ULYSSES

a review by Darrell Hanning

Be extremely subtle, even to the point of formlessness. Be extremely mysterious, even to the point of soundlessness.

Thereby you can be the director of the opponent's fate. —Sun Tzu 300 B.C.

When I was in my early twenties, one of the more interesting game companies was Yaquinto. They weren’t afraid to tackle difficult and exotic topics, which resulted in games such as STAR FALL (arguably still the most comprehensive board game of interstellar exploration and colonization), TIME WAR (an otherwise intriguing and chrome-laden system, with a central mechanism of dubious value), and MYTHOLOGY. There were a couple of occasions when I was able to coerce fellow gamers to try MYTHOLOGY. In it, we players represented the Greek Gods, and fought for control of Earthbound heroes, in order to get them to complete our tasks (or fail, if we felt an opponent had invested too much in said hero). (And for those of you who wish to debate which game was the first “God game”, well, it wasn’t something on the computer.)

ULYSSES follows in MYTHOLOGY’S footsteps – if not in actual execution, then at least in spirit. It is very much in the vein of the “Euros”, with wooden pieces, an attractive and uncluttered board, and a fistful of cards. The story goes that Ulysses is on his way to Ithaca, and becomes the unwilling pawn in a game amongst the Gods. Being the control freaks that they are (and thus reminding of some of my past managers), the Gods now wrestle in their influence over Ulysses’ path, each trying to get him to their four, hidden objectives first. The board is a map of the Mediterranean – now familiar to many a gamer – with locations stretching from Gibraltar (Saulen des Herkules) to Syria (Sidon), and along the European and North African coasts. Save for four neutral locations at or near the starting point of Troy, each location has one of four colors – violet, green, red or blue – and contains a symbol found on a matching destination card. Each location on the board is connected by lines to several other locations, and so there are only certain sets of locations available by which one can reach a given location. Each player starts with one randomly drawn card of each color, and these are the locations they initially want Ulysses to reach, in order for them to win the game. Each player also starts with one temple piece. For each temple a player owns, they draw one card from the action card deck during a turn. (More temples, more worshippers; more worshippers, more power.) The cards are organized as follows:

Objection cards – allow a player to “argue” about the next, intended destination of Ulysses
Temple cards – used to add to your collection of temples, increasing your power base
Wind cards – permit extra moves of Ulysses’ ship during your turn
Plague cards – used to “ban” locations, thereby making Ulysses’ arrival there problematic
Zeus cards – Joker or wild card
Pandora cards – turn one in to draw two additional cards

At the beginning of each player’s turn, all players draw a number of new cards equal to the number of temples they own. They can then conduct as many of the following actions as they see fit:

-Draw two extra cards by playing a Pandora card. This can be done only once per turn.
-Place one or more plague markers on the board. Each plague placed costs as many cards from your hand as you have temples.
-Exchange goal (destination) cards. Again, each card exchanged costs as many cards as you have temples.
-Build one or more temples by playing a temple card for each, and as many cards as you have temples (including any you built this turn, if you want to build more than one).

Now comes the fun part. A player proposes a location to which Ulysses will move – a location connected by a line to his current location. If this proposed location currently has a plague marker on it, the marker must first be removed, at a cost of one card for each temple the player has. The proposed destination is then marked with a blue disk. In turn, each other player has the opportunity to object to this destination, by playing one or more Objection cards. The first player to do so must mark an alternative destination with a red disk (paying to remove any plague marker first). Players following this initial objection now have a different choice. They can still refuse to get involved (pass), throw down one or more Objection cards to support either the blue or the red disk as a destination, or (sigh) state a second alternative destination with a black marker. Thankfully, that’s as far as alternative destinations go, lest the game start to resemble a family sitcom. Each successively proposed destination must have more cards supporting it than the previously proposed destination in order to win. In other words, if the blue destination has 3 Objection cards supporting it, it wins unless the red destination has 4 or more Objection cards supporting it. Likewise, the black destination can only win out if it has more Objection cards in its support than both red and blue.

If the current player wins this Godly brouhaha (that is, the blue destination wins out), then he has the opportunity to play Wind cards, allowing him to move Ulysses to another destination. So long as he keeps winning objections, the current player can play as many Wind cards as he has, and this is a salient point to keep in mind when playing the game.

The second salient point is the realization that a player isn’t necessarily trying to move Ulysses to the location he or she desires (a feint, in other words). Rather, he or she may be trying, instead, to get someone else to unwittingly Object, and move Ulysses to where the current player really wants him to go. And then you realize that you can toss one of your destination cards, and draw a replacement from one of the color-coded decks of excess destination cards (and thus throw the other players off your scent). And once you realize that you can do this for what usually amounts to fewer cards than you will throw in a heated argument about direction – then you have grasped the third and final salient point of the game.

And so the game usually comes down to an opportune moment with a fistful of Wind cards (“opportune” because the other players have exhausted their inventories of Objection cards). Alternatively, it comes down to a happy drawing of a new destination (happy because nobody suspects it to be that destination, and it’s within a stone’s throw of Ulysses’ ship when you draw it).

I know what the designers had in mind, and maybe they’re just plain smarter than us ‘Murricans. They picture the game being played adroitly, and with the utmost in mental agility. A player gladly tosses 5 cards on turn 7 to replace one of his destination cards, and then cleverly wins after letting his opponents win an argument and unwittingly move Ulysses to this new destination. Ha, ha – a veritable tour de force of blinding intelligentsia. And when 5 Europeans get together to play this game, I wouldn’t be surprised if such a delicate ballet of misdirection is exactly what transpires.

But this is the country we pick NASCAR and monster trucks over Formula 1. We pick wrestlers to be state governors. And we scratch our heads in puzzlemen, when The Terminator doesn’t get nominated for best movie. When an American can’t drive a nail straight, he automatically concludes he needs a bigger damn hammer. If one were inclined to express this in terms of Star Trek, one might surmise that we – America - are a country of Klingons. We respect Kirk for his brute-force solutions (“MORE POWER, SCOTTY!”), and sneer at the analytical Picard, and his let’s-talk-this-over approach to problems that obviously require nothing more or less than a full spread of photon torpedoes - with a liberal portion of phasers for dessert, just to make sure that whatever-the-hell-it-is doesn’t get back up again.

