Post by Gilvan Blight on May 21, 2006 15:20:10 GMT -5
Quickly: a really good game, very underrated, came well recommended and I will pass that recomendation on.
Summary: Another euro style resource management style game with a few twists. You play a land owner attempting to out do the other land owers. It's a point based system with points awarded for a wide variety of things. Each turn you get three actions. You get a choice of buying a face down card (land or animals), buying a face up card (land or animals), playing a land card and tile, playing an animal card and chit, building a Hacienda, buying water or harvesting your lands. The animals and lands will remind people of catan, with a deck of cards for each with 4 types of animals and 6 (I think) types of land. You don't trade at all in this one though, nor does the land provide you with cards like in Catan. In this one there are four face up animals and lands at all times, and you have to buy more cards. You use land tiles to purchase land. The board has an assortment of land types around a set of markets. When you buy land you put a tile on the hex showing you own it. Chains of land are worth points and can make you some extra money. The animals are played next to you land, with a chain of animals becoming a herd. These are played in such a way that the chain hits one side of a market hex. When this occurs you get pesos for the chain (1 peso per animal and land in the chain). Play continues buying, playing cards and getting animals to market until half of the animal deck is gone. Then the first scoring occurs. You receive points for a variety of things again. Land chains of 3 or more are worth 2pts per tile, Haciendas built score for each land and animal in a chain, the number of markets you supply give you a ton of points (the more markets you touch the more points), tiles around water are worth 1pt each, every 10 pesos is worth 1, and probably something else I am forgetting. Play then continues with the second stack of animal cards and ends when that is exhausted with another set of scoring. It sounds way more complicated then it is, as with most euro games by your second turn you pretty much have it, and it's all rather simple once you see it.
The Good: The board! They did a really cool thing with this one. On one side of the board you get an abstract map in which the land looks looks like a giant dogbone (thanks to mildly for that image), where every market is equidistant from land and there are 10 markets. On the other side is a more realistic map with lands in more logical places. There are 11 markets now and some are very close to land and some very far. This doesn't affect the game balance though as all players are playing on the same map and have an equal chance to buy whatever land they want. The playing pices and tiles are all very well made and there was only one issue I had with the desing (see the ugly) the rest of excellent. It even included some wooden playing pieces that I have come to expect from these styles of games. The rules are very elegant and simple once you learn them. The learning process is only hard due to it being really hard to explain (note the summary), give it about 15 mins in and you will have no issues (probably less). Each players turn is usually rather quick and gives you just enough time to plan your next move. This plays with a lot more strategy then some eurogames, there is a randomness factor in the cards, but there was never a turn that I was 'screwed' by the dice or the cards. There definately doesn't seem to be a perfect way to play. Multiple strategies are possible and all seem pretty viable but must be adopted to the other players styles. There definately wasn't one way to win or one way that always worked, and that's great to see.
The Bad: as seems to be the new trend the cards are the smaller type. I personally prefer the playing card sized cards to these micro ones. The box doesn't hold the product in very well when placed vertically on a book shelf. This is a pet peve of mine as that is how I store my games, and I hate spending the extra 10 minutes at the end of the night putting thigns away perfectly only to open them to find everything all mixed up. This was quickly fixed by the addition of an empty cigarette pack but I shouldn't have had to fix anything. As you can see I didn't put anything bad about the gameplay, this is because I can't think of anything. This really is a good game.
The Ugly: during the game you use tiles to mark what land you own. The set comes with a ton of tiles, but oddly they printed them two sided, and each side is a different colour. This seems rather cheap, instead of putting in say 30 tiles a player for a total of 150 tiles, they put in 30 tiles a player split over 75 tiles. This can mean that you sit there flipping tiles on the board trying to find one of your colour. It hasn't actualy come up that often in gameplay, but it just seemed like they cheaped out on this aspect.
Overall: a really good game. Probably my favourite as of writing this (though I still think Peurto Rico is a better game, but I have played that A LOT). The simple rules but complex and difficult strategy combined with short player turns that keep the game moving quickly will probably bring me back to this one repetatively. On a note, this rates very poorly on boardgamegeek and I don't know why. This is one of the better eurogames I have picked up and I see no reason for it to rank that low.
