Game: Flandern 1302

Thread: Re: How to get the building site markers onto the sites....

Marfried — 2008-06-23T16:50:44+00:00

You only place a cube on a tile that you placed by using the builder card. These need the corresponding city card to be completed (the cube is then removed).
However, if you place a tile using the city card, the district is completed right away; you don't place a cube in this case.

Thread: How to get the building site markers onto the sites....

geberus — 2008-06-16T20:31:20+00:00

Greetings,

Just reading through the rules and it tells me how to get markers off the sites by playing a city card, but the only way I see to get markers on the sites is to play the generic card. And with getting this card back infrequently, that would make for a bit of a long game.

So, is it correct to assume that when placing a district using a city card that I also place a building site cube on said district? If not, how do I track what districts I have placed are built or not?

Thanks,
Dan

Thread: Re: 4 Player Game Review

brdparker — 2008-04-26T16:47:21+00:00

I've played this 2ce, but quite a while ago (at pretty much the start of my gaming experience). It never quite clicked for me. Now I have more experience with strategy, game design, and general understanding of game flows, so I think I'll go back and give it another shot. Nice review!

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Silke_und_Andre — 2007-03-20T13:53:32+00:00

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dipdragon — 2007-01-21T14:34:04+00:00

F1302 Houses

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dipdragon — 2007-01-21T14:33:16+00:00

F1302 House

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dipdragon — 2007-01-21T14:32:15+00:00

F1302 Grey Meeples

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dipdragon — 2007-01-21T14:31:36+00:00

F1302 Cubes

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lastalchemist — 2007-01-15T02:02:11+00:00

Full cover image

Thread: Rule variantions for FLANDERN 1302 (in german)

bayerbube — 2006-11-24T15:00:08+00:00

Hi,

i received an e-mail from the author of the game as I asked him for a variant for the two-player-game to use all the included material instead of putting some of it aside. Here are his rule variantions which he send me (poorly just in german, but maybe sometime I will get it managed to translate them):

FLANDERN 1302
Variante für goldene Karten bei 3 und 4 Spieler:

In der Regel steht, dass der jeweilige Startspieler die in Schritt 1 gezogene goldene Karte in Schritt 5 ausspielen muss. So hat er (fast immer) im Gegensatz zu den anderen Spielern zwei Spielzüge. Allein die goldene Einflusskarte muss auf die Hand genommen werden.

VARIANTE 1:
Statt die goldene Karte in Schritt 5 spielen zu müssen, darf (alternativ) er sie (als Schritt 5) nun auf die Hand nehmen, um sie später zu spielen. Er verzichtet so aber auf den 2. Spielzug! (Das macht nur bei der goldenen Karte KARTEN AUFNEHMEN **) keinen Sinn, die sollte man immer in Schritt 5 nutzen - es sei denn man nutzt zusätzlch auch noch Variante 2)

Nimmt der Spieler die goldene Karte auf die Hand, kann er sie später (in einer der nächsten Runden) einsetzen.
Der Spieler kann sie dann anstatt einer eigenen Baukarten spielen! Ausgespielte goldene Karten gehen auf den Ablagestapel.
Anmerkung: Für die Karten Dom und Zunftmeister macht es niemals Sinn, sie mit Einflusskarten zu unterstützen, bei den Baukarten der neutralen Zunft ist das anders.

VARIANTE 2 / optionale Ergänzung zu Variante 1
Zusätzliche Möglichkeit für die 4 goldenen Karten-Aufnehmen Karten:
Man darf auch sie auf die Hand nehmen um sie später zusammen mit einer eigenen Baukarte einusetzen.. Diese eine Baukarte darf dann wieder auf die Hand genommen werden. (Sollten da noch weitere Karten liegen, bleiben sie liegen und können dann ganz normal nur mittels der eigenen Karten-aufnehmen-Karte wieder auf die Hand genommen werden)

Anmerkung: Ich halte die Karte-aufnehmen-Karte neben den Zunftmeistern für die stärkste goldene Karte, denn nur sie erlaubt einen „Doppelzug ohne auszusetzen“! Und da spielt es keine Rolle wie viele Karten ich bereits liegen habe! Und ein solcher Doppelschlag ist planbar da ich die goldene Karte zu Beginn meines Zuges nehme.

