I approached Phoenicia with a rare enthusiasm based on all my geek reading. Reviews, discussions, it was all there, and I felt coming in that I had a good feel of what to expect good and bad. Unfortunately I was able to see first hand all the bad stuff and only had a glimpse through the window of the good stuff. It happens. Lots of my complaints are less of an issue after multiple plays, but it is common knowledge that if a player does not gel with a game first time up, then there are a hundred other games that they will select instead. Maybe it’s the same with reviews. Maybe you won’t get to my praise for the game, I hope you will. But don’t blink and be careful or you might miss it.

A lot had been made about the board and the components. Several of the statements I read on the geek were passed almost verbatim my members of our group. The plastic pieces were problematic. Mostly for me because I at first mistook the coins for mints and it was not until I came to the realisation that these were very hard, tasteless mints that I discovered my error. No harm done to my teeth, some very homely scratches on a disk and a good memory for the crew. Phew. Rack that one up to experience.

Part of my confusion was that there were three containers of white disks. Three different playing pieces were the same colour of hard plastic. Each player also had some plastic cubes in their colour but the pieces really looked out of date. The comment “plastic pieces don’t really fit with the game” came out very quickly as it did on the geek, and I am in agreement. It’s not that the plastic pieces weren’t good quality, they were, the little houses were fantastic, but wooden meeples and cubes would have this conversation a non-event. I hope they will correct this is they ever re release the game.

The board was also problematic. In fact it was terrible. Firstly the scoring track. The differentiation between victory points, and production was difficult. The level of income you receive was hard to see and these symbols were often covered up because of the crowding. This crowding was the hardest thing to handle because secondly, the rest of the board was a waste of space! I knew this before I started but it still shocked me. There is this diagram that takes a third of the board that is virtually meaningless. You expect it to mean something, but it doesn’t. In fact it simply misleads suggesting prerequisite requirements (like many other civ games). But there are no prerequisites. The diagram is counter productive and takes away from the game.

If you want a list of chances that would improve these problems it would include, wooden pieces, separate scoring and production tracks, discount and explanation cards for each player and hence a board that is half the size or even better a board that describes all the cards.

This brings up the rules. The rules by all accounts are very poor. There is not the basic information you would expect, and they are even ambiguous in parts. Ambiguous, unexplained. Rules are meant to make things clear and simple, as are the player aids. There were not player aids, and not having any really hurts.

Ironically the game play is really simple, but the rules and components make it seem complex. Having played the game once, it seems the game could be played in half the time next time and game play seems really simple. And I mean really basic. Not to say there aren’t any strategic choices, there are. And in fact one aspect I really like is that this is not a traditional civ game where you specialise on one path. Strategically you cannot afford to give one player all the Dyers for example (allowing stacking bonuses) because that would virtually guarantee one player the cloth making. All players need to spread your interests so that no one player has an advantage down a particular path. This is a great feature.

The main mechanic is a no frills auction at the beginning of the turn. Nothing special about it. The different items allow you to balance victory points against productive ability against potential for the future. Each card will provide you with varying amounts of these three things. The game is basically balancing those decisions. It is simple, it is straightforward and provides some subtle strategic choices.

Despite it’s strengths the game is just so hard to pick up. There was a discussion on the geek about how easy it is for a player to effectively eliminate themselves from the game with some bad choices on turn one and two. Guess what, I did it. I am not a bad player, in fact I am a good euro gamer, but I had an hour and a half of mind numbing boredom because of the decisions I made in the first two auctions. I could not recover period. I tried my hardest, made good decisions with what I had, but I could not recover. I can in fact isolate the exact confusion which lead me to bad choices. It was a combination of the rules not being clear and not seeing the coin symbols on the board. True, I would not make those same decisions again, but for a first time player the rules, the board, and the game play were confusing. No game should eliminate a player in the first two turns when they play conservatively. This one did. It is far to prone to a bad experience.

In conclusion Phoenicia is a auction game which balances potential, points and resources in a simple and balanced way. Having played the game is easy to understand and has a level of strategy which most people will pick up easily. Unfortunately if you love this game you will have to guide new players very carefully, and if you are playing from scratch, beware of the confusion it is prevalent. The game itself is a major paradox because its major plus in my view is the simplicity of game play and the auctioning dynamics. Yet it is soooo complex to learn and lends itself to a bad gaming experience. The geek testifies that I am not an abnormality. All in all this game could fit nicely into a niche of a quick simple civ game. Yet for me life is too short to waste my time learning a game like this, and there are a hundred other good games that are everything it is and more. The game play is good, but not brilliant, and the rest of it is bad. Now I know how to play I wouldn’t veto it but you won’t see this on my bookshelf anytime soon.