Game Review: Courtyard

By W. Eric Martin
August 15, 2008

Publisher: Blue Panther
Designer: Steve Jones
Players: 2-4
Ages:
Playing Time:  minutes
Rules Language: English

Version played: Production copy
Times played: Four, thrice with two players and once with three

We create and define our own spaces from a young age, whether in the sandbox, on the playground or with an imaginary line down the center of the family car’s back seat. Sure, our parents emphasize the need for sharing and learning how to play together, but at the same time they’re doing that, they build fences and yell at the neighbor to “keep that damn dog off my lawn!”

As we get older, we build private spaces as well, learning when to keep secrets and when not to say what we really think. (No one needs to know my true feelings about Mr. Rogers, agreed?) We divide into cliques at school and teams at work. Barriers are everywhere, as much by choice as by imposition.

As such, it’s not surprising that designers keep turning out games that involve the building of walls, the division of space into quantifiable bits. Wall-building is understood by everyone, and designing something that recreates that fundamental activity is a good challenge for game designers, whether budding or in full bloom. Leo Colovini’s Masons, for example, combines the freedom for players to build walls wherever they want with the forced placement of towers and houses around those walls. Hidden scoring cards, together with those unpredictable towers and houses, drive each player’s building decisions so the board develops differently each game. Thomas Fackler’s Die Mauer is a bluffing game with building rules that give you some idea of who might try to build which wall piece in each round. These games and many others are bricks in another wall I’ve created, the Wall O’ Games in my game room.

Not all of these wall-building games succeed, mind you, and Courtyard is one that falls a few bricks short of a towering achievement. During the game, each player has a hand of five wall tiles and one tower tile; on a turn, you can play as many tiles as you want following the usual rules for such games. (Walls can’t intersect empty spaces; tiles have to line up; etc.) As with all Blue Panther games, the wood box and components have graphics burned into them.

The custom-designed tile racks are a nice idea, but don’t work as well as you would hope

When you enclose a space with a complete wall, you score points equal to the number of tiles in the space multiplied by the number of towers in the wall surrounding that space. Since you have only one tower in hand, you want to create areas that incorporate towers already on the board to get lots of multipliers – but other players are trying to do the same thing, of course, which leads to stand-offs. If, for example, I don’t have six tiles that can link together to enclose an area and score, then I’ll tend to play one or two tiles that create a situation in which my opponent would need to have six tiles in which to score. Heck, I might divert a wall in such a way that he can’t score at all unless he can create a loop off an extended twig of wall – and if he does score in such a situation, he’d get only four or six points since the enclosure would have only one tower. If I build in any other way, then I’m probably handing more points to an opponent, who will enclose the space before I get another turn.

In my games, typically one player would net a decent area scoring of 20-30 points, then that player would try to shut down the field by blocking or diverting exposed ends. Players would then alternate small scores until one type of tile ran out and the game ended. The trick was how to create that big scoring opportunity for yourself and gain that lead position, but doing so seemed more a matter of luck than anything else.

Early scoring

I’ll freely admit that Courtyard works fine as is and will appeal to some people. An opponent in one of my games, for example, is a huge Scrabble fan who competes in tournaments, and Scrabble mimics Courtyard‘s play style as players alternate between turns in which they swap tiles (i.e. play one or two tiles as a null move) and turns in which they lay out bingoes or other huge scoring words (i.e. play all six tiles to enclose an area). This opponent likes to describe Scrabble as an area-control game with each potential word counting as an acceptable play. Similarly Courtyard can be seen as an area-control game with turns varying widely between passes and all-out assaults.

While I do enjoy many games that require turn-by-turn tactics, the all-or-nothing approach of turns in Courtyard – which seemed to rely more on good drawing than smart playing – led me to remove this particular brick from the Wall O’ Games. With luck, the new owner will find it a good fit is his wall…

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