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Vasco da Gama
Author: Paolo Mori
Publisher: Hutter Trade / What's Your Game?
Year: 2009


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Vasco da Gama discovered and secured a sea route to India, through which valuable spices were sent to Europe. The players in the game send their ships along various routes, hoping for a succesful journey with great revenues, more specific: victory points. Before they are able to do this, they will have to acquire these ships that will have to be manned also. Of course this all costs money, and the right to be the first to perform an action sometimes also has to be paid for. After five rounds it will be clear which player navigated the best.
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The bingo discs in the center of the board immediately stand out. Through this bidding system each player decides when he wants to perform which action. When all players have placed their coloured discs with a bingo disc on top of it, a tile is turned face up that states from which bingo disc an action has to be paid with one gold, each lower number costing one gold more. Consequently the numbers are called from low to high, and the players perform the corresponding action for it.
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The most important action is the sailing of ships, but to be able to do this several things have to be arranged first, acquiring a ship being one of them. In this section each round several to be sailed routes are placed. Low numbers sail at shorter tracks and earn less victory points than higher numbers that might score more often. The tile also shows what combination of crew is needed, from two to five different feathers; the rules merely state colours.
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The crew is picked up and paid for in an other section: the player pays per colour, regardless of quantity. This way five crew members of the same colour only cost one gold, where four different colours would cost ten gold.
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Each ship also needs a captain that can be obtained at the same time in this action, costing as much as the number of crew a player bought; for free if he did not buy any crew.
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There are special roles a player can place his action disc on that give him special possibilities; with the bishop he gets an often needed fifth white colour, but also the role of the king is not unimportant: here a player acquires an additional action disc together with a bingo disc nubered ‘21’. With this action dsc he always is last in a round, but he is able to take an extra action in any area.























In this same section gold can be taken instead of a role.
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So it all comes down to get a ship afloat, togther with crew and captain, and place it on a route. Of course a player must have taken the action by placing his coloured disc there in order to be able to do this. A ship tile is placed on a number space in a row of a player’s choice, but never higher than the number the ship tile carries. After placing a ship tile for the first time in a row, the player gets a bonus according the row it was placed in: from a free ship tile or a crew, to one or two gold or a captain.
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When each player has placed his new ships, all placed ship tiles, old and new, are scored gold or points.
After this ships in completed rows shift upwards, one by one, to a higher row, but only if they still meet the condition that they must be on a space with a lower or the same number as on the ship tile; otherwise the tile is out of the game. For each full row per ship points are scored; the more often a ship can jon a score, the better. That is why ship tiles with higher numbers have a higher chance to score more often. But, as said, when a higher row has no room for a qualifyig ship tile, the player still has bad luck.
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A player must take care not to make sequence errors: lacking the crew when he wants to send a ship on a route for instance, as for that action he put a higher numbered bingo disc on it, consequently handled later in the round! It gives a nice tension between players when they take low numbered bingo discs but do not know if and how much they will have to pay for it, intensifying the tension when each player repeatedly takes even lower numbers because all want to be the first to perform a specific action.
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A player has to divide his attention between four sections and of course he does not want to be interrupted by intervening actions of other players. Some planning can be done, although there are enough disturbing elements caused by former mentioned players. Very disturbing is the ship of Girolamo Sernigi, a role were a ready to sail ship is placed on a route, possibly blocking a nice position for other players.
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The mechanism that moves ships from full rows to a higher row sometimes an be very frustrating when there is no more room for a player’s ship once it’s his turn to ‘upgrade’. To have the same ships in a full row for several turns can be very rewarding, so a player will have to manoeuver very carefully with his actions.
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In the category 'place a player token and perform the local action' 'Vasco da Gama' is a nice variant that derives its charm by the vicious placement of ships and the more or less free choice to pick the order of a player action. Further, the game looks terrific, has a nice atmosphere, is full of nice considerations and isn't complex at all. And we do not complain about the interaction either!
© 2010 Richard van Vugt

Vasco da Gama, Paolo Mori, Hutter Trade/ What's Your Game?, 2009 - 2 to 4 players, 12 years and up, 60-120 minutes


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