And so my experience with ULYSSES has been, well, less than lackluster. I’ve watched a game intended to be played in 90 minutes or less be turned into an Objection-rich, Plague-plagued slugfest of 4+ hours. At that point, all players stretched, scratched their bellies, and made simian-like hoots of pride at their ability to contribute to a mutual grinding down of all players’ willpower. Stalemate. And enjoy it. I sincerely believe that the designer, having seen this slugathon of single-mindedness, would have walked away shaking his head.

So, be forewarned. There are two ways to play ULYSSES – the game of misdirection and patience, and the red-white-and-blue, stomp-their-guts-til-they-squeal-Mommy game. Remember, boys and girls, if it don’t fit, push harder, or get a bigger, damn hammer. “Kariff! Sho ‘Ka!” Which, I am told by a reliable source, is Klingon for “Shut up and die, weakling, before Daytona starts!”

Darrell Hanning lives and plays in Jacksonville, Florida. While he does not watch NASCAR, he is not steadfast against the temptations of the bigger hammer, or the occasional power tool.

PUERTO RICO
-- or --
Imperialism the Happy, Fun, German Way
a review by Jon Waddington

Quick: what do you get when you combine Spanish conquistadors, African slaves, aboriginal tribes, and rich natural resources? (Hint: it's not massacres, epidemics, and exploitation. Well, okay, it is, but....) The answer is, of course, Puerto Rico, the new game by Andreas Seyfarth. I should mention that there is no conquest of the Taino here, and the slaves have been replaced by friendly, eager colonists. The rich natural resources, however, remain a key element (but they're not exploited, they're just produced).

Made by Ravensburger's adult line, Alea, and imported by Rio Grande Games, PUERTO RICO boasts the usual excellent components one expects from the company that made PRINCES OF FLORENCE, TAJ MAHAL, and TRADERS OF GENOA (among others). The bits are: one "common" gameboard, five individual gameboards, a host of thick counters of diverse sizes and shapes, and a gaggle of wooden pieces (don't worry; no geese were harmed in the making of this game or this review). The theme, as you may have surmised, is colonial management of estates in the Antilles in the mid-16th century. Players represent estate owners and landlords who are attempting to outpace their rivals in terms of buildings constructed and commodities sent to Europe.

The common board is just a holding area for money (doubloons) and counters representing various buildings players can purchase. Around this board, on the table, players arrange the other required elements: counters representing victory points, resources, roles (you'll see), the colonist's ship, the market, and three cargo ships. Wooden pieces represent the colonists and the five different commodities (indigo, sugar, corn, tobacco, and coffee). In front of each player is his individual board, which has an area for the buildings he can purchase (12 slots available), crops he can plant (12 again), and a "windrose" (just an open area, really, but the artwork is nice) where his money, victory points, and commodities will go. Also on this board is a chart describing the various roles (wait, it's coming) that are the heart of the game.

Gameplay is simple, though the rules and initial setup belie this point. Each turn, a player chooses one of seven roles. Then he and his fellow players do what that role allows. Read that again, as it's important. The chosen role allows everyone to use its function, not merely the active player. He does get a little bonus for choosing it, called a "privilege," and choosing the role also denies it for the rest of the round to any other players. Roles which are not chosen get a single doubloon added to them each round. Over time, an unpopular role will accumulate enough bonus money to make it appealing regardless of its function. Once each player has chosen a role and all players have acted, a round is over, and the starting player (the "Governor") shifts to the next clockwise player. The roles are all placed back in the center, and play continues this way until the game ends. Already, PUERTO RICO is probably not what you expected; it's a role-playing game! Well, not exactly. Now, at last, here are the roles:

Settler: Allows players to choose one plantation from a number of face-up tiles (the number is always one more than the number of players). The privileged player may choose a quarry instead of a plantation. Each quarry reduces the cost of buildings by one doubloon, with certain restrictions.
Mayor: Allows players to take, in turn order, one colonist from the ship and place it on their board. This continues until the ship is empty (granting an advantage to the player choosing first). Every quarry, plantation, and building requires one to three colonists to "occupy" it in order to produce commodities or receive other benefits. The privileged player receives one extra colonist (from the main stock, not the ship). The Mayor refills the ship each turn from the supply, placing one colonist for each player, and possibly more if the number of open positions in all players' buildings exceeds this number (elegantly tying in the thematic demand for labor).
Craftsman: Allows players to produce commodities. Occupied plantations produce one commodity, but only if the appropriate production building is occupied as well. For example, a small indigo plant (a type of building) has one space for a colonist, so an estate with an occupied indigo plantation and an occupied indigo plant generates one indigo good; if either the plantation or the plant is unoccupied, nothing is produced. Corn is the only exception; it requires no building, just an occupied plantation. Goods are placed on the player's windrose, until they are traded or shipped. The privileged player receives one extra good in a type he produced that turn.
Trader: Allows a trade of one commodity in the market (to earn money). Prices range from zero to four for Corn, Indigo, Sugar, Tobacco, and Coffee, respectively. The market only accepts one item, and it must be different from those already sold. If the market fills up (only four slots are available), no more trading can occur, but at the end of that turn the commodities return to the draw pile, opening the market up for the next round. The privileged player receives one extra doubloon (provided he makes a trade).
Captain: Allows players to load cargo ships (for victory points). Every player who has available commodities must load all of one type if possible. There are only three ships, however, and each must have a different commodity, while no ship may contain more than one type of commodity. In addition, each ship has a different number of open spaces in its hold; if it's full, no more can be accepted. Each good loaded grants the loader one victory point. Goods which cannot be shipped must be stored, but only one good may be left on the windrose (warehouses, a type of building, are useful for storing goods, as they allow storage of one or two types of goods, regardless of the amount). At the end of the turn, the Captain empties any full ships, returning goods to the stockpile and opening new opportunities for subsequent Captains. The privileged player receives one extra victory point (but only if he loads some cargo).
Builder: Allows each player to build one building. All buildings in a player's district must be different. The privileged player receives a one doubloon discount. For cheap buildings, or in conjunction with a quarry, this can result in a free purchase.
Prospector: Allows only the chooser to receive one doubloon. No other player receives anything.

