Game: Fugger, Die

Thread: Expansion?

Greedo — 2008-03-11T15:14:39+00:00

I heard there was going to be an expansion to this game called "DIE, YOU MOTHER FUGGER!", but my sources may be incorrect.

Thread: Crónica en español de dos partidas.

Schroinger — 2008-02-22T10:06:56+00:00

Tocó en esta ocasión jugar "Die Fugger".

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Jakob Fugger fue un gran hombre de negocios radicado en el Augsburgo del siglo XV, que se convirtió en el hombre más rico de su tiempo, mucho más que el Emperador del Sacro Imperio Romano Germánico, a quien él mismo le prestaba dinero.

Los jugadores encarnan a comerciantes que comercian diversos productos en la ciudad, junto a Jakob, y compiten por demostrarle quién es el más capaz. Quien sabe y a lo mejor el ricachón podría necesitar alguna vez un socio para sus negocios.

En cada turno se puede jugar una carta o tomar una del mazo. Cuando se juega la quinta carta de un producto termina la ronda y se procede a la puntuación.

Las tres mercancías más jugadas avanzan tantos escaños en el marcador de precios como cartas de ese tipo se hayan bajado. El valor máximo es de nueve florines, por lo que si se excede, el precio de la mercancía cae a uno. Por su parte, las mercancías que no avanzan su posición, retroceden un espacio, decreciendo de esta forma su valor.

El juego, como se puede intuir, se basa en jugar con la oferta y la demanda, tratando que las cartas jugadas por el rival valgan lo menos posible, mientras que las propias lo máximo.

Dado lo rápido, jugamos dos veces. El juego es tan sencillo que se hace imposible una descripción pormenorizada de lo que aconteció, por lo que se consignan simplemente los resultados, empezando, como es de suponer, con los de la primera partida:

1er. lugar: Luis Paulino, con 124 florines.

2o. lugar: José, con 85 florines.

Por su parte, la segunda partida arrojó el siguiente balance final:

1er. lugar: José, con 120 florines.

2o. lugar: Luis Paulino, con 111 florines.

Esta crónica puede verse también en http://juegosdemesacr.com/cms/index.php?option=com_content&t...

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fenolin — 2008-01-03T17:35:55+00:00

Home made box; playing with googs track detail

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fenolin — 2008-01-03T17:35:18+00:00

Home made box; playing with googs track

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fenolin — 2008-01-03T17:34:08+00:00

Home made box and contents

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fenolin — 2008-01-03T17:33:27+00:00

Home made box

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fenolin — 2008-01-03T17:32:39+00:00

Home made box: rules

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fenolin — 2008-01-03T17:31:13+00:00

Home made box 2/2; top with score track

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fenolin — 2008-01-03T17:30:14+00:00

Home made box 1/2; bottom with goods track

Thread: Re: English Rules

Stradk — 2007-12-19T20:19:38+00:00

There are no problems with the english rules whatsoever. Don't worry.

Thread: Re: English Rules

ljw74us — 2007-12-10T20:08:51+00:00

Maybe you should worry a little bit. It is Adlung-English.

(I own a number of Adlung games and do enjoy them... including the deciphering of their English rules)

Thread: Re: English Rules

DKahnt — 2007-12-10T18:16:38+00:00

Thanks!

Now I am not worried at all!

-DK

Thread: Re: English Rules

sefton — 2007-12-10T18:08:20+00:00

In my copy, the booklet inside contains rules in a number of languages, English being one of them.

Thread: Re: English Rules

AnakinOU — 2007-12-10T18:08:18+00:00

Yes, the game comes with full (Adlung-)English rules.

Thread: English Rules

DKahnt — 2007-12-10T18:02:35+00:00

So, I'm getting this game in a trade and have (right now) no idea if there are any English rules with the game?

Can anyone provide me with some insight. Does the game come with English rules, if not, where can I find them?

-DK

Thread: Re: Where can I find this little card game?

JeffyJeff — 2007-12-05T16:46:32+00:00

Scott Firestone IV wrote:
There was a hubbub with the Fugger family and the use of the name, so Adlung stopped making it. So except in a trade, you're unlikely to find it. Sorry.
I have a copy myself so not looking for it... but I do wonder if the designer re-release it with a different theme (or at least family name). Then again he's probably too busy with his Carcassonne franchise to have the time to deal with a card game.

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luckacs — 2007-11-07T02:12:05+00:00

Thread: Re: Die Fugger - A review

Greendan — 2007-06-28T09:27:01+00:00

Cheers mate, it's certainly an improvement over the Dalmuti Review! I dunno what I'm gonna review next as most of my games collection already has about a gizillion reviews on here. So it may be a while...

Thread: Re: Die Fugger - A review

GeneSteeler — 2007-06-28T01:51:38+00:00

Well done Dan, look forward to more reviews!

Thread: Die Fugger - A review

Greendan — 2007-06-23T09:59:14+00:00

So I've forked over my cash, what stuff I get?

You'll have got a card game for 2 to 4 players.
Well, you won't have paid more that a tenner (I hope) because all you get is a deck of cards:
9 Price Cards
45 Goods Cards
4 Merchants
5 Goods Value Cards
1 'Jacob The Rich' cards
a couple of cards that demonstrate the layout
and a 4 language instruction book. (I was given this game by someone who'd decided the rules were just in German, so I left it on the shelf for ages, then logged onto the 'geek to look for English rules. Oh dear.)
The cards are printed on fairly heavy stock with color printing on the front and black and white on the back. All very shiny and nice. Well worth the small amount of cash you just paid.

