Game Preview: Masters of Venice

By W. Eric Martin
March 27, 2009

Designer: Frank DiLorenzo
Publisher: R&R Games
Players: 2-5
Ages: 15+
Playing Time: 60-150 minutes
Release Date: April 2009
Language: English
Price: $35
Link:

In my initial write-up of Masters of Venice, I mentioned that an involved strategy game seemed like an odd release for R&R Games, given the company’s recent track record of titles like Time’s Up! Deluxe, Disorder and Igor: The Monster Making Game. At the 2009 New York Toy Fair, an R&R representative mentioned older strategy titles that R&R had released, such as Overthrone, but being familiar with those titles won’t prepare anyone for the complexities that await them in this game.

To some degree, Masters of Venice is an everything-and-the-kitchen-sink game. Goods delivery, stock and market manipulation, bidding, worker placement, role selection – it’s all included, whether for good or ill. One player even mentioned that the game rivalled Die Macher in its sprawling, interlocking nature, an assessment that does have merit.

Your goal in Masters of Venice is to end up with the most victory points (VPs). That’s an easy goal to grasp, but getting there will take some work. The game lasts 16 rounds, which is broken into four equal quarters of a bidding round followed by three action rounds. Players secretly bid for turn order and the right to choose characters, each of which has a special power; the lowest bidder will automatically become the gondolieri, which isn’t necessarily a punishment as your poor standing in turn order is balanced somewhat by secret rumor tokens that you collect and the one-time ability to cut in line during an action round.

Once everyone has bid and found their place in line, they secretly select actions in three consecutive action rounds, with the restriction that they can’t choose the action chosen the previous round. Some actions can be taken by all the players, as long as anyone chooses them – think of Race for the Galaxy, while other actions benefit only the one who chooses it. When a shared action comes up, the players who chose it go first, then everyone else has a go at it. The locations associated with the actions are:

• The guild hall: Two actions are possible for all players at the guild hall: 1. Taking a guild order, which shows three resources (i.e. cubes) that must be delivered to the guild hall, and 2. Delivering goods to complete a guild order. (No surprise there, hmm.) To complete an order, you must have the goods and there must be enough orders for those goods on the resource tote boards. Every good starts with two orders for it, and players can increase orders at a shop during the bidding round, but you’re constantly fretting over those orders being used by someone else first.

  Completing guild orders gives you VPs, three for the first and more for later deliveries, and as in The Princes of Florence you can cash in VPs for money at the time you earn them. You also lower the number of outstanding orders and raise the price of the resource as well as its associated stock.

• The shipping offices, north and south: One resource cube awaits the player who chooses either of these locations, then a new cube is drawn to replace it, along with four cubes that are distributed among the four docks. Each cube added to the board lowers the price for that resource.

• The docks: Everyone can visit one of the four docks and purchase as many of the resources on hand as they desire and can afford, with each purchase raising the price of the resource for those who come later in the turn order.

• The stock market: Each player starts with one randomly distributed stock for one of the five shops, and when someone visits the stock market, everyone has a chance to buy or sell stock, raising it one notch upon purchase and sinking it two notches per share sold.

• The shops: Five shops line the board, one for each resource other than lumber, and when one player visits the shops, everyone else can follow. You can visit only one of the five shops, and at that shop you can sell as many goods of that type as you wish and for which there are orders – raising the price and stock value for each one you sell – and if you own more stock in that shop than anyone else, you can manipulate the price and orders to your advantage – or to harm others.

• The mercato: If the goods you need for guild orders don’t show up elsewhere, you can visit the mercato, which allows you and only you to buy one resource and sell one different resource, bumping up the price for each when you do so.

• The church: When you visit the church, you can purchase a favor which allows you to raise the orders for one type of good whenever you desire to do so.

After 16 rounds, the game ends. Players are penalized for unfulfilled guild orders and resources still in hand, then transmute stocks and cash to VPs at the rate of $100/1 VP. Whoever has the most points wins.