So there's plenty you can do, and even more that you want to do. These choices are further complicated by the extensive variety of buildings available. Buildings range in price from one to ten doubloons, and come in two sizes, small or large, which fill one or two slots in your city board. Buildings are also one of two types: production or "violet" (yes, violet, which reflects the color of the counter, but which is otherwise irrelevant). Production buildings are required to produce commodities (except Corn). Indigo and Sugar have two types of production buildings, which can produce one and three goods, respectively. The Tobacco Storage building allows three, and the Coffee Roaster two. Since players can only own one building of each type, the maximum commodity production is four for Indigo and Sugar, three for Tobacco, two for Coffee, and ten for Corn (the number of Corn tiles). However, there are only 12 spaces available for plantations or quarries, so some planning is in order.

Each violet building offers a "special power." Some allow an extra colonist to be brought in from the stockpile, others provide more income, and still others grant victory points at the end of the game. In all, there are 17 different violet buildings, each with a unique function. Figuring out the optimal combinations (and obtaining them, as there are only one or two of each building available) is one of the many pleasures of the game.

Astute readers will have observed that the economic cycle consists of Settler (plantation) to Mayor (colonists) to Craftsman (produce goods) to either Trader (sell for doubloons) or Captain (ship for victory points). This cycle is rich in tactical and strategic interest. At the tactical level, you may be inclined to produce goods (and claim a bonus good), but if you choose this role, it's likely that a player after you will choose the Trader (possibly locking you out of a trade) or the Captain (filling up the ships before you get a chance and possibly causing you to discard some hard-earned goods). Walking this fine line is an enjoyably tense experience. Shrewd guesswork about your opponents' choices will come in handy, but it's very easy to inadvertently give another player easy points if you're not careful.

Strategic options range from maximizing income (to purchase buildings) to maximizing production (to ship for victory points). Planning is important, though never at the complete expense of short-term opportunities or risks. Since there are only two of each small violet building and one of each of the large, you can lock others out of certain types. This requires some cash flow, and cash is tight. You can plan ahead by getting buildings which confer a cash bonus, and get quarries which reduce your cash outlay, but you'll rarely feel you have enough cash. The lure of production is that you'll be able to generate a lot of victory points (hopefully more for you than for others). Production has some drawbacks, though, as timing the production cycle can be risky, and you will at times be at the mercy of your fellow players.

The game ends when one or more of three conditions is met: one or more players fills his twelfth building space, the colonist ship cannot be refilled, or the last victory point token is taken. Depending on the number of players, there are 55 to 95 colonists and 75 to 122 victory points. Running out of colonists appears to be the most common endgame condition, but each factor comes into play at about the same time. Most games average 15 rounds, though you should expect a variance of one or two rounds either way. These variable and controllable endgame conditions add yet another layer of decisions and the possibility of surprise.

Victory is determined by adding up the number of points earned from shipping (the only points available during the game), plus points per building (one to four), plus the conditional points for occupied large buildings (e.g., the occupied Fortress grants its owner one point per three colonists). One novice mistake is building a large building only to find the game ends before it can be occupied (it grants four points, but at the cost of a missed opportunity of up to ten more).

Despite the apparent complexity of the rules and the potential for confusion regarding special powers for the buildings, the game is very simple to play--mechanically. The decisions, however, are tough, and there are many of them. In some cases, it's not just what role to pick, but when to pick it. It's often the case that another player will choose a role you'd like to take, in which case you can piggyback on their choice and on your turn do something different (such as picking a role that denies a player points or which can only benefit you). For example, if you see that a ship has all but one slot full of corn, and another player has five corn while you have one, it might be worthwhile to take the Captain, take your two victory points (one for the corn, one for the privilege) and force that player to store his unusable corn. You have to watch out, though, as other ships carrying different cargo may benefit other players too much for this to be worthwhile, or your opponent may have a warehouse, which shields him from this sort of tactic. Grist for many interesting choices.

PUERTO RICO is also surprisingly interactive. On first blush, the game appears to be about managing your estate and finding the optimal combination of buildings and roles to do this. There are no auctions or direct interactions between players (no torching of fields or buildings). But each role a player takes opens or closes a door for another player. For this reason, it's important to consider what you anticipate will be chosen that round, as you may wish to allow another to choose a beneficial role for you, even if you have to forego the advantage conferred by the privilege. Nearly every action you take has a "ripple effect" throughout the rest of the game.

All of this is woven into a very elegant whole. The game doesn't feel ponderous or confusing. A few violet cards are ambiguously defined (e.g., The Guild Hall awards points for large and small production buildings, but the card omits the word "production," a crucial difference), but the answers are in the rulebook, and very little rule consultation is needed after your first few turns. It scales nicely from three to five players, and feels different at each number. There is more control in the three-player game, but the five-player game is far from chaotic. Perhaps most important, PUERTO RICO does not cross the elusive line of having too much balance, where skillful play is obviated by mechanisms that ensure a competitive finish for all players. In this game, planning matters.

On the whole, then, a brilliant game, one which I expect will be vying for top honors in the German "Spiel des Jahre" (Game of the Year) and Deutscher SpielePreis (same thing, different critics) awards, and deservedly so. It continues and enhances Alea's fantastic record of success, joining the elite ranks of the genre. Very highly recommended for a gamut of gamers, as this one is simple enough for families with older kids, and challenging enough for serious gamers. But of course, it's not for those who find fault in making a game about this subject at all. For the rest of us, happy colonizing!

