These thoughts were originally posted to my blog in November

Played Leonardo tonight -- seemed fine. Nice, even. I'm not composing poetry (or a zillion page strategy guide) yet, but that's a high hurdle.

Leonardo is, at the lowest level, just a resource management game with 'timing auctions.' I thought it may be an area control, with areas given special benefits .... but to be an Area Control game, in my book, you have to have lots of workers. Here you have 3-10 (or so), so you often tie at low numbers. In my mind, that doesn't count.

Anyway, you have workers (and one Master, basically a double worker), and one or two labs. If you have the right ingredients to start an invention (from the face up possibilities) you put them under your lab. Other players know you are working on something. Then you go around the table placing workers. These go in your lab, to provide labor, or in the city, or council. Once all workers are placed, you resolve each space in order. Whoever put the most workers in each space gets the first action, etc, with ties going to whoever placed first. In the council, all actions are free, but there are four different ones, and each can only be selected once. Everywhere else ("The City"), it's the same action (or choice) four times, but the first player gets it for free, then the next player has to pay $2, then $3, then $4. Since you only start with $3, that's a chunk of cash. In the city spaces, a player can win multiple actions (paying all costs). Spaces let you upgrade your lab, get more workers, or get resources (that are necessary for inventions). We played with the optional (or v1.1 patch, I suppose) trading space.

Workers in the lab provide labor, and each invention needs 1-4 resource cards and 4-15 labor. Labor can also be provided by "Mechanical Men", which are earned in the city. When you complete an invention you earn money. If only one player finished it, he gets the card. Cards have a symbol and each card you've gotten gives a discount on matching symbols. If two (or more) players finish at the same time they auction the card off. Players who were working on that invention can finish it later, at a reduced payout (and no card).

There's a bonus at the end for having different symbols. Play seven full turns, and two abbreviated turns (just operating the labs) and count up cash. Most money wins.

From my first play, it seemed fine. Leonardo is one of those convoluted resource management games I like. You have money, items, workers, time pressure (you can get locked out). In the setup each player gets to pick three 'advances' (improving money, # workers, resources or cash; taking each advance no more than twice), so you have some initial divergences. It may be that one combination is better (way too early to tell that) but diverging from groupthink would probably beat being the 3rd player to do X/Y/Z. (I was the only player to load up on early money, which seemed to work out just fine ... if I lost an early round and came in second, I could afford the $2).

So I'm looking forward to trying this again. Like Caylus, it handles 2-5 and I imagine it changes with each value. There may be the usual problems:

* One best path to victory
* Postive feedback
* Some "take that"

I'm most worried about feedback ... one early play to cut someone out (or make them spend $2 instead of $0) could snowball painfully. I got off to a rollicking start and never looked back ... in fact, if I had guessed correctly and picked an uncontested invention on turn 2, I may have doubled the 2nd place score.

The 'take that' is a suggested advanced variant Council action ... not sure I like it yet; it seemed reasonable. More play needed.

The following was written a week later

Two more games, some thoughts. My gut feelings:

* There's no instant path. Reaction and 'path not taken' matters.
* I like the expert setup, but I prefer that the council 'move' action should only move yourself. In my last game I got pushed out of an area (that I was second in) so that the winner could buy multiple times.
* As per Chris Farrell's comments, winning unopposed (vs opposed) matters. There's some psychology (and card counting) involved, but sometimes its basically a guess.
* The luck of the invention order matters a fair amount.

I'm keeping my rating a seven, but the last two points makes that a ceiling, and I could see dropping this to a six after a few more plays. So far all my games have been with four, I wouldn't mind trying another number.

I've seen many strategies (setups) work, and I've seen reasonable looking positions lose. The winner in our last game took a worker, lab and cards and then started manually running two factories on the first turn. Given my "Build infrastructure early, points later" bias, I thought it would fail, but it didn't. He got two early inventions which helped him diversify and provided reasonable cash flow.

One item that has turned up is that in the council we're often fighting to look and order the deck, which we ignored the first few games. (The council on the 7th turn really matters for tiebreaks and setting the deck for the final two turns).

Anyway, I've played it three times. I suspect it will hit five plays, but am doubtful I'll buy this (or ever reach ten).

Just to clarify- you can start any invention (that hasn't been completed yet), not just those that are face up.



Just to clarify- no new invention cards are drawn to replace those that are taken from the board during turns 8 & 9, i.e. turn 7 is the last turn that new inventions come up.



