Cracking the Plastic: Baron

By James Miller
July 5, 2006

I have in my hands a box with the title “Baron” on it.  That is a lofty title to be bestowed upon anyone let alone a board game that I know nothing about.  Let us hope it rules benevolently and treats us well.  As I roll the box around in my hand I quickly notice that it is a Tilsit game and that it has a number 6 on the spine.  That would make we think that it is another game in their every growing and somewhat successful line of “new” games that started with Maka Bana and Kanaloa.  The cover depicts, what I suppose is, a baron riding a white horse on a hill overlooking a lake, a castle and some oddly happy peasants.  Running with him is a small brown dog I shall call cinnamon (yes he looks like cinnamon toast).  Despite the impish smile on the baron’s face I get the impression that this is a happy game.  Oops, I just noticed the weapons at the bottom of the cover.  The box also depicts a falcon several times making me think…well I don’t know what to think.  I suspect there might be more than cutting hay and riding a horse in this game.

The back of the box quickly informs me that there will be rules to read in my language.  Nice.  French, German and Italian are also thrown into the mix.  The picture on the back of the box bears more than a passing resemblance to Keythedral.  AS I look close it appears that there is a bit of difference though.  The back and sides of the box also inform me that the game is for 2 to 5 players aged more than 12 years and that the game will occupy 75ish minutes of time in your life.

There also appears to be some story on the back of the box that will give the setting.  Let me read it…Hmmm…Interesting…It appears that the picture on the front may have tricked me a little.  It appears that it may not be a happy hay cutting game.  The words that describe the game are that its one of influence and alliances, greed and treachery where nothing gained can be taken for truly won.  Cinnamon better watch out.  Each player it would seem is a baron in Feudal France vying for territory and some large tower thing.

Let’s crack the plastic.  I must say there is something to be said for the smell of a newly opened game.  The box cardboard is pretty standard, nothing to write home about and nothing the write the publishers about.  As I take the cover off I am greeted with a rather thick, large print multilingual rule book.  Each language takes up 8 pages with lots of pictures, a good 16 point well spaced font, and plenty of examples.  There is a rule rather simple rule summary and the end of the rules.

As I remove the rules there is a box sized unfolded piece of cardboard with a cool cartoony graphic on the back.  I turn it over to discover it is the tower board that I had seen earlier on the back of the box.  Next up in the box is some cardboard punch-outs that represent different barons (players?) and a bunch of numbered tokens going from -2 to 11 with a bunch of repeats and many blanks.  Also included are some tokens with a picture of knights fighting.  Hmm fighting… There had to be fighting…

I remove the cardboard to find a large ziplock bag of plastic towers in five colors.  They are hollow and about two inches high.  They have a kinda Lord Of the Rings look to them.  Weird.  Also in here are some stands that appears to be for the cardboard figures on the cardboard sheet.  Lastly there are a mess of cardboard hexes that have an appearance of terrain (or city).  The graphics on the terrain are functional but don’t exactly scream Rembrandt to me if you know what I mean.

That gets me to the bottom of the box.  The plastic insert in the box seems to hold everything ok.  It works.  Overall I’m not filled with an outpouring of enthusiasm but I might turn out to be a pretty cool game despite all of those negative adjectives on the back of the box.  I looked all around and didn’t see a Cinnamon figure but I figure he wouldn’t want to be around all that treachery!

Comments:

< Back Home