Phoenicia is an economic engine game, with a civilization building theme. Players train workers, produce money and auction developments in the ancient world, hoping to score the most points to become the most prestigious city-state. Definitely a "snowball" effect game, where you spend your money to make money, which gives you more money...while on the way scoring points. Its strongest point is that it's fast - the box quotes 60 minutes. Reality isn't actually that far off - 2 player online games whip by in way less than 30 minutes online, whereas 5 player games aren't even close to 2 hours, even with rules explanation. But in that timeframe, you're made to really sweat - every single dollar in the game feels crucial (and probably is).

It scored pretty high on my BGG recommended game list, and it's also been a game I've had my eye on for quite a while, with a strong resurgence after I got sucked into the designer's hit of the holiday season, Race for the Galaxy. I've been wanting a "civilization game", especially having played Through the Ages: A Story of Civilization. Interest was tempered by the mixed reception and general lack of buzz - there's a lot of complaints about the rules (a potential problem since there wasn't anyone to teach it to me), and some caveats about the gameplay and components.

In the end, I had to go online to play it - JKLM Interactive - it seems that even though it's been released, they're still letting people play online. I'm glad for the chance to try it, because it's what finally convinced me to hunt up a copy of the physical boardgame. It took a couple of tries over the course of the last year before I finally got a chance to play - not many people on the JKLM online game service (for a while I thought the client was broken). Nowadays, I just open up the client and leave it in the background while I get some light work done - it'll usually jump to the foreground when someone shows up, although sometimes I check and it's gotten lost under my other windows.

But anyways, back to the actual physical boardgame. I remember seeing it in my home store in Vancouver, but it was out of stock when I'd finally worked up the nerve to buy it. So when I found it again on a trip to Toronto, I immediately noticed the size:
The box is big (oblong, and roughly 10% larger than In the Year of the Dragon, but say 10% less volume than Ticket to Ride), solid, sturdy - I was expecting something the size of Through the Ages, and was pleasantly surprised by something maybe twice the size. This made it trickier to stick in my suitcase - although I mitigated that by fitting Pandemic inside, and taking it as carry-on.
This carries through to the components inside. Full-size cards, nice substantial tiles, regular size pawns. After the undersized pieces from In the Year of the Dragon and miniature bits in Through the Ages: A Story of Civilization, it's good to see a "regular size" game.
Sadly, MSRP for the game is above the magic $50 mark - my FLGS carries it at $55. Not as ridiculous as the price for Through the Ages: A Story of Civilization, but probably half a tier too high. I guess they wanted to charge a bit more than an Alea big box game for it, but less than a full heavyweight Euro box class, so they bumped up the box size. This might also be because JKLM is "across the pond", where they mark everything with the same prices but put that fancy pound symbol instead.
The insert, made of folded cardboard, forms a single well that keeps things from bouncing around/holds the mapboard up, and not much else. Pretty useless, beyond making it obvious that the box could have been about half the height and still fit everything.

Overall, the box is solid, with good heft (you get a decent box of stuff), but be prepared for the initial sticker shock. Getting it on discount (for example, during a 20% off all Rio Grande Games sale) helped a lot here.

Once you get the box open, the most obvious piece you'll see is the gameboard, or more accurately, a scoring track/player aide masquerading as a gameboard.
Mine was a bit warped, and there's a small bubble on the front. It's the "American-style gutter" fold, which would have been okay (although the "European cut" is always nicer) except that the text and pictures of an entire column of the technology track are in the gutter. On the upside, it seems to lie pretty much flat.
Scoring spaces are big(a good thing), although having scoring and production share the same track is unfortunate - the spaces are very crowded at the beginning of the game, where everyone tends to have about the same number of points and production, so in a five player game you have 10 markers all together. Usually fine after a couple turns.
It's nice to have the discounts marked on the board, although the flowchart presentation is far from evocative. It also feels a bit half-baked - since most of the cards are described on the discount tech tree, and we have boxes indicating how many of the discount cards are present, maybe they should have gone the extra step and put the whole tree there.
The board is basically a glorified play aid - it basically duplicates each player's score, production and discounts to make those easier to see. Having to mark each discount with two cubes feels a bit cumbersome though - one half marks the value of the discounts, as well as indicating how many many of each discount are left to foil card counters - but again, why only show this for the discounts and not for every card? My idealised version would probably merge the left and right side of the board, but have the tree encompass all the cards.

The board is basically okay - no masterful balance between form and function, but works well enough. Feels like they skimped out a bit with only showing the discounts, rather than having the whole tech tree laid out.

The other big paper item in the box are the rules
The rules are full colour, printed on heavy paper/light cardstock, no glossy finish. Previous reviews and comments on the geek led me to anticipate something difficult to understand, but it was pretty straightforward - lots of examples, and a handy summary of all the cards at the back.

Finally, we get to the "bits". We have cardboard tiles, decks of cards and plastic markers.
Production and Development cards are not linen-textured, but full-sized (about as tall as magic cards, but slimmer) and appear to be good quality.
It's a bit of a hassle to pick through the deck to set up for less than 5 players. The set numbering in the corner is in some font/colour combo that's a bit hard to read - it might have been nice to have that part bolded or made more distinctive, since keeping the sets separate is key for the setup. Usually, I make the effort to sort them all by set after a game.
The art on the cards and the boards is full-colour. Personally, I'm not a fan of the style - looks like some blend of CG and watercolour - but it's perfectly serviceable.
The cardboard tiles are very solid and well-cut - some fell off the sprues easily, but on others the sprues proved a bit too solid. Not a big fan of the finish - neither glossy nor linen-textured, the dusty matte look just said "average" for me.
White plastic pawns, coins and houses, as well as cubes and cylinders in the various player colours for scoring. Perfectly serviceable, although the choice of making all the generic markers the very bright white is a little unusual. Plenty of pawns, coins and houses - never came close to running out. A couple extra tokens for marking discounts would be handy as well, rather than needing to move your markers everywhere.

"Bang for the buck"-wise, Phoenicia is decidedly average if you look at what you get in the box. There's plenty for nitpickers like me to chew on - plastic will cause eurosnoots to wrinkle their noses - and some people have reported being totally baffled by the rules. So the middle-ground 3 stars, with an extra half-star for not skimping on the size of the pieces. Some people like their bits microscopic (I'm looking at you, Through the Ages: A Story of Civilization), but I'm personally relieved to play a game with normal-sized cards and markers.


Stay tuned for Part Deux, where I look at the real reason why I bought Phoenicia - the punchy auction game underneath.