Game: Little Italy

Thread: Re: Unique use of Dice make for a Long filler

sedjtroll — 2008-11-03T06:45:15+00:00

I agree it sounds as if the OP was playing incorrectly. I only played with 2 players, in which case we each had 2 cars, and didn't share control. The game was random and boring.

I expect the 4-6 player game would be more interesting as you share control of your 2 cars with people.

Reading this review though, I may have misread or misremembered the rules... I haven't played with 4-6 so I'm not sure:

I thought you get 2 cars, and share each with another player. I also thought that the other player was unknown.

I think the 2p game might be more interesting if all of the cars were on the board, and you only know which 2 you control, not which 2 your opponent controls. The money could be stacked on the second card of the car's color off to the side, and at the end of the game you'd just add the cash on the 2 cars you control for your score.

Thread: Re: Fast filler that is a bit deeper than it looks

sedjtroll — 2008-11-03T06:36:34+00:00

Laurentiu wrote:
I only played the game a couple of times in two players, so these are preliminary notes.
So far I have also just played 2 game, each with 2 players. The 2 and 3 player rules appear to be variants, as they seem to strip away the main mechanism in the game. They are suitable for play with little kids, but as a game the 2p (and I'm sure the 3p) are very lacking.

The main mechanism in the rules, which applies to the 4-6 player game, is that each player controls 2 cars (as in 2/3 player), and control of each car is shared with another, unknown opponent.

I would like to play again with 4 or more player just to see if it's any better.

Thread: Fast filler that is a bit deeper than it looks

Laurentiu — 2008-07-04T07:58:29+00:00

Players/time

A 2-6 players game - should play in about 30 minutes more or less, once the rules are understood.

Game description

The game is fairly abstract, which isn't surprising knowing the author. If you're looking for labels, then to me it feels mostly like an abstract racing game with some special mechanics for car movements and scoring. The rules are simple, but the resulting game is not simplistic. I'll gloss over the theme (mobsters collecting money drops and trying to avoid the police) and will present the game in its abstract form.

Each player starts with 6 points. The board is a race track that forms a figure of 8. There is only one space in the middle of the 8, called the alley - it's where all the cars start. The alley is the only space that can be crossed in either direction. Each player will own 2 cars - in 2-3 players, a car is owned by a single player, but in 4-6 players, each car is owned by two players, so cars are shared. The cars can be moved by any player (not only their owners) and their movement is determined via dice. On a turn start, the dice corresponding to all cars are rolled by the first player - he chooses one die and moves the corresponding car, stopping it if scoring is necessary. Then the remaining dice are passed to the next player who rolls them and chooses a die, then passes the remaining dice along, until the last player gets a single die - instead of rolling that, he collects all dice and starts a new turn by rolling them all. Now, for the scoring: there are two markers on the board - a payout marker and a penalty marker; a player can be paid money when he moves a car over either marker (1 point) or when a car he owns is moved over the payout marker, and he will loose money when his car is moved over the penalty marker. When a car gets over a marker, it stops its movement, the marker is scored (the payout or penalty is the number of points corresponding to the number on which the marker rests), and it is moved to the next highest position, where it can be scored again if a car is already there. There are 7 positions for each marker: 1 to 7 for the payout marker and -1 to -7 for the penalty marker. When both markers end on the 7s (which are in the alley) or when one marker is scored on its 7th space, the game ends and the winner is the player with the most money.

A couple more rules involve movement and the alley: when cars move the number of spaces on a die, they don't count spaces occupied by other cars and skip over them. Also, after the initial start, only one car can be in the alley, so the alley can be blocked. For advanced players, an option is provided to randomly set the way the markers will be moved during the game.

Gameplay and some strategy notes

I only played the game a couple of times in two players, so these are preliminary notes. Basically, you're trying to collect payouts by moving your cars over the payout marker, or by setting them just before future payout locations, and you're trying to avoid having your cars be the ones moving over the penalty marker. The dice selection means that the game isn't fully random and gives you some choice. You have to think ahead and plan for where the markers will be moved. The alley is important, as it can help you avoid going towards a penalty marker, and blocking it can force another player to go get it. What I like the most about the game is the amount of choices it provides out of a few simple rules - you just have a few pawns, a few dice, and a simple track, but the rules make it much more interesting than you might expect out of just examining the components.

Components

Wood car pieces, colored dice, cards indicating car owners, a folded board, 2 markers, and more markers for changing the way the markers will move across the board. Everything is good quality. If anything, I feel a game with such simple components was overproduced - a smaller box and map would have worked just as well and would have made the game more portable, as well as making the game cheaper.