Designer Frank DiLorenzo at NY Toy Fair 2009

First impression, by W. Eric Martin

Version played: Preproduction copy
Times played: Four, once with 4 players, once with 3 and twice with 2

The description above glosses over many details about the game, such as the characters that each player chooses during a bidding round or what the rumor tokens do or what happens when the price of a resource bottoms out or goes off the charts. All of these details add to the time needed to explain the rules, rules that keep jumping in front of one another like kids buying packs of Yu-Gi-Oh cards. You need to keep circling back to specific parts of the game while covering all these details, and once you finish players are reeling from trying to fit everything together in their head: “I’m bidding for turn order and to increase orders for a resource while also taking one of six characters, each with a special power, then choosing from one of eight locations, with the possibility of taking multiple actions in a turn based on what others do, all while trying to balance my cashflow and stock holdings and not let the market for my wares get away from me.”

Yes, that’s it exactly. Now go do that.

In my first game, the three of us neglected the stock market for more than half the game. We played a game of pick-up-and-deliver, with lots of stocks changing prices to no effect on our wealth. The final turns of the game saw two of us with little to do as we wanted to avoid penalties at the guild hall from undelivered orders, so we diddled a bit, then ended the game, with the scores of the three players being determined almost entirely by guild orders. Stock was almost non-existent, as was our cash. Goods piled up unpurchased on the docks. The game ran to two hours-plus, with lots (and lots) of plastic peg movement to track resource prices, orders and stock values. The design seemed busy, far busier than a pick-up-and-deliver game should be.

But in retrospect we realized that we had neglected the stocks, stocks that deliver dividends from each shop sale, stocks that pump cash into your coffers, fueling further stock buys as well as the buying of resources. We had also neglected the rule allowing us to trade VPs for cash when delivering guild orders, furthering impoverishing us.

So we played again, or at least two of the three of us did, with two other new players, and this time we bought stock in the early rounds – three of us did anyway, with the holdout ending hurting for cash and points throughout the game. We could better anticipate who might go where when and the effect of stacked actions within a turn – for example, if I’m second and the first player chooses X or Y or Z, then I’ll have money to spend on my turn, but if he chooses any of these other actions, then I’ll be crimped, so what to choose? We anticipated the number of orders we might need and how to get them, what the stocks might do based on the actions of others and when to get rid of them.

With the shared actions in Masters of Venice, unlike in Puerto Rico, you can’t rely on certain actions showing up each round or two because someone else might choose the same action as you or an action that isn’t shared, thereby giving you only two actions in a round instead of four. You need to formulate your own plan and do what you can to carry it out, yet you also have the potential benefit of extra actions, and the better you can take advantage of those extra opportunities, the more you’ll gain versus opponents.

The two-player game is harsher in some respects as a move that benefits only you feels more like a wasted move. With three or four players, you can visit the church, for example, and still likely have another action or two in the round; with two players, a church visit feels like an admission of failure as you’ve been reduced to begging religious figures for favors and accomplishing little else. Overall the two-player game is more streamlined with fewer chances to recover from missteps due to the game having fewer actions, despite being the same number of rounds. You’ll visit the stock market less often and have less wiggle room for what to do when. You’ll be less inclined to purchase resources just because you can as you’ll likely have fewer shop visits available in order to dump them for a profit.

With more players, on the other hand, you’ll be astounded by the possibilities each turn. Processing all of these options, along with the actual carrying out of the actions, accounts for the wide range of playing times, with each player adding thirty minutes to the game.

Since I played on a preproduction copy, I’ll refrain from commenting on the components, other than to note the absence of player aids, something essential for players to know which locations allow which actions, how stock owners can manipulate orders at a shop and – most importantly – how the actions affect the movement of the stocks and the resource prices. Only after four games am I able to adjust the multiple pegs tracking such things automatically with no need to refer to the rules. A player aid would have made both learning and playing the game an easier process, and thankfully R&R Games has mentioned that such aids should be available for download from its website, the next best choice to having them in the box to begin with.

Ideally the rules will also be available for download for while I’ve grown to enjoy the game after the stodgy initial outing, I have no desire to ever teach the rules again. There are too many details to cover and absorb at once, and while I feel more comfortable with my ability to hack through the rules after multiple goes, I’d prefer to have people prepare on their own time and just get on with playing the game – the same as I do with Die Macher.

Editor’s note: After this preview was published, designer Frank DiLorenzo published designer notes detailing the game’s development on BoardGameGeek.]

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