Game Preview: Nefertiti

By W. Eric Martin
May 29, 2008

Publisher: Editions du Matagot / Rio Grande Games
Designers: Jacques Bariot, Guillaume Montiage & Thomas Cauet
Artwork: Alexandre Roche
Players: 3-4
Playing Time: 45 minutes
Release Date: April (in French) / June (in English)
Rules: English rules (PDF) / Character and market sheets (PDF)

I’m the best man at a friend’s wedding next weekend – one of two best men, in fact – and while my wife and I have been puzzled over what gift to buy, we can now gratefully take inspiration from Nefertiti, the latest game from French publisher Editions du Matagot. (Rio Grande Games will release an English-language version in June 2008.)

Players in Nefertiti are members of the Egyptian nobility who have been ordered by King Akhenaton to find fabulous gifts for his wife to celebrate their wedding anniversary. Having no access to gift cards from Best Buy or the Target gift registry, they must instead turn to four Egyptian markets and see what’s on offer there – or rather they send their servants out to scout the gifts on display. They are nobility, after all.

Back to the Past

Co-designer Thomas Cauet says that he first saw the prototype of this game – which Bariot and Montaige created on their own – more than two years ago, while playtesting with Ystari’s Cyril Demaegd. “The schedule was already full for Ystari, with no time to develop another project,” he says. “But I really liked the core mechanism, so I did a lot of sessions on my own and sent feedback and ideas to Guillaume and Jacques.”

Over a beer at the Essen game convention, the three of them decided to work together and shop the revised design to various publishers. One year later, Hicham at Matagot was interested and worked with the designers to move the game from a present-day Egyptian setting – in which players tried to bribe their way to ownership of antiquities – to its current historical setting.

Check the Registry

Each market in Nefertiti has four gift cards, one bearing a royal seal and three others; gifts come in six or seven varieties depending on the number of players. On a turn, you place one of your servants in a numbered square in a market, making a bid for an item, as it were. Each market is divided into two sections, only one of which is revealed at a time, and when the unique closing conditions of that market are reached – bids totaling 17 or more, three bids from the same player, four servants in a chain, etc. – the market closes. Starting with the highest bidder, the owners of the servants can either pay the bid by placing coins on that market’s reserve and take a gift or take half the money on the reserve.

Auctions in ancient Egypt? Haven’t we been here before with Ra and Amun-Re? Sure, but that doesn’t mean Nefertiti feels like those other games. Instead of the regular rounds of those games, the closing of the markets takes place only when someone takes action to close it – and money management is a constant challenge since you don’t know which market will close when.

The royal seals allow you to take character cards, which provide some special benefit. Asked about mistakes that first-time players will make, Cauet warns that they will undoubtedly misestimate the power of the characters.

The game ends once the deck of gift cards nears completion, then players compare their gifts with points being awarded for each item based on how many people have them. Have statuettes to yourself, and you’ll receive 11 points for each one; if everyone is giving rice cookers, er, statuettes, then they’re worth only 6 points each. If you’ve outdone all the other givers, Akhenaton will crown you the winner!

For another take on Nefertiti, head to Bruno Faidutti’s write-up. My review must wait, alas, until I actually have the game in hand. You can also watch a trailer for the game on YouTube.

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Comments:

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Nice job on the translation, Eric! I found only the following minor stuff: Page 2: “du-ring” is incorrectly split by the hyphenation dictionary. Page 2: “a empty” should be “an empty”. Page 3: It’s unclear if you get the gift(s) when resolving a bid that you cannot pay, and if you also qualify for the “Special Bid Squares” extra card affect. Page 4: “exemple” should be “example”. Global: I think “Markets sheet” and “Characters sheet” sound particularly non-English. Markets Sheet, Page 1: There’s no numeric example for Giza’s second pane. Markets Sheet, Page 1: “superior or equal to” should be “greater than or equal to”, in both places. Markets Sheet, Page 1: “If when the market closes” should be “If, when the market closes,”, in both cases. Markets Sheet, Page 2: “diffe-rent”, “sta-tuette”, “clo-ses”, and “perso-nal” are incorrectly split by the hyphenation dictionary. Markets Sheet, Page 2: What if a player uses the High Priest and has no servants? Does he close 2 markets? Can he close one and then place a servant in the newly-opened market? Markets Sheet, Page 2: “neither player pays anything in Deben” is strange since only one player is concerned. Markets Sheet, Page 2: May you choose the First Merchant if there is only 1 legal trade you can make? Posted by Jim Cote on May 29, 2008 at 02:59 AM | #

I really like the ebb and flow of the markets. It’s analogous to a 4-region area influence game where the regions are alternately filling, emptying, and closing without any rigid global control systems. The mix of player-controlled market closing with random market closing is strange. The character cards seem to be an awkward mix, reminiscent of Yspahan or Amyitis, which just about sets my outlook for this game. Posted by Jim Cote on May 29, 2008 at 03:09 AM | #

Thanks, Jim. Three things: 1) The English version has been printed and is on its way to the U.S., so the rules are set. 2) Kurt McClung translated the rules; I only helped edit them. 3) Translators and editors make suggestions, but the one who’s putting the money on the line always gets the last word. Eric Posted by W. Eric Martin on May 29, 2008 at 06:31 AM | #

Jim, For “exemple” and “aN empty”, our mistake. For the “greater than” (suggested by Eric), it was decided to keep “superior”: I know maybe it sounds too “French”. For the high priest question, 2 cases: - you have no servants: first you close a market as your first action, then you place a servant as your second action - you have only one servant: you place it and in case it doesn’t trigger a closing (in this case it is solved immediately and you have a servant to place for your second action), then you close a market as your second action Note that these exceptions don’t happen that much. For the merchant, yes you discard always the first merchant even if you don’t want to do more than one trade. For the random market closing, you’ll see that we tried to adapt it to the global markets closing rythm and is part of the fun: - each market has 2 stalls, one fast (3 servants to close) and one slow (4 servants to close with one exception) - for the random market, if you place your servants to help closing, then you need 3 servants (right stall), and 4 servants (left stall) to achieve 50% chance closing. The first four spaces of these stalls have also a limitation With luck, it may be faster or slower and so it plays with the standard (predictable) rythm of fast/slow stalls. You’ll see you have ways to adapt to this. Not sure to be clear enough :) Posted by Thomas Cauët on May 29, 2008 at 08:02 AM | #

And yes nice job Eric on editing the rules! Thanks a lot! Posted by Thomas Cauët on May 29, 2008 at 08:03 AM | #

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