Jon Waddington lives in the Denver area, where he plays German games (and the too-infrequent wargame) with family and friends. Sometimes they even let him win. Contact him at jon_waddington@yahoo.com.

WHEN TWILIGHT COMES…
An Interview With Twilight Creations’ Kerry Breitenstein

Boulder Games: Can you tell us a little about how and why your company was founded?

Kerry Breitenstein: Well, Todd was working for Journeyman Press when he designed ZOMBIES!!! (not that I didn't have anything to do with it ;o)). The United States Playing Card Co. decided to dissolve Journeyman Press right after the release of Zombies!!! Since we thought it was such a cool product, we pursued obtaining the rights to the game. So, The United States Playing Card Co. licensed the game to us so we could continue the undead mayhem under Twilight Creations, Inc.

BG: What "gaming niche" does Twilight Creations fulfill?

KB: Horror as a genre has always been pretty popular, and people seem to really like high quality, thoughtfully designed products. So, we've put horror together with high quality games at a decent price - which *everybody* needs. ;o)

BG: What inspired the creation of WHEN DARKNESS COMES?

KB: A lot of it was inspired by the ZOMBIES!!! fans. When people first started playing ZOMBIES!!!, a few said they would like to see more depth - more things for their "player character" to do. They also had all sorts of ideas for scenarios. So, we started to develop a game that included player characters with lots of different scenarios.

BG: How did you go about playtesting the game?

KB: As I'm sure with any game, you approach playtesting with this great idea and cool set of rules and find that there just isn't something right about them. The beginning playtest period for WDC was grueling. Our playtesters are fantastic. They stuck to it, helped iron out the kinks and were an integral part of developing what we have now. After the core set was developed, we wanted to add more and more and more. So, the expansions add a little bit to the rules with each set, making it a more complex and realistic type of game.

BG: Since releasing WDC and several expansions are there play mechanics
you wish you could go back and change? Are there rules you feel need clarification?

KB: I wish I could redo the whole rulebook, not the rules themselves but the book. Since we had such a limited amount of space, I left out a lot of examples - much needed examples. I've added them in the FAQ, but I really wish I could have done the rulebook differently, been a little more organized with it and added the examples. That seems to be the only complaint I've heard.

BG: How have gamers reacted to WDC?

KB: The people who've picked the game up seem to really like it. I've heard very few complaints. The sales of the expansions are very close to the sales of the core set. That tells us that the people who bought the core set are sticking with it. That's a good sign! We've got some really enthusiastic fans who've already come up with new rules and scenarios, which we love to see!

BG: Is this latest expansion for WDC the last or are more planned? If
this is the final installment, why end it here?

KB: THE DARKNESS BEFORE THE DAWN ends the story arc, but by no means is the end of WDC. We are coming out with THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME, which is in the Spycraft setting and adds a whole new dimension to the game. It includes vehicles, car chases, traps and disguises - making it a completely different game. There will be other expansions, and we have big things planned for the system.

BG: Finally, are any additional expansions for ZOMBIES!!! in the works?

KB: There will be a ZOMBIES!!! 4, where we will end things very nicely... That doesn't necessarily mean the end to Zombies!!! though……

COLONY—500 YEARS OF CONQUEST
a defense of “educational” games by Till Meyer

When Jim asked me about the English version of COLONY for Boulder Games and whether I would like to write something about the game and the development of it, I was interested. But when I said that COLONY was designed as an educational game, he replied that “educational" in the US is normally a Sales Killer. Well, yes, that’s the same in Germany, but despite this fact, our office, Spieltrieb, does nothing but develop educational games for promotion, advertising and education. So this article is an attempt to explain our understanding of "educational" and how we manage to live by developing Sales Killers.

The main problem, from our point of view, is that "educational" to the public means boring. The reason is obvious: no one can enjoy a game when he is forced to play. So the phrase “educational game" is something of a contradiction. Normally forgotten, however, is the educational history of games. If you have a look at games like Chess, Pachisi or even the Goose-game or Snakes and Ladders you will find systems that teach military tactics, religious aspects or myths. Also MONOPOLY before Charles Darrows seems to have contained educational content. Besides this, what is interesting in one of the 18xx-games, if it is not dealing with the technology of a certain era or the necessities of a specific country? And don’t you have to learn a huge amount about the battle range of a P 51 D or the capabilities of a German tank VII before you tackle a wargame? But if you tried to sell the same wargame with the subtitle "An educational game about the eastern front" it would be a Sales Killer! In almost every game you learn something about shares and stocks, about monarchy and inquisition or about the voyages of Marco Polo. And on a simpler level all players must learn about communication and how far to trust the other players, or how to calculate the probabilities of dice. Playing, from our point of view, is learning at its best. Every time you open one of these colored boxes and meet around the board some form of learning takes place. I guess the phrase, "I don’t want to learn in a game" has to be understood as "I don’t want to realize, that I learn in a game."

But of course our approach to game development is different from, let’s say, Sid Sackson’s (my hero). When we start to create an "uneducational" game, we first focus on the idea of interesting gameplay, a nice way of moving or perhaps a certain kind of communication between the players. Later, when the game is almost finished, we wrap a story around it—if necessary. In Germany the greater publishers tend to define stories for their games years before they are ever published.

When we are requested to create an educational game, we normally get a vast amount of information up front: the subject, the target group, the financial budget and the timescale (obviously a game for use in schools has to be different from a game for informal youth groups, a handout on industry fairs or a sold promotion-game).

Based on this information we try to find out which type of game might fit best and then we begin thinking about game-mechanics.
Even when the approach to the development of a game is different, we have to keep in mind that the result has to be good. "Good" for us means that it is interesting and enjoyable, fosters communication and tension between players, and balances all game mechanics.