Thats a whole bunch of cards, what do I do with them?

The 'Jacob the Rich' card represents, erm, Jacob the Rich. A member of the Fugger family and a man with a contract on offer. The players are merchants who are all trying to win the favor of Jacob by scoring more points (Florins) than the other players by the end of the game. Jacob is placed on the table and sort of plays the game with the players (more on this later)

The 45 Goods Cards and 4 Merchants are shuffled together to become the draw deck. Two of the goods cards get randomly dealt (face up)to Jacob (Merchants are shuffled back in if drawn for Jacob) and each player receives 4 of these cards from the deck.

The 9 Price cards represent a florin value from 1 to 9 and are laid out in a circle from 1 to 9. I like this bit a lot, as this could have been done in many different ways such as a board and counters, but by using cards it cuts down production costs and means the game all fits in a standard card size box.
Also you don't have to lay them out in a circle you could lay them out how ever you want provided you remember that 1 comes after 9. And how tricky is that, really?

The 5 Goods value cards represent the value of the 5 different goods: Copper, Fabric, Wine, Spices and Jewels and at the start of the game they are placed on the number 5 price card. (So all goods are valued the same in the first round)

Ok, so I've done that, how do I play the game?

The game is played over a variable number of rounds, with scoring occurring at the end of each round. Each round is very simple as on your turn you may take one of the following actions:

-Draw one card from the draw deck (as long as you don't have more than 4)

-Lay one card face up in front of you, either a goods card of merchant card.(This is the meat of the round as the cards that all players lay determine the value of the good at the end of the round)

-Finally you can choose to lay a goods card face down in front of you, but only once per round and only in the first two rounds of the game (More on this later). If a player takes this action Jacob gets one card face up in front of him (If that card is a merchant card is gets discarded and he gets another one)

So thats another sweet point of this game, it's that simple to play: Draw a card or lay a card face up, or lay one face down (During the first two rounds). Nothing scary, even non gamers get that.

Play goes round until there are 5 cards of one goods type face up on the table, including the ones Jacob has (remember I said he was playing the game too).
This starts to get tricky, so pay attention: As soon as the 5th goods card hits the table the round ends. Then the goods are valued. So for example lets say the table consists of: 5 Copper, 4 Fabric, 3 Wine 2 spices and 1 Jewel. The 3 highest value goods go up in price according to how many there are. So copper goes up 5, fabric goes up 4 and Wine goes up by 3. The final 2 goods (in this case spices and jewels drop by a value of 1 (but never below a value of 1).
Hang on, I hear you say. You said all the goods start on 5, but the highest possible value is 9, so 5 + 5 is 10? Yes it is, but the values are laid in a circle, anything that goes above 9 lands on 1. Even if it wants to go higher, for example if a good is valued at 9 and goes up by four it can't go higher than one. This means that whatever wins the first round always ends up on 1. A bit predictable, but in subsequent rounds the values will change again. If there is a tie for 2nd place then there is no 3rd place. If there is a tie for 3rd place they all go up, so it is possible to have rounds in which more than three goods rise in value.

Good, so all the goods have a new value, what happens next?
Now all, players score points based on the value of the goods they have in front of them. Some of the goods cards have a 'Royal Seal' on them and these cards score double their value, providing there is no more than 3 of this type of good on the table, if there is more than 3 they score normally. Everyone makes a note of their score and then discards all the goods in front of them.
Jacob doesn't score points, but he does lose his goods. (Poor guy)
Everyone then draws 2 cards. If you have a merchant you draw two cards, if you have two merchants you get 5 cards. Merchants are then discarded.
Jacob gets his two face up cards and the player to the left of the person who provoked the end of the round leads the new round.

So how does the game end?
The Game ends if after scoring any player has more than 100 florins. Then you do final evaluation, this means you score those cards that were laid face down during those first 2 rounds. All these goods score double their value regardless of royal seals.
The player with the most Florins (Points) wins the game.

So, Dan, what do you think of it?

Overall I think this is a quality medium to heavy filler game. Its easy to pick up for new players and new gamers alike. It is mostly a case of manipulating the end game points for the final evaluation, there isn't much decision making, mostly a case of try to provoke the end game or trying to not let the other players provoke it. The fact is all fits in a little box and you can carry it anywhere is just a bonus. Ultimately I'd say if you see it in a shop and you've got a bit of cash on you, buy it. It won't be you're favorite game ever, but you won't be disappointed. Just remember there are English rules in there somewhere!

Thread: Re: Question about cards dealt to Jacob

Powpow — 2007-06-14T14:44:00+00:00

OK. That makes sense. Thanks a lot.

Thread: Re: Question about cards dealt to Jacob

Great Dane — 2007-06-14T05:36:56+00:00

Powpow wrote:
Does Jacob get 3 cards instead of 2 cards in a 4-player game?

I think you have misunderstood the rule about adding an additional card in phase C) after each card placed by a player.

In a two-player game that would add up to 2 extra cards to Jacob if both players placed a card, giving Jacob a total of 5 cards!

And if all 3 players placed a card would Jacob end up with: 2 from the deck plus 3 cards (one from each player) = also 5 cards!

With two players Jacob would start with 2 cards (2), then may each player feed him an additional card (+2) and finally will the game provide him with one card (for a total of 5 cards).

So with any number of players will Jacob have up to 5 cards.

