Game Preview: Huang Di

By W. Eric Martin
August 25, 2008

Publisher: JKLM Games
Designer: Bryan Johnson
Players: 2-6
Ages: 10+
Playing Time: 90 minutes
Release Date: Spiel 08

Settings for Eurogames seem to come in waves: Egypt, Rennaisance, pirates, Egypt again, vikings, The Hanging Gardens of Babylon, Eygptian pirates, and so on. One mini-trend has been the Great Wall of China, with a game of the same name coming from Reiner Knizia in 2006, Chang Cheng from Walter Obert in 2007, and now Huang Di in 2008.

Is first-time designer Bryan Johnson unsettled by the thought of following Dr. K and a game that sold out at Spiel 07? “I wouldn’t say I feel nervous,” he says, “which is strange, I suppose. I can tell you that I felt a bit disappointed when I first heard about Knizia’s Great Wall of China. I designed Huang Di under the working title Great Wall in early 2005. I was proud of my initial design because I felt I was the only one to have a Great Wall of China theme. After Cambridge Games Factory (CGF) picked up the game [in early 2007], we actually used the title Chang Cheng for a while, too!”

"It is really weird,” he continues, “because I felt I had an original idea for a game theme and then all of a sudden, everybody seems to use the same theme! The same thing happened to me a few years ago when I designed a game about Vikings. I felt there were no Viking games out there, so I designed one. Then, of course, everybody and his brother releases a Viking game right after I designed mine. I swear I am cursed somehow!”

A View from the Top

As you might imagine from a game themed around the Great Wall, your job in the game is to help put the bricky beast in place, section by section. You’re a master builder, working for the Emperor (Qin Shi Huang), to cement his place in history as well as yours through the clever use of your taskmaster, workers and the Emperor.

Surprisingly, I got the idea for Huang Di while at work one night in early 2005,” says Johnson. “Our floor at work has square patterns on it and on this particular night, I began thinking of the various patterns I could make with the squares. The next night, I found myself doing the same thing, and when I got home I began drawing the patterns out on graph paper and somehow felt inspired enough to base a game design around that. It is probably the strangest way I have designed a game or got an idea for a game.”

“Although Huang Di is my first published game,” he adds, “it’s actually my fifth or sixth design. I also have designed a couple of games since then that are all still being worked on to some degree.”

To build the wall, players need to mobilize resources, hire workers, and take charge of convicts while managing their supply of jade (i.e. money) and keeping an eye on the other players. You score points by building the majority of blocks in a section or across the length of the wall, with the values escalating with the height. To take actions on a turn, you choose a role card and carry out one of the options. “Originally, there were ten cards to choose from each round,” says Johnson. “With CGF, we cut the number to eight.”

JKLM took on Huang Di in the spring of 2007, and Johnson says that he’s been amazed by the quick development time. “After the guys at JKLM playtested with people who have never played before, they felt that eight cards was just too much for new players to look over and try to grasp. Almost immediately, they consolidated it down to four cards. My initial reaction was that it was too few. After all, you get only three actions each round and now you have only four cards to choose from? But actually, it plays out much better than I thought it would.”

Johnson hasn’t played any of the other Great Wall games, but knows that his will inevitably be compared to them. “It’s a bit like games about Venice, Egypt, pirates or any of the other themes that have been rehashed and recycled a thousand times before,” he says. “People will play the games if the games are good, even though they have seen the theme countless times before. I can only hope that’s the case with Huang Di as well.”

First impression, by W. Eric Martin

Version played: Prototype
Times played: Thrice, once with 2 and twice with 3

I’ve seen some of the evolution of Huang Di first-hand. My first two games came after Cambridge Games Factory had picked up the title, and the game has a decent puzzle-y feel in that you’re trying to manage your money, bricks and workers, while also watching for opportunities to score free money and workers with your taskmaster (before an opponent snatched them) and worrying about how much to build in which locations. There’s a lot of stuff going on!

The game ends only when the wall is complete – the number of bricks to be placed varies with the number of players – and since people build at different rates depending on bids for turn order, their income level, and so forth, the number of rounds that any game will last varies. In each round, players take three actions. As Bryan mentioned above, initially you had eight role cards, and each player in turn would choose a role, then carry out that action. One role lets you repeat an action by paying jade (i.e. money), but you’re otherwise limited in being able to do something multiple times, even when you have extra actions available due to various bonuses.

The revised JKLM version cut the number of role cards in half, so now you have to manage that part of the game more diligently as well. Each role card now has multiple actions available, so choosing one action on a card cuts off the others, unless you pay jade in order to replay a role card.

The only hidden element in the game are cards that give you a bonus when you build bricks in certain patterns. This element adds a touch of guesswork to the game – is he trying for a pattern, or just going for points since bricks on higher levels score more? – but the bonuses are more of a pat on the back than anything else. The points for majority ownership within a building level in one part of the board or for a level across the entire board outweigh those bonus points, and with money, workers and bricks all open for you to count, you have some idea of who and what the real threats are. Reading intentions, of course, is another matter.

In case you couldn’t tell already, Huang Di plays much differently than Great Wall of China and Chang Cheng, and fans of the heavier alea titles will probably find a lot to like here.

Comments:

< Back Home