Neue Ideen zum Einsatz der goldenen Karten beim Spiel zu zweit:

VARIANTE A:
Neben dem verdeckten Kartenstapel für die Zünfte unter Einfluss kommt ein neuer weiterer Kartenstapel. Gut gemischt: Die 8 goldenen Karten Dom und Zunftmeister.
In den Stapel für die Zünfte unter Einfluss werden noch je 2 Einflusskarten der beiden Zünfte eingemischt.
Immer wenn eine Einflusskarte aufgezogen wird, wird zusätzlich die oberste der goldenen Karten aufgedeckt. Die goldene Karte kommt aus dem Spiel.
Ist es eine Dom-Karte, darf der Spieler am Zug nach den bekannten Regeln einen Dom setzen.
Ist es eine Zunftmeisterkarte, darf er in ein Stadtviertel einen Zunftmeister setzen.
Er darf es nicht auf Kirchenviertel (klar!) und auf ein Viertel des Gegenspielers setzen,
wohl aber in eigenes Viertel, Viertel der Neutralen und auf Viertel beider(!) Zünfte unter Einfluss! Das Wappen der Einflusskarte spielt keine Rolle!!!

VARIANTE B:
Dom und Zunftmeister kommen nicht über den Kartenstapel der Zünfte unter Einfluss sondern wie folgt über die Spieler selbst ins Spiel:
Beide Spieler nehmen zu ihren bekannten Handkarten je 4 goldene Einflusskarten hinzu.
Die 8 ***) goldenen Karten „Dom und Zunftmeister“ werden als ein weiterer gemischter verdeckter Stapel bereitgehalten.
Spielt der Spieler am Zug eine goldene Einflusskarte aus der Hand, zieht er die oberste goldene Karte vom verdeckten Stapel und führt sie wie in Möglichkeit A beschrieben aus. Alle gespielten goldene Karten kommen aus dem Spiel. Die Einflußkarten werden anstatt einer Baukarte gespielt - NICHT ZUSÄTZLICH!!!

***) Anmerkung: Je eine Karte weist ein B auf der Rückseite aus. Das ist nicht tragisch, vielmehr kann wer aufpasst sicher eine bestimmte Aktion wählen, wenn die erste B-Karte weg ist und die 2te auftaucht!

Many thanks to Wolfgang Panning!

ode.

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Goodsound — 2006-10-15T14:29:35+00:00

Back Cover (German)

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Goodsound — 2006-10-15T14:29:06+00:00

unpunched material overview

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Kiko_Senda — 2006-10-01T13:34:47+00:00

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Kiko_Senda — 2006-10-01T12:57:05+00:00

Thread: Re: Removal tile

mateybob — 2006-06-15T03:25:30+00:00

Since there are more pieces of each shape than there are spots on the board to put them, when does this ever happen? Is it only when no pieces can be legally played due to the "two same colour tiles cant be adjacent" rule?

Thread: Re: Neutral scoring?

mateybob — 2006-06-15T03:23:27+00:00

I think the question here is why do you score the TOTAL grey points ON THE SCORE TRACK?
Is it just so that if noone beats grey noone is the winner?

Thread: Re: What is the shortfall of this game?

Orski — 2006-03-20T17:03:46+00:00

zollom04 wrote:
But my question is, why hasn't this game been getting better reviews? It certainly has enough decisions to choose from. It has player interaction. Where does this game go wrong?
My buddy says it's b/c it doesn't have a new feel to it. Let's say like Caylus does.
Where do you guys think this game falls short?

I played yesterday my first game with 4 players. After hearing all the rules I had this "What! That simple game? How can you even use any tactics?" -feeling. Luckily game offered more than I thought initially. Especially deciding when to take your cards back (and lose a turn basically) is always just painful enough decision to make.

After the game I still had feeling game is maybe "too" balanced. It's a type of an game where it should be impossible to have run-away leader problem. Instead it might have the opposite problem since with players of same skill level the randomness (the startingplayer cards) can affect outcome of the game. Maybe I'm overexaggerating but still decisions made during game aren't as critical as in Caylus for example. There are moments when deciding what to do is really important. There are also many rounds when it's more-or-less the same what you do.