Thread: Question about cards dealt to Jacob

Powpow — 2007-06-13T13:47:47+00:00

I have a question about the cards dealt to Jacob 'every' hand in a 2 player game. Is it correct that Jacob gets a face up card every hand after both players played an action? We played this way last night and felt that Jacob gets way too many cards. If this rule is correct, perhaps it's more fair to give Jacob a face-down card instead of face up so that it also takes him 2 hands to play the card? Has anyone tried with 2 players? Also, I'm not very clear on the 3 player game either. Does Jacob get 3 cards instead of 2 cards in a 4-player game? Thanks.

Thread: Die Fugger: A portuguese review

Stein — 2007-05-28T01:53:32+00:00

Embora o jogo em si não seja muito conhecido da comunidade lúdica brasileira e também não é exatemente um top no rankingo BGG, é um jogo que merece crédito, seja pela companhia que o publicou Adlung Spiele, seja pelo autor, Klaus Jurgen Wrede, simplesmente o cara do Carcassone.

O jogo

O objetivo do jogo é fazer dinheiro com a venda de produtos. O jogador que conseguir mais dinheiro torna-se o parceiro comercial do Jacob e vence a partida.

As cartas de 1 a 9 formam um círculo e são a cotação, e as cartas dobradas de produtos são os produtos disponíveis. Quando um determinado produto atinge a soma de 5 cartas na mesa, o round é encerrado, a nova cotação é definida e os jogadores recebem o dinheiro pelos produtos que colocaram na mesa e todas as cartas na mesa são recolhidas.

Para definir a nova cotação, os três produtos com mais cartas aumentam na cotação a respectiva quantidade na mesa e os dois com menos cartas caem um nível de cotação. Notem que na primeira rodada o produto com mais cartas vai passar de cotação 5 para 1.

Durante o turno o jogador tem as seguintes opções: baixa uma carta ou compra uma carta, sendo que o limite de cartas nas mãos é 4. Deste modo tenho que procurar otimizar os produtos que tenho na mesa prevendo quais produtos estarão mais valorizados no fim do round (nos dois primeiros rounds há uma opção de esconder uma carta para consideração de pontuação apenas ao final do jogo, trata-se de uma aposta para tentar direcionar a atuação do jogador para influenciar na cotação destes produtos escondidos).

As cartas que são abertas para acompanhar o Jacob contam para consideração da quantidade dos produtos em oferta. Já as cartas de mercadores apenas conferem um bônus para o jogador que a baixou: ele receberá cartas extras na passagem de uma rodada para a outra.

Avaliação
É um jogo extremamente dinâmico, rápido e simples. Há algumas escolhas para conferir um certo raciocínio mas é o tipo de jogo cujos mecanismos e macetes não se demora a aprender, não existem sutilezas ou mistérios.

Considerando a relação custo-benefício vale a pena tê-lo e cumpre um ótimo papel como um filler. Pode ser jogado de dois a 4 jogadores e tudo indica que seu número ótimo de participantes é três. As partidas em três pessoas duraram cerca de 30 minutos.

* Originalmente publicada no blog Oba, Tijolo!

Thread: Re: Where can I find this little card game?

vialiy — 2007-05-01T03:02:55+00:00

My FLGS ordered one from Le Valet last week and it has just arrived, picked it up today. This site seems to have it:

http://spiele-offensive.de/?seite=2000&aid=1001524&wer=11776...

Thread: Re: Where can I find this little card game?

unity — 2007-04-26T19:03:35+00:00

unfortunately out of stock at le Valet also... error in inventory database

Thread: Re: Where can I find this little card game?

guru_mod — 2007-04-25T18:47:19+00:00

Ahh! Got it. Thank you very much everyone.

Thread: Re: Where can I find this little card game?

Mike A — 2007-04-25T17:17:42+00:00

It is OOP and is difficult to find anywhere anymore, however, they do still have it in stock at Le Valet D'Coeur out of Montreal (www.levalet.com). It is $12.50 Canadian plus $5 Canadian for shipping to the US, if I recall correctly.

Thread: Re: Where can I find this little card game?

Scott Firestone IV — 2007-04-25T16:01:48+00:00

There was a hubbub with the Fugger family and the use of the name, so Adlung stopped making it. So except in a trade, you're unlikely to find it. Sorry.

Thread: Where can I find this little card game?

guru_mod — 2007-04-25T15:50:31+00:00

It seems like no one has it in stock. Is it OOP?

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arzman — 2007-04-22T12:13:02+00:00

Box size comparison

Thread: Re: Best with three?

jostrand — 2006-11-21T19:06:44+00:00

Eric Brosius wrote:
Gola (#23157),

I played with 3 and wasn't crazy about the extra cards dealt to Jacob the Rich (in addition to the original 2 cards.) I thought that added more randomness than a 4th player.

Has anyone played 3-player without the extra cards? I'd have thought that would have worked fine.

I played 3-player on Saturday without the rule and it didn't seem to affect much. I think the rule states that Jakob only gets a card when a player plays a face down card. This would only affect the 1st and 2nd rounds, and it would make them play a lot faster.

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ricardochriste — 2006-08-20T17:46:13+00:00

Goods and merchants

Thread: Re: The best way to track goods prices

Salt-Man Z — 2006-03-17T00:29:36+00:00

Like this:
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Thread: Two three-player games

ValJor — 2005-11-12T20:23:16+00:00

Date: November 11th, 2005

Game: Die Fugger

Players: Johnny, Stephane and Valdir (myself)

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This Friday I took off from work to run some personal errands and to play some board games with the nice people of the Concordia University Games Club. So, in the morning I wandered around town doing my things and by 1h20 pm I got to the club office in the Loyola campus, in the western side of the city.

When I got there Johnny and Stephane were engaged in a game of Battletech. I had my lunch while they played another round of that game and then I was ready for some gaming.

