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Two Days At Spiel 2007
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This is a brief (well...) report on what I saw, played, experienced at Spiel 2007 on thursday 18 and friday 19 October. Please be forewarned that while I try to be as objective as possible, it is very hard to disentangle objectiveness from my personal opinion. Make sure you understand my gaming preferences (there's over 200 rated games with comments available from within my personal profile) before you decide on a title for yourself. And please excuse the spelling mistaykes. I wanted to write everything down before it fled my mind, and sometimes sentences came out different than I originally envisaged. Only it is such a large volume of text that I didn't catch all of them. The rather funny squiggly things are accented letters which my computer / browser ate for some reason. I'll be slowly correcting these.
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Posted On: 2007-10-20 15:36:13
Edited On: 2007-10-21 03:21:14
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1.
Cuba [Average Rating:7.46 Overall Rank:111]
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Righty ho. When we (= myself and my sweetheart) arrived in Essen, we made the decision to check out Cuba first. We chose Cuba because of a favourable reading of the rules---barring the odd error in the text---and because I knew that Eggert Spiele had two booths in the hall close to Eingang Ost. One is always a quiet forgotten corner, so we walked over there, but unfortunately only Space Dealer was on display there. So off to the main booth we went, only to find it packed with people already. Shit. Clearly a popular title.
Anyway, after doing a lot of stuff elsewhere we eventually got a go in a 4 player game in the early afternoon. Basically, the game revolves around the construction of a resource engine. Players have a small board where various resources are depicted, and they can only gather them by playing one of their 5 character cards. Resources can be sold using another character, shipped using a third, transformed into buildings using a fourth, and with the last character you can use those buildings. A single round requires four of these characters to be played; the fifth is used to establish how many votes you have in parliament where various laws are passed. Some laws are helpful---government support---others are just plain taxes---pay money or resources---and some are just annoying---no more market. The person who bids the most money in a blind bid gets to chose two new laws, which become effective immediately. However, since there are four groups of laws, it can happen that laws from earlier rounds are 'carried over'; this is a nice touch. Players score points along the way, and after the sixth round the game ends.
There will be lots of comparisons to Puerto Rico, Die Säulen der Erde, and plenty of other games of this type. I'm not overly fond of them as experienced players know efficient paths to victory already and leave newbies coughing in the cloud of dust their start whips up. In Cuba, this effect seems a little less because of the blind bid to establish which laws get enacted; and because of the relative uncertainty in what goods the ships can carry. Nevertheless, it is a game you play mostly on your own. I sort-of liked it, but my gaming partners were not so enthusiastic about it---a bit of a 'Is that it?'-response. Me and my sweetheart spent many hours discussing whether we should take this game home, and in the end we decided not to. But why we didn't is hard to explain. In the end it boiled down to a perceived lack of direct competition. The blind bid is of course an exception, but the result of the bid is basically just another boundary condition to your own small economy. It is hard to directly target another player with it, anyway. We will play the game when asked though, it's nice enough for that.
I should note that we did not play Cuba to completion---we broke off halfway. Therefore we couldn't really establish what the effect of a growing economy would have on the game. That is important in this sort of game. |
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5 Comments []
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Posted On: 2007-10-20 08:31:18
Edited on: 2007-10-20 16:33:08
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Since all Cuba-tables at the eggertSpiele-booth were occupied when we first walked over there, I looked for Hamburgum instead---behold my surprise when there wasn't any Hamburgum to be played at the stand at that time. The only other game on offer was Guatemala Café. I wasn't best pleased about that. So we walked off to other tables and other games to play. We quickly reached Rio Grande Games, and being blissfully empty at the time, we spotted a couple opening Hamburgum. A-HA! We walked over, and prepared to sit down. A RGG-official came along, so we greeted him in German. He replied by asking us where we came from.
Well, the Netherlands.
Ah, you know German very well then.
Yes, we do.
Well, that was a problem. Because RGG's stand was primarily meant for people from outside Germany.
So?
Well, you speak German fluently, so I'm going to ask you to leave. Please find the German booth where you can play this game. You see, we rent this floor space, but will not make a sale with you because you'll just buy the German edition, so therefore we're just wasting our time explaining the game to you.
