Game Preview: Gisborne: Die ersten Kartographen

By W. Eric Martin
February 1, 2008

Publisher: Clementoni
Designer: Carlo A. Rossi
Artwork: Michael Menzel
Players: 3-5
Ages: 8+
Playing Time: 30-40 minutes

While Italian designer Carlo A. Rossi has a few games to his credit, you would most likely have heard his name in association with Alchemist, released by Mayfair Games and Amigo Spiele in 2007. Alchemist, which in an alternate universe would be plastered with a Harry Potter license and on mass market toy shelves worldwide, has received decent ratings and far more publicity than his previous titles: Graverobbers, which is a card game from Jolly Roger Games, and a couple of giveaway games from daVinci.

This spring, Clementoni will publish Rossi’s Gisborne, which he describes as “a very well-themed family game with a fair amount of luck.” Gisborne, which is both a city and a district in New Zealand, is one of the first cities to see the sun each day since it’s within spitting distance of the International Date Line.

Of course the IDL didn’t exist back in 1769 when explorer James Cook landed on shore and claimed New Zealand for the British crown—and that’s where you step in, as part of a group of explorers who have landed on the eastern coast and must make their way through unknown landscapes to the far shore.

This landscape is composed of fixed starting and ending tiles and 10 face-down landscape tiles, nine of which are revealed as explorers make progress. (The tenth is removed from the game before play.) As soon as one player reaches the edge of a tile, the path is extended with the next tile, which might show a shortcut or a village—or packs of hungry wolves waiting to eat your face!

Each tile has a scroll on it, and the first cartographer to reach this scroll receives a card chip worth 1-3 victory points (VPs) and triggers a scoring round. Each player receives a number of cards based on his or her position on the path—with those in the lead getting more—and players can either keep these cards in hand to be used for movement or store them in their chest for VPs. (The chests nicely resemble those in the first edition of Diamant.)

The cards show either gold, silver or bronze coins, and the values on the cards reflect those of the metals: gold coins have a value of 3 or 4; silver, 2 or 3; and bronze, 1 or 2. You play one or more cards—all of the same color—each turn, then draw 0, 1 or 2 replacement cards depending on whether you played gold, silver, or bronze cards. Each player also holds a tent card, which is used solely to draw two cards.

In addition to the card fields, each tile has something special pictured on it, such as a swamp that slows a cartographer’s movement; a river, which restricts the number of cards you can hold; or a shortcut, which is just what you think it is.

The game ends once a player reaches the far shore. That player nabs a 4-point card chip, then everyone tallies their points, with cards in the chest worth 1 point each. Whoever has the most victory points wins; everyone else must hang their head in shame, vowing to be more like James Cook in the future…

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