During the week I had mentioned in the club's mailing list that people could check my collection here at BGG and request games for me to bring, but no request came, so I decided to take with me three small card games: Die Fugger, Saga and Vom Kap bis Kairo. Nice games and easy to carry when you're running around town...

Anyway, when I got there, Johnny mentioned that he had intended to ask me to bring exactly Die Fugger, he was curious about the game. What a good coincidence that I brought it along! Therefore this was the first game we tried.

I explained the rules and off we went influencing the prices of the five products bought and sold by Jacob, the Rich. In the first round we all put down one of our products for the game end scoring but in the second round we were so much into the game that we all forgot about it!

Also in the first round I made a mistake, I caused the end of the round when Johnny had one or two of the royal seal cards in front of him, which gave him a comfortable lead that Stephane and I were not able to wipe out later in the game.

Final Score
[c]
First Game
Player: Points
Johnny: 128
Stephane: 108
Valdir: 104
[/c]

The guys seemed to like the game, they asked for a second try, so we reset the "board" and started again. This time I was more careful and did not hand out points as I had done before.

Once again we all forgot to put down the face down card in the second round. It was a very fast round as well, we were all playing cloth and the round ended with two of the products still at zero cards on the table. This was a funny situation, because they were tied at third and in theory, should go up but as they did not have any cards in play, they just stayed put.

Johnny was heavily targeted in this second game and could not do much about and ended the game in last place, as you can see for the standings below:

[c]
Second Game
Player: Points
Stephane: 120
Valdir: 85
Johnny: 75
[/c]Later on I checked the rulebook and it seems that I failed to mention one minor rule: in a three-player game, each time a player places a face-down card, Jacob receives one extra card in front of him. This would speed up the first round of each game a bit, but shouldn't have affected the scoring too much.

Thread: The best way to track goods prices

Salt-Man Z — 2005-10-24T14:47:06+00:00

After playing the game once, I decided (as did many others here) that the written rules for tracking the goods prices needs to change.

We had started using TransAmerica stations to mark the costs and # of cards, but a better idea quickly presented itself.

Yesterday, I picked up 5 six-sided dice, in 5 colors: red, yellow, green, blue, and brown. Now, to track the price of each good, we need only place the die of corresponding color on the proper price card; the number shown on the die indicates the number of cards of that good currently in play.

Thread: Defeat in Die Fugger

raolsson — 2005-09-13T20:27:20+00:00

When VuDuJoie and I arrived at the local mall to try a game of Die Fugger, I should have know by the tight time constraints and the confident way he shuffled the cards that I would not be walking away from this game a winner. With a view towards playing one round to get a feel for the game, we played three rounds and finished the thing. A quick game for two players and sure to be a regular in the Working Lunch Game rotation.

VuDu set up the board and dealt out the cards, with The Rich showing the blue fabrics for the initial commodity. I had two of these in my hand, both with the royal seal, so I should have held back and played them after four of something else was out. But it was my first game, so I played theme early to get a feel for how the game worked. Also, with one round in the offing originally, how bad could it be?

Well, blue fabric ended up being the five-timer in our first round, so I got three points (I had three of the cards, sadly enough) with no bonus for the royal seals.

VuDu, on the other hand, had two royal seals on coffee, our second commodity, and scored 32 points on those two cards because I had put one out as well. With the other cards, I was able to get 24 points to VuDu's 42 starting points. I knew we were looking at a victory for my opponent, but we moved into round two because round one was quick.

Although there were no merchants out in round one, round 2 found three of them on the board. I was able to push two of VuDu's high scoring cards to low scoring cards, but the score remained pretty distant. By round three, even with my three-card advantage for having two of the three merchants, I was unable to close the gap of round one.

For my next game, I will play much closer attention to where the royal seal cards go down, because they can add the necessary points to carry the game. And I will also make sure that if we are playing only "one round," I will do my best to play the game like we were going the full length.

Thread: Re: Evaluation at the end of the game

cktjharris — 2005-08-12T14:28:52+00:00

Yes, that clears it up. Thanks for your help!

Thread: Re: Evaluation at the end of the game

Micha — 2005-08-12T07:08:00+00:00

Hi all,

it is intended as follows:

- an evaluation takes place
- somebody has collected enough money to end the game
- NO goods rise or fall
- Everybody gets additional points for his/her face-down-cards

Hope this helps,

Michael Andersch
- Adlung Spiele -

Thread: Re: Evaluation at the end of the game

cktjharris — 2005-07-28T15:56:27+00:00

We also play that you change the prices of each good one last time before scoring the cards that were saved for the end of the game. Here’re the rules that we make us think this should be done:

“Now a final evaluation takes place. You only take into account the cards that the players have laid down on the table, face down, during the first two rounds (deliveries).”

As far as I can tell from the rest of the rules, doing an evaluation implies that the prices are changed.

However, the folks that play the opposite way are absolutely right. Changing the prices again at the end does make the game very random. In fact, most of our games have been decided solely on who does better in this final scoring.

Playing this way also raises another question. How do you handle ties for first place during the final price changes? The rules only tell us how to deal with ties for second or third place. That’s fine after a normal round, because in that case the round has ended because exactly 1 good has 5 cards. There can never be a tie for first place.

But when you change the prices again at the end of the game, there can be a tie for first. This has worked for us because we play 2-player, so there can be at most 4 cards set aside. We increase the prices of all goods that have been set aside, and decrease the others’.

