Larry Levy:  Diamonds are a Smuggler’s Best Friend

The most innovative ideas in gaming continue to come from the smaller publishers, even some of the really tiny ones.  Unfortunately, those same publishers are also the most likely to produce games that might require a bit of development.  That’s the chance you take with a pig in a poke (or even a cat in a sack), but it does let you try out some enjoyable new things.

Crazy Diamond & Karatino (sounds like a bad seventies rock group!) is the first effort from Dutch designer Bas Kesting and spanking new publisher Spezet.  The game actually debuted in 2006, but it seems the first that anyone had heard of it was at this year’s Essen.  The strange sounding title comes from the fact that this is two games in one, with Karatino constructed as the thematic follow-up to Crazy Diamond.  Crazy Diamond seemed more gamer friendly, so that’s the one we played last week.

The theme is we are all diamond smugglers trying to extricate some hot rocks from a mythical African nation, where apparently the stuff is just lying around waiting to be swiped.  The central board is six-sided and each of the player boards attaches jigsaw style to one side, giving the final display a snowflake-like appearance.  This not only makes it easier to place the boards where the players are sitting, it also makes it simpler to turn the board over, revealing the playing area of Karatino.  The components also include a custom die and plastic pieces cut to look like diamonds (a very nice touch), which are the markers the players will be moving on the boards.

The player boards are all identical, with each showing a map of the fictional country, including about 50 cities joined by three types of connections.  There are dirt paths, traversable only by foot; roads, where cars can be used; and rivers.  Some of the cities on rivers are labeled as ports and some of the others are labeled as airports.  The city at the top of the board is connected to the mine, where the diamonds can be found; the one at the bottom is the way out of the country and the players’ waiting safe deposit boxes.  Diamonds enter from the mine; once a player moves one onto his board, it remains his and can’t be affected by an opponent’s actions.

On each player’s turn, he rolls the die and all the players get to use the result.  Four of the sides of the die show the numbers 1 through 4; the fifth side shows a port symbol; and the sixth shows an airport symbol.  Each player can use the die’s result to move one of their diamonds.  For a 1 through 4, you can move up to the rolled amount, but you must move by land, either on a path or on a road (but not on both).  For a port, you can only move by sea—if you have a diamond on a port, you can move up to two ports away over the river.  For an airport, you can only move by air—if you have a diamond at an airport, you can move it to any other airport.  After everyone has moved, the next player rolls the die and the process continues.

The cities and transportation connections are arranged cleverly enough that moving your diamonds so as to make the best use of any roll that comes up on the next turn isn’t all that straightforward.  Still, this would be little more than a pleasant die rolling exercise except for the final element.  There is a corruption card for each city in the game.  On the active player’s turn, before she rolls the die, she has the option of buying one of these cards (the costs range from 3 to 5 diamonds).  If she does, she has bought off the local constabulary and every other player has to put a marker on that city to show that they can no longer visit there.  There is a way out, though.  At any time (even after the die has been rolled), another player can offer to make a set payment (usually two diamonds) to the holder of the corruption card.  If the holder accepts, then the player can use the city.

Each corruption card has a value that can be applied toward the game ending total.  For example, a corruption card that costs 5 diamonds has a value of 3 diamonds, which is added to the diamonds the player possesses.  This lessens the absolute cost of the cards, while still ensuring that the players won’t be able to buy them up too quickly.  The first player with a combined total of 25 between his diamonds and his cards wins the game.

At first, it seems as if the corruption cards aren’t really worth their cost and maybe they’re not at the start.  But as more and more cities get closed down, the noose begins to tighten.  I don’t care if Al shuts down this city, because I still have a road path through this alternate city which is only slightly longer.  But then Barbara buys that city!  I guess I’ll have to pay the bribe to Al, but it would have been nicer if I’d done it right away and not had to take the detour these last few turns.  It might have been smarter still for me to have bought the second city after Al’s purchase!  These are the kinds of decisions that you encounter and they’re rather nice.  The costs are such that if you get only one player to bribe you, you’ll break even on the deal (that is, the card’s value plus the bribe will equal its cost) and you’ve still inconvenienced the other players.  And if you get two bribes, then you’re really making out!  But deciding which cities will be critical, both for you and for your opponents, isn’t particularly easy, which is where the skill comes in.