I should still say I really liked the game. Components were great quality and rules simple and overall feeling of the game is relaxed and fun. Even I complained you have too little control basically, you still _have_ total control over game and there is very little luck. Definately a good game. I'm considering buying a copy of my own.

Thread: 4 Player Game Review

ptsuk — 2006-03-07T22:15:14+00:00

Played this game for the first time last night, and we had 4 players. Flandern, while it might seem a bit of the "same fare" as other games, is a fun and "deep" game.

The basic premis Played this game for the first time last night, and we had 4 players. Flandern, while it might seem a bit of the "same fare" as other games, is a fun and "deep" game.

The basic premises is that you’re a guild of flandern, and are attempting to create cities where you have the most influence by building Burroughs (those funny shaped pieces with your guild symbol/color upon them). Once a city is complete it's scored and whom ever has the most Burroughs gains the most points, 2nd place earns lesser points and so on. There are 4 player "controlled" cities, a generic "grey" player, and the "church".

Each player starts with 16 Burroughs pieces, 5 of each of the various shaped pieces plus your "starting" piece which is your largest piece with your guild symbol/color upon it. You also start with a colored card for each of the cities, six total (4 players, 1 dummy player, and church) along with 3 influence cards, a builder card, and a "sweep" card.

The basic play is that you first pick up a gold card, then play a colored city card and then choose to play either a piece of your own, a generic "grey" piece, or a church piece within that city. Pieces have to be played next to other pieces and the pieces cannot be of the same guild. So you can't skip over from the center piece to the outside section without having to place an intervening piece which has to be of a different guild than the center guild of that town.

Other plays could be the builder card where you select a "building site" and place a piece (yours, grey/dummy player, church) within a city along with a "builder block". This allows you to play additional pieces further out, allows you to possibly block an opponent in a city, or can take away points from cities that you might not want to have score a large amounts of points. More or less playing the building site piece "sets aside" that space, and someone, your or another player has to play that city card to remove that piece if they want to score that borough.

There are also influence cards which you use in conjunction with colored city cards to allow you to go before other players. The person who players the most influence cards is the one who acts first and places their piece for that round. Once an influence card is used its gone for good! Also to note that any influence cards that are left over at the end of the game count as 3 pts each!

The last card is the sweep card and allows you to pick up any colored city cards/builder card you have already played. (influence cards are not swept back up!)

There are also "gold cards" which are labeled a & b. Each player picks up a gold card at the beginning of their turn and then at the end of the turn plays the gold card. Gold cards consists of additional colored city cards allowing you to place additional pieces on the board, building site cards, guild master cards (allowing you to place a "meeple" upon a piece to help in the breaking of "ties" within a city), sweep cards, chapel cards, and influence cards. The B cards are more or less influence cards with a smattering of guild master cards and chapel cards. You can only choose the b cards after all of the a cards have been played/chosen.

Game ends when there is a single piece of open land within a city. If the a city has an open spot at the end of the game that city is not scored.

As soon as a city is "filled" it is scored at the end of the turn, after the gold card is played.

Our game was a little squirly at first as we digested the rules, but once a two rounds went by everyone knew what to do. The only thing that we failed to do was to use more of the "generic player pieces" as well as the church pieces to either block out enemies. We primarily used our own pieces at first to secure a city and maybe come in second place on another while not entering a third or fourth city. The winning score was 35, I came in second place with 30, and the other two players tied with 22. We filled all the cities until the very end with the last city where one player placed a church tile with additional spaces down and the two main players in that city myself and another player attempted to close the city so we could garner the points to score, ended up getting swindled because the other two players did their "sweep" cards and left us to fill the 2 of the 3 spots remaining and thus ending the game.

If I were to play again I'd think I'd save my own pieces for opportune times to obtain a hold over a city and place generic or church pieces to thwart my other players from obtaining direct control.

Over all I think we just scratched the surface of the strategy for this game and think that it's a very deep game with many opportunities. Once people grasp the concepts I feel that this game will do much better in the ratings.

