures; a tiger, a fountain, and a statue. The game includes six different kinds of tiles: jungle, water, inner court (worth 1 victory point), pagoda (2 points), temple (3 points), and the princess. A player’s turn is rather simple: place two tiles or playing figures, and refill the own supply to five. When a princess tile is drawn, then this tile is placed face-up next to the other princess tiles already drawn (if any); when five princess tiles have been drawn the game ends immediately.
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Following simple placement rules, the tiles with victory points are placed on the own building site to increase its total value. With the jungle tiles things are getting serious: these are placed on another’s player’s board, starting from the edge growing inward, in an attempt to overgrow the earlier placed building tiles. The water tiles serve as a protection mechanism: while any tile may be placed on top of another, this is not true for the water tiles. When these are placed on the (own player’s) board, then no jungle tiles can be placed on top anymore. The playing figures are used to place on the own board, thereby getting (additional) points for adjacent water tiles, jungle tiles, and inner court tiles. So, whenever your opponents made the error to overgrow your complex with a large, connected are of jungle, this allows you to score nicely by placing a tiger playing figure. After drawing of the fifth princess tile the game stops and points can be counted. This whole exercise takes about 20 minutes.



Angkor tries to create an atmosphere by connecting theme to a pretty graphical design. However, during the game you never have the impression that you are constructing your own, and/or dismantling any other’s, temple complex. It keeps being a rather abstract tile placing game, with as main dilemma: do I go for own profit, or for the deconstruction of another. Nothing wrong with that, then this is a tense decision, not forgetting the princess tiles that can finish any plans before they can even be executed.
With Angkor Schmidt has delivered a nice family game, in the tradition of Tongiaki, Europa Tour, and Diamant. The experienced gamer will classify this game as a “filler” and return to business as usual. Moreover, this type of gamer will notice that the tile drawing and the sudden end form the weaknesses of the game. Given enough luck of the draw, it will be rather easy to compete, and the maximum difference between the leaders will be about 1-3 points. However, the sudden end of the game can typically deny you a complete (last) turn, a turn that a (right) neighbour probably did get. The experienced player will sneer at this. However, as a short family game it is rather fun, especially when it is time to teach children in the range of 7-10 years that teasing is sometimes a required skill to survive in board game land. Especially with Angkor’jungle tiles, not only to prevent opponents from scoring, but also to get rid of them, since they are of no use to one’s own temple complex. For the time being, Angkor satisfies as a fine light family game in the category 'explained-quickly, played-quickly, and... just one more game please?' Angkor? Encore!
© 2005 Edwin van de Sluis

Angkor, Knut Happel, Schmidt Spiele, 2005, 2 to 4 players

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