However, I expect this could be a problem for 4 players. Suppose that the following cards have been set aside:
2 coppers
2 wines
2 fabrics
1 spice
0 emeralds
Presumably copper, wine, and fabric would all increase in price. Emeralds should decrease. But what happens to spice? With a 3-way tie for first, should 2nd place be awarded and its price increased also? Or should 2nd place never be awarded, and spice’s price should therefore decrease in value? Any thoughts?

Thread: Die, Fugger!

SeeMo — 2005-07-20T20:23:33+00:00

Prologue
After getting Meuterer I was blinded by its greatness, and got intrigued by Adlung-Spieles card games, their cheap, their said to be good, and hell, I personally have witnessed one of them to be brilliant. I decided to get Die Fugger because the theme seemed nice, it had a "nice" name, it is said to be good and it is designed by Klaus-Jürgen Wrede, whose Carcassonne was my introduction to German gaming.

Components
Like many Adlungs card games, this game only has a deck of cards and rules. The rules are multilingual, so you don't have to print your English rules from the internet. Rulestastic! The cards are of fine quality, with decent art on them. There are goods cards (there are five different goods, and some of the goods have a seal on them), merchant cards, price-wheel cards, and price-goods cards or whatever you are supposed to call them, anyhow they are supposed to be used to show the prize of the goods on the price-wheel. These cards are supposed to be folded so they stand up, like many others here on BGG, I find the idea repulsive. I have been using my "general gaming pawns" for the goods price indicators, works fine. There are also the "Jakob the Rich"-card and some player aids.

Goal
The goal of the game is to became the partner of Jakob "The Rich" Fugger. The player who has collected most point/money (whichever you prefer) by the end of the game is the one to reach this goal. Hooray!

Gameplay
Players are dealt a hand of four cards, and the price-wheel is set up, and price markers put on five florins for all the goods, also, Jakob. The game consists of turns taken in rounds. On his turn, the player may play a card face up (either sell a good or play a merchant), take a card from the deck (a player can't do this is he has more than four cards in his hand), or if it's the first or the second round, he can, and actually should, play a goods card face down, this can be done once in the first two rounds, and these cards are scored as the last thing in the game. Anyhow, depending on the number or player, Jakob the Rich also get randomly played cards, but if he get's a merchant it's discarded and drawn a new card, until he gets a goods card. The round ends when there are five cards of some good on the table (the cards of Jakob the Rich are also counted). At this point the three goods that there are the most played are moved clock-wise on the price-wheel the amount that there are the type of goods played. The trick here is, that the prices go up until it reaches nine, after that it drops to one. And now, the goods are scored. Players get points for the goods played face up according to their current price on the price-wheel. If a goods has a seal and there are less than four of that type played face up on the table that goods card is worth double points. After scoring cards are discarded and players get two cards (Jakobs cards are also renewed), unless a player has played a merchant, if he has, he gets two extra cards, and if he has played two merchants he gets five extra cards, and a player can't play more than two merchants a round. This keeps going until somebody reaches hundred points. Now the face down played cards are scored, players get points, as usual, based on the goods price. Seals don't matter with face down plaed cards. Now, the player with most points is the winner, yay!

Verdict
First of all. This game did not at all disseapoint me, was pretty much what I expected. A nice, quick card game. Some people have mocked the game for being too random but I'm somehow I don't see it. I think that this is one of those games where a skilled player makes a "useless" hand useful. It's a nice, exciting, fast paced. light economics game where you have to try to guess what your opponents are going to play that is also easy to teach, plus it's cheap. The only actually bad things in this game are the fact that it doens't have proper score track, but hey, it's a card game, it's really understandable, also the suggestion of folding the price indicators is disgusting. Otherwise, it's a fine piece of gaming that I think should deserve more attention than it does right now.

On the good 'ol BGG scale I'll be giving this game a...
10 - Outstanding. Always want to play and expect this will never change.
9 - Excellent game. Always want to play it.
8 - Very good game. I like to play. Probably I'll suggest it and will never turn down a game.
7 - Good game, usually willing to play.
6 - Ok game, some fun or challenge at least, will play sporadically if in the right mood.
5 - Average game, slightly boring, take it or leave it.
4 - Not so good, it doesn't get me but could be talked into it on occasion.
3 - Likely won't play this again although could be convinced. Bad.
2 - Extremely annoying game, won't play this ever again.
1 - Defies description of a game. You won't catch me dead playing this. Clearly broken

Get this, for it's price it's really good. A proof that Klaus-Jürgen Wrede is more than Carcassonne if you ask me.

Thread: Suggestion for improved playability

Glamorous Mucus — 2005-06-09T04:15:27+00:00

Die Fugger is a great little game, but some shortcuts were made to package the game in the compact Adlung card box. The suggested method of tracking good prices just doesn't work well. Additionally, assessing the game state can be tedious, since there's no quick indicator of the numbers of the various goods on the table.

We've come up with a simple method that solves both of these problems. You will need one small marker in each of the five goods colors: blue, green, red/burgundy/wine, gold/orange, and brown/black. I use the short wooden cylinders from an extra copy of Heimlich & Co., but the ubiquitous wooden game cubes should also do the trick.

Lay out the the numbered price cards in a line from one to nine, rather than in a circle. It will be much easier to visualize what is happening to the prices. Set aside the folded cards and use the colored markers instead to track the good prices.

At the start of each round, each goods marker will start out just above the appropriate numbered price card, according to the current value of that good. When the first good card is played to the table (either by a player or by the Rich Fugger), move the corresponding colored marker onto the upper region of its current price card. When a second good of that type is played, the marker goes to the middle region of its price card. The third good moves the marker to the lower region of the price card, and the fourth good moves the marker to the area just below the price card. The fifth good immediately ends the round, so you don't need a way to mark a fifth good. Do this for each of the five commodities. At the end of the round, move the markers to their new price and reset them above the new price card.