Conclusion

This is a light game in terms of rule complexity and speed of playing, but it is meatier than expected in terms of gameplay. The random aspect of throwing dice is nicely controlled by allowing you to choose the die to apply, and by having pairs of players own cars when playing in more players. In more players, I expect it would be hard to predict what will happen until your turn will come back. But given the speed of play and simplicity of rules, this can be a great filler game. You would probably like it if you like abstract racing games, messing up with other players, fast play, and you don't mind a bit of chaos and improvisation from one turn to another. You will probably not like it if you're looking for a thematic game that allows for more strategic planning.

Thread: Mystery Variant

benbodrero — 2008-06-17T01:03:55+00:00

Another game my wife and I enjoy is "Ribbit" which has a hidden element to it (everyone chooses their color in secret so only you know who you are and any player is allowed to move any player's token). We thought it would be fun to add that element to this game. So with that addition, the game would go roughly as follows:

1) Shuffle the car cards (appropriate number of cards for number of players) and deal two to each player. Ensure no player got two cards of the same color (then again, maybe that doesn't matter so much).
2) Use pieces of colored cardstock matching the colors of the cars for car payouts. Each color gets $3 to start.
3) When a player moves a car to cops or money, they get the $1 payout directly to them, and the car's color card is affected per the rules.
4) When the game ends, reveal your cars to the rest of the players and whoever has the most money wins!

Now I do have to say that we have only tried this with two players which destroyed the mystery element (I suppose you could still use all six cars...), but we scored everything as above and it was still enjoyable.

Anyway, give it a shot and let me know what you think!

Ben

Thread: Re: Unique use of Dice make for a Long filler

benbodrero — 2008-06-17T00:24:34+00:00

We grabbed this one for Father's Day at half off beacause, well, its Knizia. Most of his games have been a pretty good gamble for us, and at half off - of course!

Anyway, I agree with the ten minute game play. We have only played (2) two-player games so far learning this by ourselves and while the first game had the learning curve, the second game certainly took about that long.

Thread: Re: Unique use of Dice make for a Long filler

Favre4MVP — 2008-03-14T21:19:59+00:00

elcomadreja2 wrote:
Favre4MVP wrote:
You only stop if a car reaches the money token, the handcuffs, or the alleyway.

You've got to be kidding me. The rules were read by myself and another person multiple times. Time to dig it out again. If true the drawbacks of this game go away for me. If not we'll probably play that way anyway.

Have you re-tried it the correct way yet? Did it improve the game for you? Cars stopping on every numbered space would really make this a poor poor game. By the rules it's a lot of fun, I think.

Thread: Re: Unique use of Dice make for a Long filler

elcomadreja2 — 2008-03-08T20:21:05+00:00

Favre4MVP wrote:
You only stop if a car reaches the money token, the handcuffs, or the alleyway.

You've got to be kidding me. The rules were read by myself and another person multiple times. Time to dig it out again. If true the drawbacks of this game go away for me. If not we'll probably play that way anyway.

Thread: Re: Unique use of Dice make for a Long filler

Skwib — 2008-03-03T21:48:20+00:00

elcomadreja2 wrote:
This is not *as* random as it sounds because numbered spaces must be stopped on, and these are only 2 or 3 spaces apart.

I would check the rules again.... the only numbered spaces that you have to stop on are the ones with either the Payout or the Police tokens.

I personally found this to be a great quick game. No game went beyond ten minutes (and this was with four people), and each game was very close. In fact, there was one game where I was behind nearly the whole game. My only real hope for winning wasn't to try to earn money myself, but to force everyone else to lose theirs. I kept maneuvering other players' vehicles into the Police token, and won the game with only $1 in the bank. Everyone else ended up with zero on the last turn. I gloated immensely.

You should try this again. No game should go beyond ten or fifteen minutes tops.

Thread: Re: Unique use of Dice make for a Long filler

Favre4MVP — 2008-01-18T19:14:10+00:00

Favre4MVP wrote:
Oh, and I didn't time it, but I would guess the game was easily under 30 minutes.

I played twice yesterday. Setup, teaching the game, playing twice, and tear-down was less than 40 minutes total. I know that the first game only took 10 minutes. Great filler if you ask me.

Thread: Re: Unique use of Dice make for a Long filler

Favre4MVP — 2008-01-08T17:09:41+00:00

Oh, and I didn't time it, but I would guess the game was easily under 30 minutes.