There are many educational games created by teachers and trainers in certain areas, like history, ecology or economics. Most of these designers/teachers know their stuff, but very few have an idea about what makes a game really work. The result in many cases is a game which might be played by people who know their stuff too (most of the time with a frozen smile), but not by the people who should learn about ecology, economics, world politics or whatever. Because, ultimately, the game is not fun; it’s boring.

The aim of the COLONY Project was to simulate 500 years of European conquest of other continents and to show the impact of this exploitation on European history. The story is obviously terribly complex and during all steps of the development we had to kick out different subjects which would have made the game unplayable (except for crazy wargamers, of course). Despite our conviction that games have a huge educational potential, games are also one of the worst mediums from which to disseminate facts. This, I guess, is the main mistake most teachers make; they create an educational game and forget that they want the players to “play” more than anything else. Well, every time, you have to read something about a certain point of a game and its link to reality, it prevents you from playing. So every time a game tries to inform with facts, the playing has to be interrupted.

So, what we did with COLONY is less fact-based, but more focused on information about the structure and the dynamics of colonialism during the centuries (of course we want to give facts too, but these are represented on the supplemental CD-ROM, not in the game itself). Naturally the reality was responsible for the game-mechanics in many ways and here’s the point where we receive some harsh criticism.

First of all we’ve received criticism for the “accidental” gameplay in the first two phases. Some players feel really depressed when they lose most of their colonies by stupid events which are impossible to avoid. They are right; that doesn’t seem like a good game mechanic. This “accidental” character of COLONY diminishes towards the end of the game so that by the sixth phase accidents have a marginal effect and the communication, cooperation and active competition between the players increases.

The reason for this accidental character in the gameplay, and its correspondence to reality, is that in fact the history of conquest and colonization was full of accidents and chances with far-reaching consequences. If there had been a simple tactical mistake during the reconquista, the Spanish peninsula could well still be an Arab nation today. Or if the Chinese heir to the throne died two years later, a Chinese admiral would not have been ordered back and Europe would now have a great Asian history. Or if Columbus was a pimply guy with horrible halitosis, he would never had been able to wear off Isabella’s gems. During the first 100 years of conquest of America an estimated 9 million Native Americans died from influenza, measles, small pox and other diseases against which they had no resistance. This well could have turned in the opposite direction: imagine if an American virus swept over the Atlantic in the other direction and killed 90% of the European population.

The historical European influence on today’s world is not a matter of supremacy but of chance. And so this aspect of COLONY is a point where we force the players to suffer (or profit) from fate. We agree, that in an normal boardgame this excessive role of chance would be a sign of poor workmanship, but in the educational game COLONY in the initial phase of conquest it has its calculated importance. And as said in the brief description of the game: if you like, it’s quite easy to alter this aspect with house rules (some of these you’ll find on the COLONY Homepage).

When we ran the tests of the game we surprisingly never faced the situation that a player was kicked out of the game, which has obviously happened to some players of COLONY. We initially handled this possibility with the rule that you cannot, neither by events, nor by colonial wars, lose your last remaining colony. Additionally we experienced in nearly every game that the poor guys with only one or two tiny colonies in the second phase ruled the game in the 6th.

Another criticism has to do with the board featuring a fictitious continent. Of course we could have used a world map. An additional advantage of a world map would have been that we could demonstrate geopolitical aspects. The first disadvantage of this choice is that the player is forced to simulate real history instead of having the opportunity to write history new. The main problem was even larger.

COLONY starts like a normal economical game, like MONOPOLY or similar. Step by step the players are led to the historical relevance of the game. The game becomes more and more "serious," by events, by tasks for the players and more. Obviously colonization and, as a consequence, the wealth of Europe would have been impossible without slavery. In a realistic game slavery therefore should have a main role. But, despite the fact that most players don’t have any problems to lead a global war or to damn thousands of workers to poverty in an economic game, there are some taboos like torture or the holocaust or slavery.

Of course these subjects are part of many games, but very superficial and simplified. In COLONY you have to deal with slavery or with the deterrent impact of a few thousand killed rebels. But if the players would be forced to deal with that right from the beginning, most of the players would end the game after the first few turns. Therefore these realistic components are introduced in the gameplay when the players have already established their colonies and carry all the goods back to Europe. At this point as a considerate, friendly player you should say: "Oops, alright, when they dislike my presence here in Latin-America (in Australia, in Africa, in Asia), I’ll head back home." But of course you don’t do that. What you do is to protect your income by whatever inconsiderate, unfriendly measures you deem necessary.

If we had created COLONY on a world map, slavery would have been presented directly after the initial conquest, according to the necessity to have workers plant and harvest the crops and dig the mines. But then most of the players of our target groups would have turned down the game - don’t trade with human beings!

Really impressive for us was the rise of an informal network in the course of the development of COLONY, and afterwards in the creation of new rules. Peoples from all over the world participated in the work, sent us articles, made remarks about the game and its contents (including some remarks that the subject is too bloody and too serious to transfer it into a game) and gave advice. We are grateful for every remark that comes our way.

Till Meyer is the designer (and defender) of COLONY.

a cartoon by Jerry Capria

HIVE
a review by Richard Glanzer

HIVE is a tremendous game. One of my top three, 2-player games (GYGES and LINES OF ACTION being the other two). The object of the game is to surround your opponent's queen, using your and your opponents’ pieces. There are 5 different types of pieces: Queen, Ant, Spider, Grasshopper and Beetle for a total of 11 pieces. What's interesting to me is that on your turn you either place or move a piece. So often the number of pieces for each player and the board can be quite different. Sometimes fewer pieces can do more. This leaves you more pieces in reserve to either make an attack or change the configuration of the board (more on this later).

The board is created as pieces are laid. The pieces are well made, thick pieces of wood, hexagonal shaped. No piece may be moved which would break the hive into two disconnected segments. So pieces often get pinned. And that's a part of the game that is always important. Pinning pieces, freeing pieces by changing the shape of the board, and limiting your opponent's moves are all part of the game.