In this way, a quick glance at the price cards shows the number of each good currently on the table. The marker travels downward with each good of that type that is played.

Try it. You'll never go back to the folded cards and the circular arrangement.

Thread: Halunken & Spelunken, Attila & Die Fugger. Great evening of fun!q

faqtotum — 2005-05-27T14:27:45+00:00

After surviving a gut-wrenching viewing of the last Star Wars episode, we decided to head to my place for a change of pace. I won't go into the movie beyond saying that it almost ruined a perfectly fine lunch that I had a hard time keeping down. I was hoping against hope that in the throws of rage, a fight scene containing Jar Jar and a good measure of lightsabers converging on all parts of his neck but alas.

I have so many games that I've yet to try that whenever the gang comes over I usually impose a new game in the lot. This time around it was Halunken & Spelunken by the late great Alex Randolph. Everyone agreed on this choice because it was one of his designs.

While we can't say we were disappointed, nobody was conquered with this game. The play is fairly straightforward and there are few opportunities for difficult decision-making. Pick a number, move your pawn, recruit scoundrels and hope to be in a good position for the next turn. The exciting moments are when several players choose the same number which cancels those move cards and forces your pawns to stay put and pick a scoundrel (if available) from your current location. There are 14 locations arranged in a circle and your move cards range from 1 to 7 with a rum card acting as a wild card. The standard game allows for a neutral player called Black Jack to have an impact on the game when the conditions are in place.

To put it in perspective, the impressions ranged from "didn't dislike it" to "nice". No "Wow!" or "What a pile of hoowie!". Jean-Luc made clever use of Black Jack (and drew a good movement card to help it) and stole this one from the jaws defeat. We'll try it again, but later. Much later.

Then it was time to pull out Attila again. Now in our group, this game enjoys a stellar reputation. Mostly because all games we played were all very well balanced and tightly contested affairs. I love the difficult choices and the hand management in this game. When to play your 3 options is probably one of the key to victories and it is not always a good idea to hold on to them til the very end. Scoring rounds seem to happen when we last expect them; when we can make them happen to our advantage, even just once, it will keep you in the running.

As it turns out, the evil dicelord Jean-Luc handed us both me and Francis our hats last night finishing well over the 100 pts mark. There is no dice in Attila so we were shocked to find how proficiently he had used the foul tribes from the East to plunder better than we could. As a side note, this was the first game we played where it wasn't the Huns who ruled over the most areas. This is usually the case. This time around the Franks spread their savoir faire from the borders of Belgium to beaches of Scicily and they were darn near triggering a game end by virtue of a lack of blue tokens. We've never seen this BTW. If anyone has seen this before, do let me know.

Finally, we pulled out Die Fugger from Adlung Spiele, maker of those fine in your pocket portable games. This game is in the same vein of simplicity and ease of play like their other titles. More complicated than Titus, but simpler than Meuterer.

The game involves price manipulation of 5 commodities and is played in rounds until someone hits the magic 100 pts. Players take turns playing commodity cards and drawing cards, until there are 5 of a commodity. Then the round ends and scoring happens. The 3 commodities that have the most played collectively, go up in price. The others go down. Then the players trade their commodities at the reset price and tabulate scores. Very simple.

We were surprised to find how many choices there were, and in some cases, very difficult to make. The flow is fast but there is enough room for thought and planning. We all enjoyed this. Francis ended up being the wisest trader and there was much rejoicing.

Thread: The game had two more rounds than everybody expected!

ValJor — 2005-05-09T15:22:47+00:00

Date: May 7th, 2005

Game: Die Fugger

Players: Alexander, Pierre-Luc, Rami and Valdir (myself)

This was probably the last meeting of the Montreal Boardgames Meetup Group under the auspices of the Meetup organization. They have taken this weird decision of charging $19 per month for each group, which I’m sure is going to kill the entire idea of the Meetup. I mean, small groups can’t take such a hit and large groups don’t need the Meetup anymore to keep thriving, so I don’t think that too many Meetup groups will be left alive a year from now. I understand that they have to generate money to continue operating but this was one of the worst possible ways to do it...

Anyway, this event was even bigger than the previous one, we had nine people in total and we played many different games. When I got at the Concordia Hall Building, Jean-François and Alexander were already there. Shortly after that Pierre-Luc, Rami and Joe arrived, so we were six. Jean-François proposed a game of Mogul that he had brought, but as he was about to start explaining the rules, he saw that he had brought only the German rules…

We decided then to break up in two groups: Jean-François played a game of Hera & Zeus against Joe while I taught Die Fugger to the other players.

After three rounds I had a total of 76 points, so I told the other players that the fourth would probably be the last round, because the game ends as soon as someone hits 100 points or more. Pierre-Luc wanted to put down a merchant but I told him out of it because it would be a wasted card if that was to be the last round.

Well, surprise, surprise, in this round I only got 14 points, so we had another round to go. However, the weirdest part was that at the end of this fifth round we all threw our cards in the middle, because we “knew” it was the last round, but when I counted my points, I had only gotten 7! And nobody else was close to 100, so we had to play still another round!

We got back the cards that we had thrown out and played a sixth and final round. When we revealed our face down cards and counted our points I had won with 135 against Alexander’s 131. Rami had Pierre-Luc had 117 and 103.