I couldn't believe what I had just heard. I was asked to leave a near-empty booth for speaking a language too well, and for possibly threatening the sales output of RGG. We complied, but my temper was dangerously close to boiling point. A nice beginning to Spiel 2007 after the Cuba-mishap!
Anyway, we flipped to bird to this stupid policy---which was not written down anwhere---by returning when the tables were packed, and finding a couple from Belgium who did not speak German. After a brief explanation from another RGG-official, we set off. The core of Hamburgum's mechanics is of course the infmaous rondel. The game itself is also a resource engine where the three main goods in Hamburg's golden age---beer, sugar and cloth---are produced and sold. By buying construction materials you can buy factories to increase the amount of goods you produce (and thus get more money selling them), but you can also donate these materials to the clergy. The clergy rewards you with tiles with points on them, or ways to obtain points later on in the game. The delay allows you to set up, for example, as many ships as possible so that the tile gives you the maximum amount of points for that. The game ends when 6 churches have been built---or rather, when 30 donations have been made to the clergy.
The game is, I think, a clever resource management game, and not at all like Antike or Imperial (although the resource gathering is of course present in Antike too). This is mostly caused by the fact that in Hamburgum, the action on the rondel is the action you physically do; you do not have to move tons of figures when you select something like 'Movement', for example. There is a good market saturation mechanic in place which reduces the price of the produced goods as more and more production facilities are erected. There is no sense of fighting a lost battle as the tiles can increase their worth over the course of the game. It is by no means a certainty that a player in last place will lose the game. However, as with all of Mac's games, his rondel sets my teeth on edge as the game progresses. At some point you want to be able to take bigger strides, but by doing so you are wasting valuable victory points. Therefore a lot of moves become suboptimal, and by the time you finally arrive at your destination someone else will have nullified or pre-empted your initial idea. A lot of interaction therefore, just not all of it nice once the game heats up.
Added later: What also bothered me somewhat was the rather washed-out artwork. It is all pastels, and on more than one occasion did I grab the wrong tile as I made another donation to the clergy. I really have no idea why I made this mistake as often as I did; I'm not colourblind or anything, and I wasn't overly tired at the time. Nevertheless I had this nagging feeling that the design could have been improved upon; right now it felt a bit like a haphazard jumble of bits and components which worked together to create a game. You might want to consider taking a look before buying this game.
My sweetheart found the beginning rather fluid, but complained about a 'rather dull' and even slightly grating middlegame when everyone is preparing for the final rush to complete the churches, but conceded that it seemed to hold together pretty well. This game will certainly appeal to people who enjoy Mac Gerdts' other designs, is certainly worthy of a look if you're into resource management themes, but be careful if you're a bit iffy about the rondel mechanic. Like Cuba, we also discussed taking this home for hours on end (take away the limitations of the rondel and you have a nice, if not good, game), but in the end decided against it: we'll wait a bit.
This game was played to completion. |
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20 Comments []
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Posted On: 2007-10-20 09:36:18
Edited on: 2007-10-23 06:52:39
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Only in Germany.
Posted On: 2007-10-20 16:03:48
And thanks again for playing.
Besides, I'm tired of building the perfect "economic engine". It's been done, and done well - time for game design to move on.
It seems to me that in Cuba players compete indirectly with each other: through the scarcity of buildings, the filling of ships, and the passing of laws. In my opinion the randomness with the ships is a bit too much: you might get a nice cigar-production facility running, but if the ships that arrive do not want to load cigars, you are out of luck. However, there is a building that allows you to pick the ships that you like, which might mitigate this effect (and actually, again, hinder other players).
What I like about Cuba is that there seem to be very many ways that lead to victory: the challenge is to pick the best one for the current situation, and get it to work quickly. With only six rounds, a slow start might cost you the game. The biggest criticism I have is that the game has a lot of downtime, but that will probably become less with experience.
I have to see how the game holds up after a couple more plays, but I still look forward to bringing this to the table.
The game is to short to build an engine which will winn you the game. (but it will benefit) You need to use all your roles to the full potential and all the scoring options to win the game.
I think it is a great game, differnet enough from teh above mentioned game to earn a place in any collection.
oh yeah an the full set up looks great!!
But thank you for the honest review.