Thread: Re: Unique use of Dice make for a Long filler

Favre4MVP — 2008-01-08T16:10:25+00:00

I've read and heard some bad things about this game, but hey, it's a Knizia so I got it and tried it out this weekend. I really liked it. After reading this review and other people's comments, I'm wondering if people are playing wrong. The rules are a bit unclear in one place, and it's the most important part of the game. It took me at least 3 re-reads of the paragraph to get it.

You don't stop on every numbered space, and the moving player does not get a point for moving a car to a numbered space. You only stop if a car reaches the money token, the handcuffs, or the alleyway. If a car reaches one of the tokens then the moving player gets 1 point, the car owner earns or loses money based on what the number is at that space and then the token moves to the next space numerically (possibly scoring again). This gives you a lot more control over the game and allows you to try to set yourself up for some bigger chain scoring (at least with 3 players where you have 2 cars each). The other numbers on the board are just there to show you where the tokens move to...they can be ignored when moving cars unless one of the 2 main tokens are on a space.

I don't have the rules in front of me now so I can't give you any quotes, but I would think that stopping and scoring on every numbered space would make this a random bore-fest. That's also probably why you ran out of money. We had plenty left at the end of the game.

Image

dsmeyer — 2007-12-28T05:14:26+00:00

A two player game mid game.

Image

dsmeyer — 2007-12-28T05:12:11+00:00

The cars, the dice, the cards, and the chips.

Image

dsmeyer — 2007-12-28T05:10:42+00:00

Box Interior and all the components

Image

Runehardt — 2007-12-21T20:24:26+00:00

"take him for a ride"

Thread: Unique use of Dice make for a Long filler

elcomadreja2 — 2007-10-21T22:10:35+00:00

This is the latest Knizia game that I had to try simply because it was from him. Even though it's Knizia, just listening to the rules gave me the instinct that this is not a gamerly game. That is not why I bought it. I bought it as a not-very-deep game that I could play with the likes of those that like party games, and that I could still feel like I had some meaningful decisions to make. After actually playing the game I found that my instincts were right. For my general purposes this is just a little too random, a little too long to call a filler, and not enough theme to make it interesting.

Overview:
The board is basically an oval to drive cars around, with an alleyway cut-through in the middle. You are gangsters and are driving around picking up money drops (positive points) and avoiding the cops (negative points). There are several numbered spaces on the track which are the locations where these things might occur. One of these spaces (the 1 space at the beginning) is marked as the money drop, and another space (-1 at beginning) is marked as cops.

The points are given out thusly:
whoever moves a car on one of the numbered spaces gets a point, and if it is the money drop the owner(s) of the car get points, and if it is the cops the owner(s) get negative points. The amount of points starts at 1 and goes up during the game to a maximum of 7.
BTW, if someone gets confused about the game it's going to be in scoring. It doesn't help that the first payout/penalty takes several rounds to get to, or that it happens a most 12 times a game.

Gameplay:
There will be the same number of cars as players, and a matching die for each car. The first person rolls all the dice, sets one aside, and moves that color car that many spaces. The next person takes the remaining dice and does the same thing. When a player would only roll one die, they instead grab all the dice and roll them. This is not *as* random as it sounds because numbered spaces must be stopped on, and these are only 2 or 3 spaces apart. So most of the time, the dice will tell you *which* cars can be moved for personal gain. Many times the choice is just left up to the player. The other detail of movement, and this is how you get past the stops, is that a space already occupied
with a car does gets skipped when counting spaces.

The game ends when someone gets the 7 point payout or the -7 penalty, or when both markers have made it to 7/-7.

Ah but wait... there's more! And I've left the twist till the end. When playing with 4 or more people, everyone will pick a color car, take two matching cards of that color and pass one to their left. Thus everyone will have two colors of cars for which payouts/penalties will apply.

Components:
We got wooden cars, a plastic/felt dice cup, plastic dice, cardboard money, money drop marker, police marker, and number chits to randomize the numbers on the board if so desired.
Components are top notch, but I have a few complaints here. One is that there is not enough money (money and points being the same thing in this game). We ran out of money when playing with 4 people, and this game goes up to 6. The other is the padded dice cup that comes with the game -- it is only wide enough for 3 dice to rest when turning the cup upside down, without stacking on each other.

To tell the truth is game is kind of fun, but it's just too long for me to play it with any regularity.

Image

johnsone1978 — 2007-08-25T14:59:07+00:00

Little Italy Game Board

Image

Mr Freedly — 2007-08-20T23:19:07+00:00

Promo 2

Image

Mr Freedly — 2007-08-20T23:18:18+00:00

Promo 1