This is one game where defense is as much fun as offence. Games can last 5 to 45 minutes. Going for the kill is not often easy or quick. You can only place pieces touching your own pieces. So there's the need to get pieces on the board and on your next turn, move them into position. This process always takes longer than you want it to. The beetle can climb on top of another piece. This has two effects: one, that piece is pinned and cannot moved and two, for the purposes of placement, the beetle on the top becomes the color for adjacent placement. This can be a serious threat. A great part of the game is that there are only 11 pieces per side. If you need 6 of your own (sometimes your opponent's pieces help) pieces to surround the queen, this only leaves 5 of your own pieces to move. And if they're pinned (either by the beetle, or by the disconnecting the hive rule) it becomes very hard to maneuver. All delicious stuff.

While this is an abstract game, the bug theme works well for me. The ant scampers around the "hive" to any spot on the hive. The grasshopper jumps in a straight line over connected pieces to the first open spot. The breeding queen can only move one spot at a time. The spider scampers three spots at a time. I feel like I'm placing and moving my bugs when I play; it doesn't feel abstract.

This is the only game I've played that I think about when I'm not playing. I can't wait to try out different opening combinations. I can't wait to see if I can claw back from near defeat. Can I place the queen as my first play and still win the game (yes.)?

This is also a game of learning how to combine and advance forces. I am not a wargamer and never will be. And this does not feel like a wargame. But you have to learn how to combine forces to both secure victory without leaving your queen too vulnerable.

This game is one of wonder. Superbly crafted and designed. Little lights go on in my head each time I learn a new wrinkle or play combination that will push the game a little in my favor. This game has that one more time quality to it. If I just did things a little bit different I would have won. Let's play again.

Richard Glanzer is a New York gamer.
Editor's note: Play a virtual version of HIVE at www.hivemania.com

CAIRO
a review by Mark Jackson

Some days you want a game with strategic depth. Some days you want a game system that simulates the fog of war and the difficulties of the chain of command. Some days you want to build new civilizations, forge roads & cities out of the wilderness, trade shrewdly for commodities to make your dreams a reality.

Other days, you just wanna flick stuff & score points. CAIRO (Schmidt Spiele) is for those other days.

Granted, I'm the kind of gamer who has a LOT of those "other days", so I found a great deal to like in Gunter Buckhardt's new game of pyramid building along the Nile. It plays quickly, has a high fun/turn ratio, and, for what is essentially "CARABANDE goes to Egypt," manages to throw in some decent decisions about what to do next.

Players are - heck, I don't know who they're supposed to be. I mean, you've got a barge from which you shoot pyramid building blocks (15 small blocks—EL GRANDE 'caballero'-sized; 1 big block - EL GRANDE 'grande'-sized; and one d6 in your color) into a variety of building sites (marked with point values for 1st & 2nd place). I'm not an expert on Egypt, but I don't remember anything about catapulting great hunks of stone from passing barges in the building of pyramids section of World History.

But who cares about historical accuracy? (Yes, I see that hand. Go find SPI's WAR IN EUROPE and come back when you're done setting up.) This is a "flinking" game! (Get it?! "Flicking" + "Thinking" = "Flinking". Wish I'd been the one who made it up but I wasn't - I just can't remember who did.)

The "thinking" part rears its ugly head when you add two more elements to the game: first, you can retrieve & re-use blocks that aren't completely in building sites, and second, blocks outside of building sites are used as tie-breakers for determining who gets the points. (Blocks in building sites are 'locked' there - while blocks that go off board or completely in the Nile are returned to the game box from whence they came.)

So, you say, big deal. I flick, I score points, so what? Did I mention that the die roll you make at the beginning of every turn not only gives you the movement for your barge but also, as an extra-special added bonus value to you, the gamer, tells you which finger you'll be flicking with that turn? (This, for an odd fellow like me, seems a stroke of genius.) And what game about pyramid building along the Nile without... pyramids? That's right, you too can build pyramids for fun, extra chances at winning the building site, and creating a target for other players to shoot their big cube towards!

It's 30 minutes of fun for 2-5 players... and on my last plane ride, I found myself mulling over how to do better at the game. (A good sign - when a game is intriguing enough to take up residence in my limited brain space.) A strategy thought: attempt to scatter your blocks into as many different regions of the board as possible. This enables you to pick up 1+ blocks on your first return trip, thus increasing your chances of having the final turn of the game (which allows you to wreak havoc on other players scores).

I'll have to try it next time.

With all that said, it's a delightful game - fluffy enough to satisfy me, interesting enough scoring to satisfy Greg Schloesser. Hmmmmmmm... (and Frank Branham's right: this is "CARABANDE meets ACQUIRE"... or, if you like, “Cara Grande"... he he he).

Mark Jackson runs Game Central Station, a Nashville based gaming group and website. His favorite game this week is VOM KAP BIS KAIRO.

Keythedral
a review by Darrell Hanning
Sure, it looks like Settlers, but wait ‘til you check under the hood…

If you buy Euro-style games as often as I do, you inevitably find reason to pause, after placing that order with Boulder Games, and wonder “Should I really have bought that one?”

On occasion, that post-purchase doubt proves to be a credible concern. The game – despite eye-pleasing components – turns out to be less satisfying to the mind than you had hoped. I suppose it’s somewhat like marrying that delicious, leggy lady you met, then waking up two years later wondering why the hell you did it.

Rest easy if you ordered Keythedral – you’ll probably play it more often than half of the other games that look as pretty, or prettier.

The initial impression – if you see pictures of the components, or even read a review – is that Settlers of Catan has a wannabe clone. I won’t refute the similarities, but this game goes further than Settlers did, yet is no more complicated to grasp. The designer, Richard Breese, is known at least in Europe for his “Key-series” of games: Keywood, Keydom (probably better known in its incarnation as Aladdin’s Dragons), and Keytown, with Keythedral being the fourth in the series. Production of his games is low-volume, but I gather the quality of components in Keythedral is substantially higher than that found in his previous designs. I find the components in this game top-notch – the only shortfalls being the rather flimsy box, and some print-color issues I’ll deal with later in this review.

