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International Toy Fair Nuremberg 2011
Internationale Spielwarenmesse Nürnberg 2011
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Alea
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Ah! To live like a prince in Burgundy! Up to four players take this role and try to live long and prosper. In each of their backpack are two dice that narrow their choices but at the same time lessen their contemplation.
Five rounds with five phases each, lots of chits and tiles, hexagon or square size shaped, in order to build the most profitable estate and earn the most victory points from it without getting punishment; this is a whole different Feld game we did not know about till now!
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All sounds simple: in a turn a player rolls two dice; from the result he may take up to two actions related to the roll of the die, or sometimes ignore the die and take the action anyway. Each player has an estate that is similar in geography; when players are more experienced, they may agree to randomly take differently organised estates.
There is a general gameboard that houses the various tiles for each round, keeps track of the score, playing order and number of round. There is some organising at the start of the game: each different tile has to be sorted, shuffled and placed, some taken away and put aside for later use, some that are removed all together from the game - it feels a bit like setting up 'Puerto Rico'; but in this respect this is not the most awkward comparison one could make.
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There are worker tiles that allow a player to adjust his die roll by one, allowing changes from 1 into 6 and vice versa. More workers may be used; in this way with the use of two workers a roll of 2 still could be regarded as a 6. With this result, a player may take a six sided tile from the corresponding depot and place it in his storage; placing it from his storage in his estate is a separate action. These six sides tiles represent buildings, castles, animals, mines, ships and knowledge.The knowledge tiles come in 26 (!) different functions, and the rules need two pages to work them out in detail, but in general they all neglect one or more of the basic rules and give the player an advantage: ignore the rule that only one kind of building may be placed per town, collect one more money at the end of the round, take an additional tile from the stock, each placed animal additionally scores for every already present animal in a meadow, etc. etc.
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With the placing of ships, buildings, etc. as part of the action 'adding six sided tiles to your estate' various other things are carried out immediately after the action, for instance, when having placed a building in his estate, a player immediately may make single use of it. Buildings such as a warehouse allow a player to immediately sell one goods type of his choice. Normally he would have to use the action 'sell goods' for it. Should he have placed a market in his estate, he could take any one ship or animal from any numbered depot on the gameboard and place it in his storage. Castles are very important as when placing them on a dark green space, a player may make an additional action of his choice, with an imaginary die roll of his choice.
When placing tiles in his estate, the space were he may put it is dependent on the number of the die; besides this all tiles must be placed adjacent to an already placed tile and the colour of the tile must match the colour of the space it is placed on.
Players have various ways to score. Apart from scoring from animals and certain buildings, players also score after they have completely covered a coloured region with tiles; they score the size of the region and, depending on the phase but regardless of the size of the region, between 10 and 2 points. There also is a large bonus for the player who is the first to wholly covering his estate with tiles.
The game ends after the fifth phase, with minor points given for unsold goods, remaining money, worker tiles.
All this certainly has wetted our appetite, but the proof of the pudding is in the eating!
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Die Burgen von Burgund, Stefan Feld, Alea/Ravensburger, 2011 - 2 to 4 players, 12 years and up, 90 minutes
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From the website of Wolfgang Kramer:
'A nasty and exciting tactical game for 2 to 4 players age 10 and up. The game adresses both the occasional gamer in the basic version as the experienced player in the advanced version.
The game has an unusual mechanism that abruptly can change the situation. This means that a player has to stay calm and wait for the right moment. The problem is though: when is the right moment?
Alll players are dealt with the same tasks. With some of them, a player is on pins and needles, as they certainly collect minus points. Take the 12 minus points now, or is it better to wait? Many will miss the right moment and collect more minus points.
It all comes to optimizing one's turn. Next to tactics this also involves the occasional luck. Luck factor for this game in the advanced version is about 30%.'
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Players all start with 3 or 5 cards of a personal set of cards in their hand, with other cards in several blind stacks. In their turn, they play a card for one of their princes or the king. Some of them score plus points, other minus points depending on their position around the table as shown on the disc/table. Playing a king card moves the king and rotates the disc to the current position of the king. This causes sudden changes in position and scoring. One can crown princes - and three crowns turn a prince into king, so the current king can be overthrown, again rotating the disc to the new king. After his turn, a player refills his hand but may choose from which stack he takes a card. This enables him to choose between taking movement cards, score cards, or crown cards.
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König Artus und die Tafelrund, Michael Kiesling & Wolfgang Kramer, Alea/Ravensburger, 2011 - 2 to 4 players, 10 years and up, 45-60 minutes
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