Carlos Robledo
United States
Atlanta
Georgia
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Overview
In the past few weeks I have been able to try this "new" game by one of my favorite designers, Wolfgang Kramer. I called it "new" because as many of you know it is basically a re-implementation of an older game, Tycoon. However, as a gamer relatively new to the board gaming world, I have not had the chance to play Tycoon before so I unfortunately cannot draw any comparisons for you. So this review will focus on the impressions El Capitan had on me as a brand new game.
When I was reading all the reviews about the Essen games, this was one of the games that intrigued me the most. I have enjoyed pretty much every single Wolfgang Kramer game I have played in the past, from Colosseum to Torres. He has also designed two of the BGG top ten games (at least at the time of this writing): El Grande and The Princes of Florence. I read the rules to the game and I was immediately sucked in, anxious for it to get a US release. the basic game mechanics are simple, yet they feel elegant and polished. And to top it all off it is published in the US by Z-man Games, one of my favorite publishers.
I was not disappointed. If you have played before or do not want to do the big "rules read", please feel free to skip to Impressions below.
For those of you who have played Tycoon before, Jonnathan Degann wrote a very good comprehensive list of comparisons and changes on this thread: http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/278260.
What you get in the box
The first think I could think of when opening the box is "Wow". The board art is beautiful and full of vibrant colors. It has that "modern board game" look, even though the game is set in the 15th century. The game also comes with 87 cards, which are made of very heavy card stock and feel great. After a few plays they show no sign of wear. The player bits are all wooden and are all the same standard quality of many of the common German games. Each player has a set of warehouses and fortresses, and one ship. Money is the standard cardboard chips, and come in what seems to be an excessive quantity until you actually get to play the game (more on this later). The rulebook is very well illustrated and the examples of play presented are very helpful. For some reason the first time I read through it it seemed very hard to understand, but after reading it a second time the game became quite clear.
Also included right out of the box is an expansion for the game. The regular board contains 9 cities and the expansion can add up to three more to the scene. They are added to the left side of the board and the best part is that you can choose as many or as few as you want to add. If adding all three makes the game have too little conflict for your taste, then just add one or two instead. They are made of hard cardboard and also very sturdy.
Setup and Rules Summary
The game begins by setting up the board and cards as stated in the rulebook. Shuffle the destination card deck and the city connection card deck. Place the two decks by the board and draw 4 destination cards and 6 connection cards face up. Place the 2 types of loan cards on their marked spots on the board. Give each player 6 warehouses, one fortress and their ship of their respective colors. Leave the three proliferation bonus cards nearby and give each player a starting total of 20 Florins (money). Determine a start player and you are now ready to being play.
The point of the game is simple. You are trying to build warehouses around the different cities of the Mediterranean. These cities will provide you money during the three "paydays" of the game (scoring rounds).
After the third payday the game is over and the person with the most money wins. Now, how do you exactly build warehouses and sail around the Mediterranean sea?
Let's start by how do you move around the map and basic turn order. A player's turn is very simple:
1. Sail your ship (optional)
2. Perform one of three actions (mandatory):
a. Build a warehouse
b. Build a fortress
c. Take a loan
You may also purchase sailing cards at any time during your turn.
You begin the game off the board and on your first turn you must buy at least one destination card and use it to sail to the location shown on the card. This is an example of a destination card:
This is what the different things on this card mean. At the top are the red seals, anywhere from one to three seals. Next is the number of Florins it will cost you to purchase this card and add it to yuor hand. Next is the name of a city and its location on the board. After you have purchased this card, you can play it during the sailing part of your turn to sail your ship. You can either (1) immediately move your ship to the city on this card or (2) move a number of cities orthogonally adjacent to your current ship location equal to the number of seals on the card. In the example card above, it only has one seal so you could only move one city vertically or horizontally from your current port if you choose to play it for the seals.
The other type of cards, connection cards, are purchased the same way but have the names of two of the cities on the board. In order to play a connection card, you must currently be at one of the two cities on the card and you will then sail to the other city on it. Because they are more limited, however, they are considerably cheaper than destination cards.