The game contains five Player Information cards made of the same heavy stock as the counters, 51 Worker counters (although I was missing one of the gray workers, that fifty-first piece works fine), 29 large octagonal Field Tiles, 34 Building Tiles, 25 Cottage Tiles, 5 wood Work Order Markers, 20 Law cards, 5 Player screens, 115 resource and craft cubes, 15 Fence markers, 1 wood Start Player marker, 1 Keythedral Tile, 1 Keytown mat, and 1 Keythedral mat. Looking at this list, the game isn’t as pricey as one might otherwise think. It all just barely fits in the box, once the components are broken out and organized in bags.

Each player receives the 10 Worker counters, 5 Cottage tiles, and 3 Fence markers in his color. The playing board is comprised of the octagonal Field tiles, which come in 5 flavors – Woods, Quarry, Farmland, Vineyards, and Water. These fields produce, respectively, Timber (brown cubes), Stone (black cubes), Food (green cubes), Wine (red cubes), and Water (blue cubes).

Three to five players will be using these resources to build the Keythedral. On the Keythedral mat there are five levels of construction to the Keythedral. The Building tiles for the first row are worth 1 Victory Point each, at the end of the game. Those on the second row are worth 2 Victory Points each, and so on. As the Victory Point value goes up, so does the resource cost for obtaining it. On the first row, for instance, you might be able to purchase a Building tile for one timber and one stone. On the second row, however, a tile might cost two timbers and one stone. A player cannot purchase a Building tile from the second row, until all tiles in the first row are purchased, nor from the third row until all of row two is gone, and so on. Once the players are on the third row of Building tiles, they’ll start seeing tiles with a cost involving Crafted Goods. These are goods one cannot collect from the Field tiles; rather, they must trade two resource cubes for an Iron cube, three cubes for a Stained Glass cube, or four cubes for a Gold cube.

Once the last Building tile on row five has been purchased, the game ends, and players count up the victory point values of the Building tiles they have purchased. There are no other ways to collect victory points in the game, just Building tiles.

However, Building tiles are not the only things one can purchase with Resource cubes. They can also upgrade their Cottages to Houses (which allows them to place two workers in fields, rather than one worker), build Fences (which blocks access to one field, for the cottage next to which it is placed), tear down opponent’s Fences, buy one of the two Law cards available on a turn, trade any two Resource cubes for one of a different color, or trade Resource cubes for Craft cubes, at the exchange rates mentioned earlier.

The game starts with the Players building the game board. The board begins with two Woods tiles and two Quarry tiles surrounding the build site of the Keythedral.

Each player then, in turn, draws a face-down field tile, places it adjacent to one already played, and then places one of his Cottage tiles in one of the unoccupied gaps one finds when placing octagonal tiles in a grid. This process continues until all the tiles used for the number of players present are played, and all Player cottages are placed. The cottages are numbered one through five, and this number indicates which cottage deploys workers in each of the five rounds of deploying them. The players will, in turn, get to choose which number of cottage next deploys workers.

This is a crucial phase in the game, as it dictates what resources to which you will have access for the duration of the game. Your workers can only work Field tiles adjacent to your cottages. You certainly want to have access to at least two or three Woods, two Quarries, and at least one each of the other types. You might also want to contrive to have one Field tile “hanging” off the main bulk of the board, adjacent only to one of your cottages. This will ensure that the cottage in question will always have a place to put a Worker, barring a malicious fence-placement. There are other considerations, too. One player in my regular group, based on how he places his cottages, is clearly of the opinion that it is better if his own cottages compete with each other than with those of other players, and so places the bulk of his cottages across Field tiles from each other. I’m not personally convinced this is the optimum strategy, but one strategy that seems clear is to avoid placing a cottage near one owned by the player on your right having the same number as yours. In a three-player game, that opponent would then be deploying a worker from his cottage before you do two times out of three, and the odds get worse as the number of players increases. Since you will place your cottage during the building of the board, after the player on your right, you will get to react to his placement, and generally avoid this situation. Of course, a lot depends on the numbers of the cottages you and your opponents place, so this is an important sub-element to that strategy.

Once the board is built, the game proper begins. The Phases are: Place Worker counters, Collect Resource cubes, Spend Resource cubes, Retrieve Worker counters, and Change Start Player.

During Phase One (Place Worker counters), the players will, in turn order sequence, select a cottage number still available, and place a Worker on a Field tile adjacent to his cottage of that number. The Worker cannot be placed in a field where another Worker is – either an opponent’s or another Worker owned by the same player. The other players, in clockwise fashion, then place one of their own Workers from their cottage of the same number. Placement of Workers occurs over five rounds, as each player has five cottages.

One of the things you can purchase in Phase Three is an “upgrade” to one of your cottages, making it a house. A house can place two Workers during Phase one. Once there are a few houses on the board, it becomes routine that one or more Workers will not have an unoccupied Field tile adjacent on which they can be deployed. This is when your choices during the building of the game board come home to roost.

In Phase Two (collect Resource cubes), each player receives one Resource cube for each Worker he placed during Phase One. A Worker on a Water tile, for instance, gets the player a blue resource cube. As the number of houses present on the board increases, the disparity between most and fewest cubes collected by the various players will grow – more Workers will not be playable, and yet more Workers will be available to play. The sequence of cottage numbers selected, and the order of the players will dictate that some toes get stepped on, so to speak. This makes it very important that when it is your turn to pick a cottage number you look not only at what you can get, but what you can deprive the other players of, and weigh these considerations accordingly. Generally speaking, if you have the option of picking a cottage number which matches a house for you, then that would be a preferable number, but it usually isn’t that simple. In a nutshell, it is in Phase Two that the game is won or lost.