I think that because the completing an invention mechanic is relatively unique, it is being over-scrutinized.

I find that the ratio of luck (or more aptly, chaos from player decisions) to the actual benefits at stake is easily within a range that is acceptable for a game of this intellectual investment (weight).

In any multiplayer game (including those other heavyweight Euros that outfit the top 10), chaos from player decisions is going to be present. I'm thoroughly unconvinced at this point that in Leonardo it is a) as uncontrollable, or b) as influential as you guys are making it out to be.

I suppose it is a matter of taste. I noticed that you dislike Taj Mahal for the same reason of chaos created by multiplayer decisions (although just to be clear- the degree of chaos and the stakes are much higher in Taj than in Leo), but I think that this is a characteristic of all multiplayer games (just packaged more conservatively in some than in others), and this particular mechanic in Leonardo Da Vinci does not have a degree of multiplayer chaos that is unacceptable to your average Euro gamer, so I felt the need to offer my opposite point of view. After all, Taj Mahal is ranked 22- Leonardo's completing an invention mechanic is unlikely to upset your average BGGer.

Thanks for the clarifications.

The comparison to Taj Mahal is apt, and it clarifies my thoughts for me. I like Greg Aleknevicus' comment: "The way to win is not to get into a fight, which you have no control over." In Leonardo (as in Taj), if someone picks the same invention you do for whatever reason, you lose out. You have to pay to get the card (or you don't get it). You can guess what they are going for, but sometimes it's a toss up. For example, there are two easy inventions. One requires A, the other requires B. Two opponents have started inventions, and they can each meet either. You can start either one. If you do start it, the person who doesn't match is way ahead. This happened in my second game. It's a blind guess, as far as I can tell.

My other games had some that were less than blind guesses (I had a strong feeling about what was going on, guided by details of what people had taken, etc etc), but these decisions mattered. I don't actually mind games that are completely about that (Aladdin's Dragons, etc) but the mixing of this mechanism with a resource management game is jarring.

I'm not sure what you mean by that. Care to elaborate?

And that's all well and good, but you get those "Let's you and him fight" situation where there are three people contesting two items ... whoever gets away unscathed is fine, and there's nothing to be done about it. You only have so many labs/resources, you can't fight everyone.

I have played a fair number of these games recently, Iliad and Great Wall of China come to mind. It seems fine in two player games, like Blue Moon, but I agree with Brian that it does not fit with the rest of Leonardo. I think an easy solution would be pairs or (triplets) of chips and everyone who has a chip has the card that the matching chip is on.

This would basically remove the tension of the game. You guys talk like it is completely out of your control whether someone else completes an invention the same turn as you. If you REALLY want to complete an invention the turn before anyone else does, then forego placing some of your workers in the city and instead send them to the lab.

There's this whole game of balancing your investments in the city vs those in the lab; with a bunch of variables involved such as: what discounts you already have from matching symbol cards, what your labs look like including mechanical workers available, what components you've collected so far, how many apprentices you have, etc etc...

these are all decisions that influence the speed with which a particular invention gets finished, and you guys almost make it seem (to someone who hasn't played the game before) that when two players decide to pursue an invention they will necessarily complete it at the same time, regardless of their decisions. The amount of control a player can exert over his/her destiny is very high, and full of subtleties.

What really irks me about this criticism is that I feel that it is based more on principle because people don't like the hidden information aspect of inventions in progress nor do they like the blind bidding for a disputed card. But the actual consequences of these mechanisms are not as influential as they are being made out to be, which is why they fit the game well... just my $0.02

John, I disagree that this would remove the tension in the game. The end of game bonus for diversity of invention types as well as the incentives to specialize in a single or pair of invention types mean you are often balancing raw material acquisition with wanting to finish inventing faster to start the next one sooner and with the newly acquired discount.

How can you determine "when and where" to fight when invention decisions are hidden? One game had two single resource inventions show up at the same time (turn one). Three people went for them. Two people conflict, one doesn't (all four people finish the turn they start).

The single player gets the card; the other two have an auction. Completely random.

Even if you drop the 3rd player from this scenario, sometimes they players will go for the same invention, costing them money relative to the non-inventors. Again, a luckshot.

There are situations where its easy to judge who's building what, and then strategy apply. But it's a short game and this early random conflict can decide it.