Now let's look at a sample city:
When you sail your ship to a city, you place it in one of the two harbors on the upper left corner of the city, most likely on the one with the lower number unless it is already occupied by another player. The number of the port is important because this is the amount of Florins you must pay to build a warehouse in this city. If you choose to build a warehouse, you pay up (in this case 2 Florins) and place one of your pieces on the lowest available spot (starting on the zero spot and going up from there) on the row for that city.
The exception to this rule is that the first player to build a warehouse in a city can choose to build on the first OR second spot first. If he chooses to build on the second spot, the next warehouse built MUST be placed on the first spot and then regular building order proceeds. The reason a player might want to build on the higher or lower spots is because only the player with the majority and the second-most number of warehouses in a city get paid for it when payday happens, and ties are resolved in favor of the player who controls the first warehouse closest to the zero spot. You are also not allowed to own more than three warehouses in a row in any given city and you may never build on the last spot of the track.
Fortresses are built on the two spots on the upper right corners of the cities. They cost the amount shown on their spots to build. In Constantinople above, the first fortress costs 4 Florin and the second 5. No player may have more than one fortress of their color on one given city at a time.
Last thing to consider are shut-downs. When a player builds a warehouse on the dark squares on the track, the first warehouse in the chain is taken out and placed in the image on the center of the city. That warehouse is now inactive and does not count for anything. A player whose warehouse was shut down can sail back to the city where this warehouse is and spend their action that turn to put the warehouse at the END of the warehouse track for free. Shutdowns can change who has the lowest warehouse in the chain, thus affecting ties. The spaces that are "half-shutdowns" are only considered in the two player game.
After the track is full, players build backwards (towards the zero spot starting from wherever the chain starts at the moment) filling in any spots of warehouses that were shut down.
Loans are taken during the game when you need more money before a payday. To take a loan players sail to the bank (no cards required to sail there) and use their action that turn to take one of the two loan types in the game. As you can see above, you can take a 10-Florin loan or a 16-Florin loan; at the end of the next payday, you can pay back 12 or 20 Florins, respectively. If you cannot (or choose not to) do so, you can extend the loan by turning it upside down, but now you MUST pay 20 or 30 Florins next time. Note: you also need to consider that to get out of the bank, you must use a destination card. Take its cost into account.
Paydays occur after all players have taken their turn in the round that one player (the first one to do so will trigger payday at the end of the current round) builds all their warehouses and fortresses.
Players are paid during paydays in the following manner:
1. Players are paid a specific amount of Florins for having a warehouses in multiple cities. The rate is printed on the upper right side of the board. This is called proliferation.
2. The player with the most number of warehouses in each city gets paid the amount shown on the next empty spot on the warehouse track.
3. The player who owns the second-most number of warehouses in each city get paid HALF of the amount shown on the next empty spot on the track.
4. If there is a fortress in a city, it pays HALF of the amount shown on the next empty spot on the track to each player with a fortress there; OR, it pays the full amount shown to each player IF the city in question is the city with the most (or tied for most) total number of warehouses built on the whole board.
After payout is done, players get to pay or extend loans as stated above. Then the player with the least amount of money becomes the new start player for the next phase. All players add 6 more warehouses and one fortress to whatever they had left from the round before, if any, and the next phase begins.
There is also one extra incentive to proliferation. The first player to have any presence in 9 different cities gets a bonus of 15 Florins, the next player 10 and the third 5. This bonus is in addition to the proliferation payout during paydays.
After the third payday is done, the game is over and the player with the most money wins.
Expansion blurb: Add either one, two or all three cities to the left side of the board. These cities can only be reached by using the seals on the destination cards, and you can only leave them with destination cards also. All of them function like regular cities, plus they each have special rules:
-All 3: new second-most majority rule - Everyone that has at least one warehouse in a given expansion city gets paid half the amount of the player with the majority, not just the player with the second-most amount of warehouses.
-Islas Canarias: Pirate ship - A player who just sailed their ship to Islas Canarias can sail the pirate ship to any city on the board. They can choose either harbor space, and if that space is occupied by a player ship, it is moved into the other space immediately. The player who moved the pirates can now collect a protective charge on the city they moved the black ship to. Every player having a warehouse there must pay the "pirate player" 1 Florin for each of their warehouses there. This payment is increased to 2 Florins on phase 2 of the game, and 3 in the third phase. All players in the game are also allowed to move the pirate ship anytime during their turns. However, they need to spend sailing cards to do so and do not get to collect the protective charge.