In Phase Three, the players take turns purchasing. Obviously, the Building tiles are the most crucial purchases, as they are the only Victory Points in the game. The game starts with only those tiles in row one being visible. As a row is emptied, the next row is flipped up, to reveal their costs. If you’re sitting on a decent combination of resource and/or craft cubes, and a row is almost emptied, it’s sometimes smarter to let someone else take that last tile in the old row, and go for one in the next, more valuable row. Our group considers the number of building tiles available on each row as being right for 3 players, but adds an extra tile to each row for 4 players, and two extra tiles for 5 players. Otherwise, the game really seems to end too soon to make the other types of purchases viable.

Those other types of purchases are houses, fences, law cards, two-for-one trades for other resource types, and trades for craft cubes. House purchases are important early in the game, and less so once you reach Building tile row three or four. This is because there will generally be more houses on the board as time goes by, meaning more workers every turn, meaning fewer opportunities to place two workers. I’ve won the game on a couple of occasions with only one or two houses, while watching others upgrade every cottage they have, and come in last. Upgrading a cottage to a house costs one timber and one stone cube (brown and black), yet these are the two most common resources found on Building tile rows one and two, so you will have a decision to make in that regard. Another purchase option is building a fence, for one timber. This is cheap, considering it takes two wines (red cubes) to take a fence down, and there are fewer vineyard Field tiles on the board than Woods or Quarry tiles. Still, in the discussions of this game that I have read, fences are generally considered a waste of resources. I would agree with this, with the following caveats.

If the number of Building tiles to be purchased is not increased with the number of players (as I described above), then each one that is available constitutes a higher percentage of total available victory points. This reduces all other purchase options, regardless of the stage of the game, to purely secondary considerations. I would also submit that if a fence is placed to block access to a vineyard, then you are increasing the chance that it will stay there, which theoretically makes the placement more worthwhile. I would also submit that if two players get into a fence-building “war” then the players who stay out of the fracas are infinitely better off. Too, if a fence is built to block your access, it is best to get rid of it early, or just leave it alone, as you’ll want those red cubes for the Building tiles you’ll see when you get to the latter stages of the game. I would further suggest that smart cottage number-picking, during Phase Two, will be more damaging than the three fences you can build during the game.

Law cards are one of two “random” elements in the game which, if the players agree upon it, can be removed from the game without altering strategy or enjoyment. The other random element is keeping Building tiles face-down until that row is available for purchase. Law cards are the purchase one usually makes when they get pimped over in placement of workers. These confer an advantage to the holder, or a disadvantage to another player or players, such as improved cube-exchange rates, free house upgrade, altering turn order, tearing a fence down, etc. There are only two Law cards available each turn, and when you purchase a Law card you can purchase no more items that turn.

Exchanging resource cubes for craft cubes is critical, for the last three rows of Building tiles have a large percentage of craft cube requirements. It is best to be the first player on a turn when their need becomes evident, as you’ll have to conduct the trade, and wait for your next purchase opportunity to actually use it. Alternatively, if you are not the first player to purchase one, pay close attention to which ones are being purchased, and try to anticipate which Building tiles are being targeted. You may find it behooves you to purchase a craft type you instead expect to be required on the next row of Building tiles, and wait for the current row to get emptied. Also, it’s smart to hold onto those red cubes in the second half of the game, as they show up on an increasing number of building tiles.

(Incidentally, the ink shades used for the Building tiles in Keythedral give me fits, as they will give fits to anyone having the slightest red-green deficiency, or playing the game in less than optimum lighting conditions. For this reason, I made my own tiles with brighter shades, and haven’t used the originals since.)

During Phase Four, players remove their worker counters from the board. Actually, we’ve adopted their removal immediately after collecting our Resource cubes, as this makes it more difficult for the other players to know what cube types and numbers you have, making it more difficult to predict which Building tile you might purchase.

Phase Five is changing of the Player order. Whomever has the wood First Player disc passes it to the player on his left. Starting with the player to that person’s left, one round of bidding for First Player advantage occurs. The player holding the disc bids last, and must only match the highest bid to keep the disc. Bids are made in resource cubes, and a successful bid to take away First Player is paid to the player who was holding the disc. A successful matching bid by the player holding the disc is paid to the player whose bid had to be matched.

At this point in time, having played the game regularly for five or six weeks, I’d have to say that Keythedral is unquestionably one of my better purchases in the last year or so. My entire group is always willing to play it, and the short playing time (60 to 90 minutes) means it’ll fit in a window other games won’t. The game rules are simple enough to teach a pre-teen, yet the numerous strategy elements make it an enjoyable experience for the grizzled veteran. I do wish someone such as Rio Grande Games would pick it up, publish it with a sturdier box, and brighten up the Building tile colors. This would likely, in turn, push the cost down, too.

Call for Game Notes Submissions

Boulder Games is looking for submissions for future issues of Game Notes (believe it or not, we’re trying to come out with a new “issue” more than once a year). Please consider the following before you submit an article:

1. If at all possible, we prefer reviews of recently released games. An occasional article or review of a long forgotten game will be published, but we are mostly interested in what has gamers excited in the here and now.

2. Keep your reviews/articles between 1,000 and 1,500 words.

3. Payment for reviews is modest – usually $20 in Boulder Games credit per review used. Obviously if you submit an unusable review or article you’ll receive no compensation for it. Them’s the breaks!

4. Our space is limited, so make certain your writing is strong, eloquent and original. See any Darrell Hanning review for a good idea of what we consider effective writing.

5. Be opinionated! Boulder Games is known for telling it like it is. Heck, just look at many of our product descriptions. If we don’t like a game, we let you know it. So, whether you love or hate a game doesn’t matter as long as you clearly convey WHY you love or hate it.

6. Ease off of the game mechanic descriptions. We want a critique of the game, not three pages of detailed instructions about how the game works. Mechanic descriptions certainly have their place but don’t let them become the “meat” of your review.

That’s it! If you have any questions, or if you want to submit an article or review, just contact chriskirby@bouldergames.com.