I give it a 8 out of 10 for gameplay
8 out of 10 on components
8 out of 10 on replayability

Thread: Re: Why is title on some editions different?

Bernd — 2006-01-27T14:04:24+00:00

Very simple. Since we only have space for one title for the international edition, but four languages involved, we decide to print the name of the game in the language of it's origin e.g. flemish = Vlaanderen (as a flemish distributor advise us).
So, german version is titled: Flandern 1302
the both international versions are titled: Vlaanderen 1302.

Thread: What is the shortfall of this game?

zollom04 — 2006-01-26T15:46:11+00:00

OK, I was able to play this game for the first time last night and I have to say I actually enjoyed it. Granted it was only a two player game and I know two player games of this type are always trying to over compensate for lack of players. But my question is, why hasn't this game been getting better reviews? It certainly has enough decisions to choose from. It has player interaction. Where does this game go wrong?
My buddy says it's b/c it doesn't have a new feel to it. Let's say like Caylus does.
Where do you guys think this game falls short?

Thread: Re: Why is title on some editions different?

zollom04 — 2006-01-15T20:07:32+00:00

I was thinking the same thing. The best explanation I could come up with was, the font?

Thread: Re: Why is title on some editions different?

swinkelp — 2006-01-11T08:18:28+00:00

In Dutch/Flemish it is "Vlaanderen"

Maybe a typo?

Thread: Re: Why is title on some editions different?

2ndPlace — 2006-01-10T21:32:05+00:00

Yes, it has four languages with these small titles by the flags:

Spanish - Flandes
English - Flanders
French - Flandre
German - Flandern

But the box title is - Vfaanderen
Why?

Thread: Re: Why is title on some editions different?

Spielguy — 2006-01-10T03:38:37+00:00

That is likely the spelling of the international edition. Does the rest of the box and rules reflect the same name?

Thread: Why is title on some editions different?

2ndPlace — 2006-01-10T03:14:45+00:00

I just got my copy here in the U.S.A. and the box title is Vfaanderen 1302 not Flandern 1302.

Does anyone know why it has a different title or do I have a special collectors edition with a missprinted title?

Thread: new game for a new year

canucklehead — 2006-01-05T16:17:01+00:00

We started the new year with a new (to us) game - Vlaanderen 1302. It looked very intriguing right off the hop, and once we figured out the rules, well it is a pretty good game.
We started off tentatively, being a little unsure as how to attack the game. One city was scored failry quickly, and then we realized we needed to spread things out a little more. Katherine never won a city even though she had all her tiles out - she came in second in at 3/6 cities however. Daren started off hot coming in first in the first two cities, but was shut out once and Selena was just shut down a lot, period.
I managed to win the last two cities and this put me over the top.
Jason - 50
Katherine - 40
Daren - 32
Selena (and the Neutral armourers) - 25
A very intriguing game as you need to be wary of cities filling up too fast, when to place neutral tiles vs. churches, and when to go all out. A light, but not too light, game that could become addictive!

Thread: New game at New Years!

canucklehead — 2006-01-03T20:24:19+00:00

We cracked open this new game (for us) and most of us found it a pleasant surprise. After making sure we had the rules somewhat down we proceeded - only to discover that we needed to read the rules again!

Finally we figured out the jist of things and got strategies going. Most of us stuck to a 4-5 out of the six towns. Katherine never finished in first but was second several times. We shut Daren down in one town and Selena in another - The armourers kept pace with us!

All in all a good game with the ending unsure until the final town was scored. I was able to pull it out by finishing first in the last 3 towns scored (lucky!).
This game is a good mix of strategies - when do you pick up your cards - when do you abandon a town and focus on another - when do you play a church or a neutral district? A good fun game.

Jason - 50
Katherine - 40
Daren - 32
Selena - 25
Armourers - 25

Thread: Re: Neutral scoring?

GeoMan — 2005-10-14T15:48:50+00:00

I am using the English translation posted here since i have the German edition of the game.

When you score a city the player with the most pieces of his color gets the total points added to his score. The player with the second highest majority would get half of the total points, the 3rd place player gets 4 points and the 4th place player gets 0 points.

