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Mike Amos
United States
Minneapolis
Minnesota
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My BGG SS sent me a nice surprise, an additional game. He's been super generous already and certainly owed me nothing but was kind enough to send along a copy of Sultan, a game I had never heard of. It looks like most of the geek has never heard of it. It's from Queen games, has nice box art and seems to have good components. I'm not sure if they got a deal on the box size but it's ridiculously oversized for the game. I'm fairly certain it could easily be less than half the size and still store the game very well.
Inside the box you'll find 5 decks of money cards with colored backs and values 1-15, one deck of extra points cards with values form 2 points through 20, 5 player shields, a double sided board, a cloth bag (classy) and plastic gems (11 clear, 10 yellow, 9 red, 8 green, 7 blue {from memory so I think that's correct}).
The way the game plays is that you shuffle your money cards. Each player (we'll talk about special rules for 2 and 3 players in a bit) draws five cards to his hand. The start player draws four gems from the bag, places three of them on the bidding board, throwing one back in the bag. Starting with the start player, each player places one face down card on one gem as her bid. When this is done all the cards are revealed, whomever has the highest bid wins the gem. The gem is placed behind the player shield, start privileged rotate and we repeat. When all five cards from your hand are gone a new phase starts with a fresh five cards. When all the cards are gone the game is over.
Scoring begins by looking at the number of sets you have (like colored jewels). I don't have the numbers in front of me but it looks something like: 4 jewels for 5, 5 jewels for 10, and 6 jewels for 20 points. These are distributed in the form of cards with a picture of gems and a number. Then the value of each jewel (blue - 5, green - 4, red - 3, yellow - 2, white - 1) is added to the bonus points for your final score. Scores are compared and I WIN! well, if I'm not playing, then whomever has the highest score wins (hint: ME).
That's all there is too it. It's a very simple game. It also works with two and three players, a great niche for a blind bidding game. For three players you simply use a fewer gems, for two they have a pretty innovating solution, you shuffle two decks together, with the 13, 14 and 15 cards removed. You place two bids per round. This usually means you each get an unchallenged gem and you duke it out over one but there will be times where a gem goes unwanted and unloved and is then kicked back to the bag.
We sat down and cranked through a two player game and had fun. It was quick, like maybe 15 - 20 minutes. It wasn't stand up and shout kind of fun but we enjoyed it. There are moments of tension when your hope that card you laid down will get you the gemstone you want. There was enough room in the game for us each to have a different strategy. I went for cheap gems in large sets where my wife went for the more expensive gems and through my neglect of expensive gems got some nice sets of her own. In the end she won the day but I foresee this coming out again soon.
EDIT: changed to reflect Kendahl's correction below.
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