So in essence, we have not a network building game, but a network destruction game, where your goal is to keep enough paths alive amongst the carnage to succeed.  I can think of only one other game that uses this clever idea:  John Bohrer’s Rebel Rails.  That 2001 title was a city connection game set in the Confederacy during the Civil War, so rail links were destroyed with some regularity as the Union encroached on ol’ Dixie.  The concept in the Winsome game was sound and innovative, but sadly, the execution was not.  But it does work in the much simpler Crazy Diamond.

However, there is one flaw to the game and that’s where the lack of development may have come in.  The game takes too long for what it is.  Usually, a roll and move game, even one like this with a clever twist and a reduced luck element, wears out its welcome after a half hour or so.  But there’s enough going on here that I think 45 minutes would be just fine.  However, the listed duration is an hour and our game went at least 10 minutes longer than that.  It wasn’t torture by any means, but we all would have been happier with a shorter game.  It doesn’t appear to be an isolated problem either, as several people on the Geek mention the same issue.  The difficulty is that the last 15 minutes or so are just die rolling, since the game is close enough to ending at that point that you won’t get a sufficient benefit from buying new cities.  The thing is, this is a necessary process, to demonstrate which player’s surviving network is the best.  All build-and-test games, like Railway Rivals/Dampfross and Streetcar have similar endgame issues.  You could always lower the game ending requirement, but that would probably make it worthwhile to minimize the number of cities the players buy (maybe to zero) and that’s the best part of the game.  The best change might be to accelerate the beginning of the game and I have an idea for how to do that, but I’d rather test it out before I post anything.

I still think Crazy Diamond is an interesting game that’s well worth trying out.  It’s always fun to see innovative ways of using age-old mechanisms and projecting which cities will close out and what purchases you should make in the face of that requires genuinely good judgment.  I wish it was shorter, but it’s still a very nice first effort by Mr. Kesting and I look forward to more designs from this source.

© 2007 Larry Levy

---

Comments:

You must register with BGN in order to comment. Registration is free!

Another game in this tiny route destruction category is Eric Solomon’s Alaska (Ravensburger, 1979).  In Alaska the object is to rescue containers from an island in a lake. In the first half of the game, pieces of ice are placed and paths to the island are created.  In the second half there is a thaw, paths gradually melt away and routes get more tortuous. Posted by Andy Parsons on Nov 6, 2007 at 03:48 AM | #

Interesting---I like path rerouting games, so I might have to add this to my list. Although what I REALLY want is the Pink Lady and Jeff game. Posted by Frank Branham on Nov 6, 2007 at 08:01 AM | #

The Bridges of Shangri-La incorporates a type of route destruction concept in that each bridge can only be used once. A couple of Moon games also incorporate the concept.  Elfenland and Santa Fe both have all the paths available.  In Elfenland, the routes aren’t so much removed as made more difficult either by “wrong” tpye of transportation chit or hazard chit.  In Santa Fe, the decisions players make at intersections can eliminate potential paths. Merchants of Venus with the advanced rules also includes the Rastur that start making formerly profitable routes more expensive and/or impassable. I can’t remember if it was a published game or not, but I played an 18XX railroad game where after the Civil War, the southern rails started disappearing randomly. It is fun concept. Posted by Scott Russell on Nov 6, 2007 at 08:51 AM | #

"Crazy Diamond” - I would have expected a game about Syd Barrett.  When is that one coming? Posted by Jonathan Degann on Nov 7, 2007 at 11:52 AM | #

< Back Home