The Gray (dummy) player can take 1st, 2nd, 3rd or 4th place just like the human players, so you may lose for example the 1st position to the Grey (dummy) player and score less points.

That's why you have to count the Grey player's points during a city scoring.

Thread: Re: Neutral scoring?

tempus42 — 2005-10-14T13:55:45+00:00

GeoMan wrote:

Because it may affect your position (and so your score) during a city scoring.

Hmm, I'm not sure about that -- The rules that came in the box (the English ones at least) don't seem to mention score as a tie-breaker in any case I can see. When scoring, highest points go to the player with the most districts, with ties being broken by the number of guild masters. Can you give a direct reference to the case you're talking about?

Thanks!

Thread: Re: Neutral scoring?

GeoMan — 2005-10-12T22:43:13+00:00

tempus42 wrote:
The rules are very careful to say that you must record the score of the neutral (gray) guild. But why? It seems as if there is no real point to this, except possible to humiliate the other players ("ha ha, the dummy scored higher than you!"). Am I missing something?

Because it may affect your position (and so your score) during a city scoring.

Thread: Neutral scoring?

tempus42 — 2005-10-12T20:52:07+00:00

The rules are very careful to say that you must record the score of the neutral (gray) guild. But why? It seems as if there is no real point to this, except possible to humiliate the other players ("ha ha, the dummy scored higher than you!"). Am I missing something?

Thread: Re: User Review

Alan Kwan — 2005-07-20T01:02:39+00:00

It seems to me that you have missed most of the strategic subtleties of this game. Your comment that the builder card is "weak" relies on two assumptions: 1. you can always play a city card instead of it; 2. it is always better to build a full building instead of an under-construction site. But neither of these assumptions are true.

1. Sometimes you need to hurry to fill up an area before an opponent builds into it. If you wait by playing your get-back card, your opponent builds first.

2. Sometimes you cannot place your own building into an area because you already have one adjacent, so you are building the neutral or church area to fill up the space. You are building with no intention to complete it.

3. If you are third or fourth (or sometimes second) place, it is not advantageous in terms of scoring for you to build a full area to increase the top two players' scores. If you don't do it, the leader will play a church there.

4. If you go last, you may want the flexibility of seeing what the others do, before having to commit to which city to build in.

Thread: Re: Removal tile

GeoMan — 2005-06-25T23:06:49+00:00

When there is no corresponding tile in the game left!

Thread: Removal tile

Surt — 2005-06-25T19:48:42+00:00

Removal tileIt is not quite clear when to use removal tiles. Is it when I have no corresponding tile in my (+ church / greys) reserves or when THERE IS NO corresponding tile in the game left?

The rules don´t say this explicitely.
Surt

Thread: Re: User Review

Bernd — 2005-06-15T23:26:07+00:00

The game ends if one of the two follwing conditions are met,
(3 and 4 player game):
All the golden cards are dealt (the pile is empty) or
every single building space but one is covered. But take care, the town or every town with uncovered building spaces (if there are any) will be scored in the same way like the other towns.

Have fun
Bernd Dietrich

Thread: Re:Comment on Ray's translation

Luthien — 2005-04-06T20:45:34+00:00

Tycho (#455773),

Hmmm... good question. Just played this with Ray last week and we didn't remove any cards. It played fine that way...

Alan

Thread: Re:Comment on Ray's translation

Tycho — 2005-03-17T13:34:06+00:00

Phil's rules 1.1 have the addition

In a 4-player game, each player should remove one influence card from the game leaving each player with two total.
I can't find this in Ray's translation - so not then an official rule?

Thread: Re:Comment's on Phil's rules

Tycho — 2005-03-17T13:24:23+00:00

Aragorn2 wrote:
We are know in progress to release an official translation. In a few days we post a full color version as a pdf file on our homepage.

Is this still your intention?

Thread: Re:Comment on Ray's translation

Bobby4th — 2005-03-11T21:46:45+00:00

peter haslehurst wrote:

It helped a lot when I went through the rules replacing "building site" with "building space" wherever it says Bauplatz in the original.