During the game Johnny, François and his wife Carole came in but as our game would still take a long time to finish, they started their own game, they chose Carc.

Thread: Concordia

dwarf — 2005-05-08T19:03:10+00:00

Today I went to Concordia University. It was the first time I went there for board games.

It was a fun afternoon. I meet some new people. Also saw two familiar faces there, Rami and Valdir. Both are regulars at the game days at the apartment.

First game we tryed was a game Valdir had brought with him, Die Fugger. Valdir setup the game and started explaining. Usually a gameday at the apartement, we talk to each other in french. Now at the University, we were talking to each other in english. It was kinda odd, but it well rather well.

I played the game with 3 other players. The other three were Valdir, Rami, and Alexander who goes to the school.

The game is not too hard to learn and it lasted a couple of rounds. Some rounds were more profitable than others. The goods had time to move around abit. Often going from 9 to 1.

I found it to be an ok card game. I want to try some more card games to see if I can find another gem to my liking like Colossal Arena or Citadels. I am pretty open to try something new, even a card game. Who knows, I might find something to my liking and add it to the game collection. I would also need to check some 2 player games sooner or later.

The game ends when someone reaches 100 dollars. It took more rounds than we thought, so I was holding back a bit the merchant towards the end of the game.

There are 5 resources in all. They can be worth 1-9 dollars each. Some cards has the royal seal which makes the good worth doule the amount.

Valdir ended up with the win. As for me, I was dead last.

Am happy that I tried Die Fugger. Not something I would get though. Not in a hurry to play again either. I would want to a try a different card game rather than seeing Die Fugger hitting the table any time soon.

Thread: Component Tip

Gola — 2005-04-09T23:13:25+00:00

El Grande and Power Grid both have bits that can be used to track the prices of the goods in Die Fugger instead of the five goods value cards; they each have cubes/houses colored red, green, blue, yellow and brown.

Pretty obvious, I guess, but I just thought I'd mention it.

Thread: Session Report

Don Quixote — 2005-03-09T23:28:07+00:00

Die Fugger

In a recent trend of mine, I’ve been picking up a lot of card games that are really board games. This game falls into that category. Die Fugger comes to us from Klaus-Jurgen Wrede (who?), that guy who gave us Carcassone. So I was pretty excited to try this one as well.

Again, this game suffers from the 2 to 4 player syndrome that a lot of my games do. So since opportunity knocked, I opened the door with Brian and Jon again.

Again, another amazingly simple game. In the center of the table you have 9 cards with pictures of florins on them ranging in value from 1 to 9. There are also 5 commodities cards (wine, gems, spices, cloth, and copper). They all start at an initial value of 5.

On your turn you can either draw a card or play a card. Once there are 5 cards of any one commodity on the table the round ends. The top 3 commodities played rise and price, the bottom two fall in price. The top three rise in vale equal to the number of that type of card in play (so if there are 4 wine cards it rises in price 4), but the bottom two only fall in price by one.

As mentioned above all commodities start at a value of 5. So whichever good triggers round end is in trouble. If you’ll recall the values range from 1 to 9, so if the good starting at 5 increase by 5, that would give it a value of 10. However instead of going there it rolls over to 1! Doh. No commodity can decrease past 1, and all goods that go over 9 rolls over to 1. Then players look at the adjusted value of the goods (after they’ve moved up or down) and total their scores. The first player to reach 100 wins.

To make things interesting there are a few other cards in the deck as well. Each good has 3 cards with the royal seal on them. If there are 3 or less of that good on the table at the end of the round, the value is doubled. Anything more and they are counted as standard. In additional to the royal goods, there are also 4 merchant cards. These stay in front of players for the whole game and offer the following advantage: At the end of the round players are dealt 2 new cards. If you have one merchant in play you get an additional 2 cards. If you have 2 merchants in play you get an additional 5 cards. No player may have more than 2 merchants.

It was a crazy game. Jon took the early lead on the first game and Brian was the only player to set aside 2 secret goods for bonus end game scoring. Jon also got out a merchant card early and gathered a pile of cards. However, in the end, the good guys came back and I took the game from Jon by 15 points.

It was a fun little game so we played another one. This one however was no contest. Due to the luck of the draw I got 2 merchant cards during the first round and simply ran away with the game. All and all we decided this was a game we wanted to play again.

Thread: Re:Best with three?

Eric Brosius — 2005-03-08T06:34:45+00:00

Gola (#23157),

I played with 3 and wasn't crazy about the extra cards dealt to Jacob the Rich (in addition to the original 2 cards.) I thought that added more randomness than a 4th player.

Has anyone played 3-player without the extra cards? I'd have thought that would have worked fine.

Thread: Re:Best with three?

Coffeebike — 2005-03-08T03:38:20+00:00

Gola (#23157),
I wonder if adding a few cards from a second decks make sense for a 4 player game? (Like what many people say of the 4 player version of Canal Grande).

I'm in the shopping phase--I haven't played the game yet and, since everyone seems to agree 3 is the magic number for Die Fugger, I am trying to figure out if I should just go ahead and buy two decks. Maybe the low price is the deciding factor here.

Thread: Re:Evaluation at the end of the game

Yakuzaboss — 2005-02-11T14:50:03+00:00

The two facedown cards are scored at double rate. This is an important rule that often gets missed. The game ends when one player gets too 100 pts (or more) during scoring, at which point everyone immediately reveals their facedown cards (which score double). I believe you do have a final evaluation before scoring, since you must adjust the goods values before writing down scores.

Thread: Re:Evaluation at the end of the game

ValJor — 2005-02-10T15:14:22+00:00

Hi Doug!

