Game Review: Gisborne

By W. Eric Martin
April 4, 2008

Publisher: Clementoni
Designer: Carlo A. Rossi
Players: 3-5
Ages: 8+
Playing Time: 30-40 minutes
Rules Language: German (English rulebook (PDF) available for download)

Version: Production copy
Times Played: Five, twice with five players and thrice with three

I advise caution when opening a copy of Gisborne. Think of the “Crunchy Frog” sketch by Monty Python, specifically the treat labeled Spring Surprise that throws steel bolts throw your cheeks when you pop it in your mouth.

Ideally, you’ll convince a mortal enemy to open the game box. You’ll invite him over under the pretense that you want to settle your differences, that you want to limit future confrontation to family board games and not acid-filled scarfs and showers booby-trapped with razor wire. You’ll wave towards the box in a friendly manner, inviting him to open it, while you fetch him a drink from the kitchen. Will a Merlot be good?

Whatever he asks for, though, you can put it out of mind and pour a celebratory glass for yourself since his doom is near thanks to this lethal chunk of cardboard…

Click on the picture to spring the trap!

Yes, the Gisborne insert is a particularly egregious example of an insert that just doesn’t work. The game comes with great cardboard holding trunks for the maps and cards that you’ll collect during the game – even snazzier trunks than in Diamant – but once assembled, they won’t fit in the box with the insert. Heck, even without the insert, you might have a tough time fitting everything inside.

As for the game itself, Gisborne is aimed at the family market, with players invited to pretend that they’re 18th century explorers landing on the west coast of New Zealand and crossing the island to see what’s what. With most explorers, you don’t know what you’ll discover once you start down a path; since this is a game, though, with ten jigsaw-style tiles holding parts of the path, you do know what might lie ahead – one tile is randomly removed – but you don’t know the order in which you’ll encounter obstacles. (Strangely, you do get to see the beach on the final tile at the start of the game.)

Movement in the game is governed by cards: bronze cards with values of 1 or 2, silver of 2 or 3, and gold of 3 or 4. On a turn, everyone plays up to five cards of the same metal face-down, then they reveal them in order based on their progress down the path. You draw 2, 1 or 0 cards depending on whether you play bronze, silver or gold cards. If someone lands on a map tile, worth 1-3 points, you hold a special scoring, with players getting to either keep bonus cards for additional movement or toss them in their trunk for one point each. The game ends when a player reaches the beach; you hold one final scoring round, then the player with the most points wins.

While the idea of the game is simple, Gisborne‘s details bog down the game play. After each turn, for example, you have to remember to draw 2, 1 or 0 cards based on what you played. In practice, this has meant that I must remind people to draw cards turn after turn because they often forget. Scoring rounds occur eleven times during the game, which is roughly two rounds out of every three, so that’s more card distribution on my part.

The tiles that form the path come in five flavors, and a new tile is revealed only when a player would move off the final space of the latest tile. As you might expect, some tiles can reward you, others can punish you, and still others have wolves that are not present in New Zealand, as some NZ residents quickly noted when the game appeared. The tile revelation presents players with a quandary as rushing ahead helps you cover ground in case a scoring occurs, while simultaneously threatening you with swamps and wolves.

This mix of reward/risk seems appropriate for a family game, but the card fiddliness (in addition to the variety of tiles and their special actions) doesn’t since casual gamers seem to prefer more straightforward rules. Gamers can handle the details and variety – well, maybe they can on the second playing of the game – but the tile-flipping is a turnoff for some due to its unpredictability. Two have even referenced C*ndyl*nd, which is never a compliment in gaming circles.

The graphic design also hinders game play as the large wooden meeples cover the entire space on the path. Only one meeple can occupy a space, so you don’t have to worry about sharing, but the twists and turns of the path are often hidden behind a meeple wall, forcing you to twist your head all around to try to count how many spaces separate you from the next map space, safety in between patches of swamp, or what have you.

Naturally some people complain about luck of the draw – “He drew all gold cards, while I got 1s and 2s.” – but people complain about lots of stuff, and they’re almost always talking through their hat. Having lots of gold lets you shoot down the path, but then you won’t draw any cards and you’ll have to spend turns doing nothing but drawing two cards while others advance. In my most recent game, the non-gold drawer won the game by stashing cards for points in most of the scoring rounds while collecting only a single map.

In the end, I’m not sure what to think about Gisborne. I like the game play, but not the fiddly card-handling. It seems ideal for families, but only if they’re patient enough to get over that first game hump and absorb all the details of the tiles and card drawing. Gamers will find tactical elements to the movement and maneuvering, yet perhaps feel that planning isn’t worth the effort given the swings possible due to new tiles being revealed. I’ve explored the path and found a lot on the way; interpreting what I’ve found is another matter.

Disclosure: After receiving a preliminary copy of the English rules from Clementoni, I edited them and sent the changes back to the editor who sent me the game. The editor then offered to pay for my unanticipated work, and no fool me, I took the payment.

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Comments:

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Sounds like a good candidate for BSW. It fits right in with Diamante, Cartagena, and Emerald: amusing, fast, luck-heavy. Posted by Jim Cote on Apr 5, 2008 at 04:54 PM | #

Diamante, anyway, is much, much, much more fun as there’s a push-your-luck element that provides some actual entertainment. Posted by Matthew Frederick on Apr 15, 2008 at 02:13 PM | #

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