Thanks for the tip. I went through the rules and made the replacement and it does make more sense when reading it this way.

Thread: Session Report

peter haslehurst — 2005-02-18T20:13:18+00:00

Well I got to play Flandern 1302 - the game I picked up on my recent trip to Germany - a lot quicker than I anticipated. With boardgame newbies as well. Kez and Joe, my two ex-nephews, were over last weekend to visit my son Phil. I had been fiddling with Flandern 1302 on the coffee table all weekend trying to learn the rules, and after Sunday lunch they were all keen to have a go. Everyone seemed to enjoy the game a lot. The way the game works is fairly simple to explain and understand, it only takes an hour or so to complete, and the subtleties of the tactical possibilities gradually dawned on us as the game went on. What helps a lot for newbies is the pacing of the game, which starts slow and gentle with players choosing between possible tile lays on various fairly empty cities. Eventually the first city is completed and ready to score, and from that point onwards there is a gathering sense of urgency as the cities get scored more frequently, you are starting to run out of tiles, and everything becomes urgent all at once. Phil won easily on 46 and I trailed badly, finishing on 19. I like this game a lot, and can't quite understand its low rating on BGG. Perhaps this is a result of its low profile as it has not been published in English. However all the components are language-free and there is a reasonable translation of the rules available on BGG. It is beautifully produced and it doesn't cost a lot (22 Euros). Highly recommended.

Thread: Comment on Ray's translation

peter haslehurst — 2005-02-13T12:09:56+00:00

After an impulse buy in a toy shop in Aachen, I was very grateful to find Ray's translation of the rules on BGG when I got home. However I was pretty confused the first time through, until I realized that there are two words in the German rules, Baustelle and Bauplatz, both of which Ray translates as "building site". These two words refer to quite different concepts in the game: Bauplatz is an empty borough, which is waiting to have a tile placed on it. Baustelle is a tile with a cube sitting on it, which is waiting to be completed later.

It helped a lot when I went through the rules replacing "building site" with "building space" wherever it says Bauplatz in the original.

Thread: User Review

Eggo — 2005-01-24T21:01:03+00:00

Flandern 1302
by Wolfgang Panning

How would it be if German games suddenly weren’t allowed to use the seasoned principle of „place tiles/pawns to gain majority in areas“ and „gain VP in these areas and keep track of them on a victory point track“? The propagation of this principle through games like “El Grande” is perhaps the biggest achievement of German game design: the possibility to create a situation of fierce competition without resorting to wargame principles of destruction and conquest, the embodiment of the principles of democracy in gaming terms.
Flandern 1302, the new game from Queen games, certainly doesn’t invent the wheel in this respect, many might feel a slight tinge of “done that, seen that” when reading the rules. But this doesn’t necessarily make it a bad game.
In fact Flandern 1302 has some things going for it. The board and tile design is especially beautiful, and there is a certain pleasing feeling when completing the various cities with various unusually shaped tiles.
The players act as guild masters in medieval Flanders. The play of cards gives players the possibility to place tiles of his/her affiliated guild. The cards determine the possible cities in which tiles can be placed. Some of the cities already have a city centre in the colour of the player, but it is this player’s decision to use this advantage or not. Interestingly there is also a “neutral”, grey colour, which can actually win a majority and even get points (handy if you’d rather have neutrality win than another player). The latter mechanic somewhat offsets the kingmaker effect that games of this sort sometimes have, especially when the selection of tiles becomes limited and you are forced to benefit another player with certain plays.
Of course there are the usual shticks that make these kind of games interesting. It is possible to place tiebreakers (“Zunftmeister”), heighten the value of the city through church tiles, and to play cards for better hand management. A new idea is that cities can be enlargened for possible more points but also more competition. As is usual in these games one can never be evrywhere at once, so it is good to not spread yourself too thin. A winning move can be to save the right tiles and be the only payer who can continue to play at the end, but this is not easily achieved.
That’s already all there is to this game – some people might call it too simple, others will enjoy that this game can be quite quickly played and enjoyed as the abstract tile-laying game that it is.
If you don’t have enough of this kind of games yet, “Flandern 1302” can be wholeheartedly recommended. It is a solid design with no major flaws apart of the usual group dynamic effect tha sometimes makes area competition games a bit unsatisfying. But a solid design it is. Others might prefer to wait for the next gaming revolution – but who knows how long we will have to wait for it? There could be worse things than playing a game of “Flandern 1302” while waiting for it.
Moritz Eggert
www.westpark-gamers.de

