Game Preview: Chang Cheng

by Andrea “Liga” Ligabue
Updated week # 4 - 26-07-2007

Publisher: TenkiGames
Designer: Walter Obert
Players: 2-4
Ages: 12+
Playing Time: 60 minutes
Release Date: August 2007

I’ll be updating this new in the next weeks. I’ll write a full preview in the end of July, just before the final release.

week #1: quick description and box art
week #2: the action cards
week #3: the mongols
week #4: the map
week #5: designer’s notes and pictures of the bits

Week #1

Chang Cheng is a game for 2 to 4 players. The rules are quite simple but to win you need to plan well your actions. The game is in the majority group but with enough new ideas and concpets to give a new thrill also to gamers used to play majorities!

The players are engaged in building the Great Chinese Wall to prevent the Mongols invasion and protect the rich and fertile regions. The walls separate Mongols regions from Chineses regions but not in a symmetric way (more on that in the next post!).
More walls you build in a region better you score. In the end the Mongols attack destroying the wall so more walls you have built more point you will lose!

Pictures - Click the picture for a larger version
	Chang Cheng Box

Week #2

During the course of the game players use most of their actions building walls to protect the rich fields of the China from the Mongols invasion but sometimes is better to ask the help of specialists or make something different. All this possibility are grouped in the use of action cards: each player start the game with 6 action cards (all the players have the same cards). The card are played face down in the regions and are activated just before the scoring (when the region is totally walled!). The cards have a priority factor, to determinate the order in their resolution, and a special action: usually the cards allow players to build/destroy/move walls in order to change the majority in the region. The presence of one or more action cards in a region make the resolution not so deterministic. every card can be used just once in the game, so players must be careful when and where play.

Pictures - Click the picture for a larger version

Week #3

Every Chinese region confer a fixed amount of point, printed in the map, to the player securing it from the Mongols invasion. In every Chinese region, at the beginning of the game, is placed also a face-up counter with bonus point. So, the total point scored securing the region, is the sum of these two values. In that way the values of the regions are different in every game.

On the other side of the wall, in every Mongols region, at the beginning of the game is placed, face down, a Mongol counter. Every counter display the value of negative points scored by the player protecting the region when the Mongols arrive. Every time you place a piece of wall in front of a Mongols region you can also look the face-down Mongol counter.

It is clear that every time you build a piece if wall (more on that the next week) you have to balance the positive point you can score securing the Chinese region with the negative for the Mongols region. But Chinese and Mongols regions are not perfectly overlapped (more on the map in the future)

Pictures - Click the picture for a larger version
	Chinese counter back		Mongols counter front

Week #4

The Chang Cheng map is a compoundable and double face. You will play on a long and thin map (all around the Great Wall): in the beginning you use just two maps and you will add maps during the game as long as you will have as many as the number of players (with a minimum of 3).

The map is divided in regions, on both side of the Great Wall. Mongols and Chinese regions are divided by the wall and not perfectly overlapped so you can have a Mongol region that is close to several Chinese regions (look at the first map picture).

Every Chinese regions has a base value, printed on the map, and a public random value (using Chinese counters). Every Mongols region has a secret random value (using Mongols counters). When the wall closing a Chinese region is complete a score will occur. The player with the most piece of wall will score the point for the region. At the end of the game all the Mongols regions are valued and the player with the most piece of wall in that region will score negative points. Since the Chinese and Mongols regions are not perfectly overlapped there is a lot of space for deep strategies in deploying the walls.

Pictures - Click the picture for a larger version

Week #5

Here some designer’s notes as a quick interview:

[Liga] Hi Walter. After several “light” games (Word Jam, Histerycoach, StarSystem), Chang Cheng is a real countertrend! A game that could be exciting both for families and gamers. When Chang Cheng was born ?

[WO] CC was born from a strange accident to another game. 4 years ago I was designing Capomastro (Masterbuilder), a game of towers building, when a too high tower falled on the table. The crash suggested to me a different use of the wooden blocks, good for towers and walls too, and one or two days after I had the new game!
I was a bit bored of all those majority games, so I started to design a different kind of game, intense and very thematic, but clean and easy to learn for all kind of players. I started to play it on a micro-version, using small plastic tokens with adhesive paper on them (all the game in two open hands!), and after some good tests the first version came out.

[Liga] So, behind Chang Cheng there are almost 3 years if developing. When finally the project approded to TenkiGames and why it tooks so much time ?

[WO] Yes, this game has a long story. Essen 2004 was my first “messe” after a long time, and I was happy for this result. I showed CC to only one good publisher: he was very impressed for the game. Two months later I had my WONDERFUL, signed contract, but something went wrong, and the production was deleted.
I tried with some other publishers, all with good comments but without any agreement for me. One year ago, I started to think to put the game on my long shelf of unpublished games, when I met the Tenki boys at LuccaGames and we began to work on it. Four years ago I would have never imagined that an Italian publisher would have been able to produce a game with these features. Now I’m happy to see that I was wrong: something has changed.

[Liga] in the next weeks I’ll post my review of the game (I was lucky enough to try it!) but I really would like to know from you which are the game features you are most proud of and which trim sizes are become your nightmares ?

[WO] The cards, on each side, without doubt. At the end of the first phase of the design, I had a clean mechanic, but too “dry”; the cards help the game to be more spiced and less predictable. The dirty job was to avoid to have cards too strong or uninsteresting. It was hard to balance their effects without adding too much random. I like the double function cards, very flexible to use. The best thing of the game for me? The growing tension through the match and the team playing mode, connecting 2 or more boxes to have a really long long wall to build!
At this moment I don’t know the final result; I can’t resist to see the great work from Tenki about the artwork and the plastic bits (you can see the here in this preview! ndr)
Ciao, and see you to Essen!

Pictures

© 2007 Andrea Liga Ligabue

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Some cool ideas here, and nice walls! Posted by Jim Cote on Aug 28, 2007 at 09:25 PM | #

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