I second Shannon's thoughts all the way. I never read the rules the way you did, but I can see you may have a point. However, as Shannon points out, it would be a worse game with your interpretation.

Thread: Re:Evaluation at the end of the game

shannona — 2005-02-09T19:41:53+00:00

Those rules are just not well written.

I can definitely see your point, and that may be how the rules are intended. It's not 100% clear from those rules, however.

Personally, I think it makes for a worse game because then there's literally no way to control the final prices, and so they become a total crapshoot, giving each player a random number of points. Having a system where each player can try and adjust his hidden goods toward a beneficial final price seems a much better design, strategically.

Thread: Evaluation at the end of the game

DougOrleans — 2005-02-09T15:58:59+00:00

The reviews I've read (by Valdir Jorge and Shannon Appelcline) seem to indicate that face-down cards at the end of the game are simply worth the current values of those commodities. But the way I read the rules, there should be a final evaluation, i.e. the top three commodities (considering all face-down cards) go up and the others go down, before the final payout. Can anyone make an argument against this interpretation?

Thread: Session Report

dotburn — 2004-11-30T14:27:10+00:00

Die Fugger:

Players were Sean, Jason, Morris and myself. We were all new players to the game except for Morris.

Morris had played the game before and thus proceeded explaining this relatively simple game to the rest of. A couple of clarification from the rules and we were ready to go.

We played two games as they are relatively quick 30-40 minutes even for a first go around

Game 1:

* Sean: 112
* Jason: 94
* Morris: 102
* Ian: 103

Game 2:

* Sean: 131
* Jason: 89
* Morris: 102
* Ian: 119

Exact same finishing order in both games. In both cases Sean took the strategy of depositing two cards until the end of the game and both finished high in the value chain. A little bit lower and I might have squeaked him out.

This game seems to be a little higher on the luck scale than I would like as you seem to be subject to the whims of what other people play. If seems that you must follow other players cards when they are going to be the only player in a high value card, or be forced to break their seal doublers.

Another strategy I would like to try the next time, is to not bury any cards, but to deduce the intent of those people who are following that strategy in order to push them over the top of the value chain. Being able to score heavy in the first round can be a big advantage if you can deny the end game value of a high buried card.

Overall I give this game a rating of 6.5 so far. I am not sure it has a high replay value, but I enjoyed the experience as something new.

Thread: Re:2 face down cards every round?

chaosbreaker — 2004-11-12T00:29:49+00:00

familygaming (#64015),

Thanks, I knew something was wrong!

BTW I love yahugaming. It is a site!

Your reviews are one of the few that actually measure player interaction. That alone makes cruise your site on a regular basis to find new reviews!

Keep up the good work!

Thread: Re:2 face down cards every round?

familygaming — 2004-11-06T20:46:46+00:00

I believe you have the rule wrong. You put one card face-down per round for the first 2 rounds only. This means every player should have 2 face-down cards at the end of the game for bonus scoring.

Thread: 2 face down cards every round?

chaosbreaker — 2004-11-06T20:32:09+00:00

Is one able to put down 1 card per turn, face down, in the first two turns of every round?

Does this not make the discard deck so small that it has to be reshuffled constantly and in turn increasing the probability of getting multiple merchant cards?

In short does the ability to put down 2 cards per round, imbalance or even break the game?

Thread: Just out of curiosity

Fantasmagori — 2004-10-15T14:14:05+00:00

I was wondering if this game has anything to do with the classic computergame 'Die Fugger' back from the C64 days?

Thread: Lunch time session

ValJor — 2004-10-08T15:20:55+00:00

Date: October 6th, 2004

Game: Die Fugger

Players: Farshid and Valdir (myself)

After the game of Casbah yesterday, today it was Die Fugger’s turn to hit the kitchen table. Again Farshid was my only opponent. I have played this game many times with 2, 3 and 4 players and it is always a success. The gameplay is quite different with only two, but it is also a lot of fun. It is much more unpredictable because every turn Jakob is getting another card, so luck plays a bigger role than in three- and four-player games. However, I don’t think this detracts from the game, it still provides a quite enjoyable gaming experience.

I gave Farshid an overview of the rules and we started playing the first round. In this first round we played with the cards open, I gave him lots of advice, explained the importance of playing a face down card in both the first and second rounds, showed how the "royal seal" cards work and all that.

One funny thing in this first game with him was that almost all rounds were very long. Two of them went all the way to 21 product cards on the table (the maximum possible) and the others were very close to the limit, too.

In this game, experience counts a little bit but there is a lot of luck, too, so I was surprised to see myself winning every one of the five rounds that we played. It was always by a small number of points, but it started adding up.

After these five rounds I was winning by a wide margin, I had amassed 107 florins against 87 in Farshid’s hands. When we flipped the face down cards he had been lucky enough to get one of his products on 9 while I had one of mine in 1. The other product we shared at 6, so that I still ended up winning but it was by a much smaller difference: 121 to 117. Wow!

He said he liked the game, but commented that there was too much "action" in it. This is because I use Monopoly money to count the points for each player and glass beads to count the number of cards on the table. It is still much better than controlling everything with pen an paper as the rules suggest.

Thread: Session Report

DangerMouse — 2004-09-17T13:46:41+00:00

Die Fugger: Eric, Phil, Bob and Mark

This is a neat little game which reminds me strongly of Quandary with a dash of Modern Art thrown in. Eric came from last to tie for first in the last couple of hands in our first game. He would've won going away had the game ended a round earlier, but alas it didn't. The second game he just ran away with it. I blame Bob.