-Porto: Harsh shut downs - if a warehouse is shut down in Porto, it is removed from the game instead of being placed on the center. In addition, Porto has 3 harbors and only one fortress space.
-Lisboa: Immediate Payment - when you build a warehouse on Lisboa, you get paid immediately. If you have majority you get paid the full amount, if not you get paid half the amount.
Impressions
Game play is very simple and every time we have played the action moved decently fast. It becomes a very different game depending on what other players decide to do. I have played games where everyone immediately tries to tackle the two big-payout cities, and I have seen games where they are pretty much ignored until after the first payday. The big bonuses for proliferation make the game lean towards the players trying to spread out quickly and start cashing in on the bonuses.
Intelligent loan management is very important in this game. In other games that include a loan mechanic, I have often felt they are there for people who are doing badly in the game or as a final alternative. I had always seen them as a "bad" alternative and always try to avoid them. Since this was my perception, this is how I played my first game. It quickly became clear that in El Capitan, this is absolutely the wrong way to approach it. Unless you decide to go to the cheapest cities on the board all of phase one, you will not have enough money to build all your warehouses and fortress. It is very useful to develop a smart strategy that will let you take out a loan and use it to its full potential. Remember, during your turn you MUST take one action. If you cannot build a warehouse or a fortress you are forced to go to the bank and take out a loan. It is a common mistake for rookie players to spend all their money then go to the bank and take a loan. This is usually a bad idea, because it is very possible you will be taking out a loan the same turn that another player is ending the round and bringing on the next payday, forcing you to repay the loan almost immediately (which is basically loosing money).
If you are playing a proliferation strategy, make sure to stay away from the first few spots of a city. Remember that warehouses that get shut down do not count towards anything at payday. They don't help with majority or proliferation. You are probably not going to have more than one or two cities with majority, but you should have quite a few with second-most majority. This is quite easy to do with 3 players, but it gets increasingly harder with 4 and 5 players. When we have 5 players playing, we usually add one or two of the expansion cities almost every time to promote a little bit more of proliferation. We are partial to Lisboa and Porto, as we feel that Islas Canarias might be a bit overpowered. Also, the pirate rules add a level of complexity to the game that we feel is best left out for novice players.
My favorite mechanic of this game (and yes, I know it is present in other games) is the fact that money and money alone is the winning condition. You must spend money to make money, so it is by definition an investing game. Sure, in other games you spend money to make Victory Points and money, and money translates to Victory Points in some sense, but in El Capitan there is no conversion. One Florin is one VP, plain and simple. The mechanic makes sure they you think closely about spending any money before you do, and makes you develop a good strategy that will pay out in the end.
My only critiques about it are that yes, it does contain a random element (what sailing cards are out on your turn) and that it can be somewhat unforgiving if you make mistakes in the early game. This is mitigated by the fact that you can always just buy destination cards and use the seals to navigate. It is more expensive than having the exact city connection card you needed though. I usually plan out the next two or three cities I would like to go to and buy the connection cards in advance if possible. Connection cards can be anywhere from 1-5 Florin cheaper than destination cards, so using as many as these as you can is to your advantage.
If you make a few mistakes early game, it is possible that you might get stuck in a rut for the rest of the game. We have had games where novice players have had to take 2 loans in the first phase and have had to spend the rest of the game paying for these, preventing them from catching up to the other players. Especially on the first turn, try to be conservative and your goal should be to break even if you pay out all your loans after payday. After the second payday, you should have enough Florins to not have to take a loan on phase 3. These are just general rules, and there are exceptions to them, but I feel they are good goals to strive for and keep you competitive.
Another tip is to NOT forget about your fortresses. One player needs to build all their warehouses and fortresses to end the phase, do not forget. And fortresses can pay out big later in the game, even if it looses you money on phase one. Remember, it is all about investing!
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Matt Smith
United States
Orion
Michigan
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Very nice review and strategy tips. However, I think a couple of rules are incorrect:
- The triangle shaded space is for 2 and 3-player games, I think.
- At the end of payday, the player with the least money chooses the starting player for the next round. She is not automatically made the starting player.
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