Summary: Another euro style resource management style game with a few twists. You play a land owner attempting to out do the other land owers. It's a point based system with points awarded for a wide variety of things. Each turn you get three actions. You get a choice of buying a face down card (land or animals), buying a face up card (land or animals), playing a land card and tile, playing an animal card and chit, building a Hacienda, buying water or harvesting your lands. The animals and lands will remind people of catan, with a deck of cards for each with 4 types of animals and 6 (I think) types of land. You don't trade at all in this one though, nor does the land provide you with cards like in Catan. In this one there are four face up animals and lands at all times, and you have to buy more cards. You use land tiles to purchase land. The board has an assortment of land types around a set of markets. When you buy land you put a tile on the hex showing you own it. Chains of land are worth points and can make you some extra money. The animals are played next to you land, with a chain of animals becoming a herd. These are played in such a way that the chain hits one side of a market hex. When this occurs you get pesos for the chain (1 peso per animal and land in the chain). Play continues buying, playing cards and getting animals to market until half of the animal deck is gone. Then the first scoring occurs. You receive points for a variety of things again. Land chains of 3 or more are worth 2pts per tile, Haciendas built score for each land and animal in a chain, the number of markets you supply give you a ton of points (the more markets you touch the more points), tiles around water are worth 1pt each, every 10 pesos is worth 1, and probably something else I am forgetting. Play then continues with the second stack of animal cards and ends when that is exhausted with another set of scoring. It sounds way more complicated then it is, as with most euro games by your second turn you pretty much have it, and it's all rather simple once you see it.
The Good: The board! They did a really cool thing with this one. On one side of the board you get an abstract map in which the land looks looks like a giant dogbone (thanks to mildly for that image), where every market is equidistant from land and there are 10 markets. On the other side is a more realistic map with lands in more logical places. There are 11 markets now and some are very close to land and some very far. This doesn't affect the game balance though as all players are playing on the same map and have an equal chance to buy whatever land they want. The playing pices and tiles are all very well made and there was only one issue I had with the desing (see the ugly) the rest of excellent. It even included some wooden playing pieces that I have come to expect from these styles of games. The rules are very elegant and simple once you learn them. The learning process is only hard due to it being really hard to explain (note the summary), give it about 15 mins in and you will have no issues (probably less). Each players turn is usually rather quick and gives you just enough time to plan your next move. This plays with a lot more strategy then some eurogames, there is a randomness factor in the cards, but there was never a turn that I was 'screwed' by the dice or the cards. There definately doesn't seem to be a perfect way to play. Multiple strategies are possible and all seem pretty viable but must be adopted to the other players styles. There definately wasn't one way to win or one way that always worked, and that's great to see.
The Bad: as seems to be the new trend the cards are the smaller type. I personally prefer the playing card sized cards to these micro ones. The box doesn't hold the product in very well when placed vertically on a book shelf. This is a pet peve of mine as that is how I store my games, and I hate spending the extra 10 minutes at the end of the night putting thigns away perfectly only to open them to find everything all mixed up. This was quickly fixed by the addition of an empty cigarette pack but I shouldn't have had to fix anything. As you can see I didn't put anything bad about the gameplay, this is because I can't think of anything. This really is a good game.
The Ugly: during the game you use tiles to mark what land you own. The set comes with a ton of tiles, but oddly they printed them two sided, and each side is a different colour. This seems rather cheap, instead of putting in say 30 tiles a player for a total of 150 tiles, they put in 30 tiles a player split over 75 tiles. This can mean that you sit there flipping tiles on the board trying to find one of your colour. It hasn't actualy come up that often in gameplay, but it just seemed like they cheaped out on this aspect.
Overall: a really good game. Probably my favourite as of writing this (though I still think Peurto Rico is a better game, but I have played that A LOT). The simple rules but complex and difficult strategy combined with short player turns that keep the game moving quickly will probably bring me back to this one repetatively. On a note, this rates very poorly on boardgamegeek and I don't know why. This is one of the better eurogames I have picked up and I see no reason for it to rank that low.