Thread: Game end rule?

ssmooth — 2004-12-01T00:00:19+00:00

We have been playing (three times now) that the game ends when the next to the last city scores -- that is, when there is only one CITY not yet filled in rather than when there is only one SPACE not yet filled in. I'm not sure which way is according to the correct rules, since I understand there have been a couple of small crinks on the way to being sure they're properly translated. Do we actually know for sure yet which ending is correct?

I will say that, playing our way, there is a tension as the end of the game approaches to try to make sure that the city you have committed a lot of strength in does not turn out to be the city that never scores. So based on gameplay alone, we suppose we're right. We've discussed the alternative of ending the game with only one space empty, but we haven't wanted to try it because we don't see how it would make sense compared to the one-city-unfinished rule.

But... we've been wrong before.....!

Thanks for the session report.

Thread: User Review

i7dealer — 2004-11-30T14:25:36+00:00

Rich came back with a serious haul of games from Essen, and one of them was this game. After reviewing the rules, the game seemed fairly straight forward. Every player has a private stock of cards composed of the following:

1 card for each city (6 total)
1 card that was a builder card (more on this below)
1 card that let you take back all played cards into your hand
3 cards that bumped up your priority (once played, the influence cards are out of the game)

the game starts with 6 cities with only the center placed. Each center is a different color (the four players each have a city, the church has a city, and the gray non-player has a city). The cities are filled in by players with 3 different types of tiles that fit in only designated areas (determined by their shape). Each tile placed in a city will have either the player's color, a grey color (neutral guild), or a big cross in it (church). A tile played can not be adjacent to a tile of the same color. The object of the game is to have a majority (more tiles of your color) in more cities than everyone else. When a city is filled up completely, it will score. When all the cities are finished, or if there is just one space left in one city, the game is over and whoever has the most points wins. I will detail scoring a bit below.

So, you have your cards, you have your starting board set up , now we play. There is a deck of gold cards that is common to all players and has different actions on them sitting in the center of the board. The starting player for this round (pick one at the beginning of the game, it passes to the left after each round) draws one of these cards. The random action could be "play to a specific city", "take back all your cards", or "place a cathedral", etc. Only the starting player looks at the card. Next every player chooses a card from their hand to play face down. If they want to try and gaurantee that they go before other players (perhaps there is a limited number of spaces in a city they'd like to play in) they can add any number of influence cards to their played card to bump up their priority of playing. Once all players have revealed their cards, each player in turn resolves the card they played. First any priority players (in case of tie in priority, it's resolved by distance from the start player position), then the regularly played cards resolved in clockwise order from the start player. So how to resolve the cards?

You played a city - Playing a city card allows you to play one of your colored pieces, a grey piece, or a church piece into the city. Most of the time, the players picked to play their own color (since you need to have your color most represented to get the most points). However, sometimes players would play a church piece into a city they were dominating in because church pieces are more valuable than any other piece, and it's one less space to be filled by an opposing player.

You played the "pick up your cards" card - you pick up all your cards except the influence cards you've already played.

you played the "builder" card - You can place a tile of your own color, a grey tile, or a church tile into any city you want. The catch is that it gets a block on it to show that it is not finished, and will not count in the scoring of the city. The only way to remove the block is to play the city card that the tile is in, and you get to remove the block making the tile complete and count during the scoring time. This was used quite a bit by the players, but they often would use their own tiles in conjunction with this card and I think that it hurt their game. Since by playing a city card I can place a full tile in a city, I saw no advantage of playing the builder card at all, let alone play it with your own piece being the incomplete one.

That's it, you played one of these cards, you performed your action, now you check to see if any city is complete. If it is, you count complete tiles (no block on them) to determine the cities value.

1 point for each guild tile (player or neutral tile)
2 points for each church tile
3 points for each church tile with a cathedral

Then you assess who has the most representation in the city. In case of a tie, you count the number of guild masters a color has. Guild masters are grey meeples both printed on the tiles themselves and could be added through the gold cards the start player gets to play. Ties were quite common, and those evil guild masters were usually tied too. This lead to the tying players dropping a rank in what score they received. Points are awarded (dropping down one rank in case of a true tie)

1st place full point value of the city
2nd place half point value of the city
3rd place 4 points
4th place 2 points
5th place nothing

It's also worth noting that the grey guild (neutral) scored just like any other player. They could also tie and take points away from the real players, although there wasn't much grey scoring in the game I played.

Overall, I thought this game was going to be a lot more fun then I ended up having playing it. I couldn't see a clear way to manuveur and make interesting choices. Since you basically can only hit a city once with a tile of your color before having to skip a turn to pick up your cards it seemed important to ignore a city or two and try and get at least 2nd in the other 4. There are church tiles which changed the layout of the city, adding spaces to play into or in one case removing one space. But it seemed that playing to open up a city for the abuse of your fellow players was sub-optimal. I felt as though I only made one serious choice in the game, the rest was played on auto-pilot. There could be a depth here that I (and my fellow players) missed, but I've been unable to come up with how to play differently to alter the game's feel. I really dislike the builder card, and felt that it should be a half step and that the builder card should be able to remove a block on a previously played tile. I'd play it one more time if asked, but I have to seriously consider what to do in order to improve the enjoyment had.

Thread: Re:Comment's on Phil's rules

Aragorn2 — 2004-11-18T17:49:19+00:00

RayMulford (#63099),
You cannot complete a building in progress with another building in progress card. Only a suitable City card will help.

Ties are broken in favor of the player with the most guild masters (printed plus pawns) and if still tied, all tied players sink to the lowest tied rank.

To say it officially: that is correct.
We are know in progress to release an official translation. In a few days we post a full color version as a pdf file on our homepage.

Thread: Re:Comment's on Phil's rules

ssmooth — 2004-11-03T22:08:54+00:00

Right, but since I've also read a comment to the effect that "the game's author came up while we were playing the game at Essen and corrected several mistakes made by the guys teaching it," I'm looking to find a more reliable source on the rules.

Thread: Re:Comment's on Phil's rules

Luke the Flaming — 2004-11-02T18:53:41+00:00

ssmooth wrote:
How did you come up with the ruling of only being able to use city cards (and not a second halfbrick card) to complete a halfbricked tile, Ray?

The guys explaining the game in Essen told me the rules in that way as well (only city cards to complete a "halfbricked" tile).

Thread: Re:Comment's on Phil's rules

ssmooth — 2004-11-02T13:52:13+00:00

How did you come up with the ruling of only being able to use city cards (and not a second halfbrick card) to complete a halfbricked tile, Ray? Are you translating straight from the German?

Thanks for the note about ties being awarded the next place down.

Thread: Re:Comment's on Phil's rules

Luke the Flaming — 2004-10-30T20:43:51+00:00

ssmooth wrote:
A seat-of-the-pants ruling had to be made about breaking ties. For players, we figured player order at the moment the city scored. For the grey (neutral) opponent, we figured any real player wins a tie against grey.

When multiple colors are tied, they all get the score of the NEXT position (i.e. two colors tied for second place would both get the points for the 3rd place); just as in "El Grande".
The 1st player can thus have a great advantage if "grey" and an opponent are tied for 2nd place (and should try to do so! ).

Thread: Comment's on Phil's rules

ssmooth — 2004-10-29T09:08:35+00:00

Played this tonight for the first time using Phil's rules, not an actual translation he says, and enjoyed it.

We agreed about the halfbricking rule, that completing construction on a building with a halfbrick on it may be done in two ways: by a building card for that area, or by another halfbricking card.

A seat-of-the-pants ruling had to be made about breaking ties. For players, we figured player order at the moment the city scored. For the grey (neutral) opponent, we figured any real player wins a tie against grey.

We rather liked it. Pretty bits, the usual scratching for advantages in several areas at once. Two or three nice innovations, good flow.

Isn't this game by Wolfgang Panning?