Larry Levy:  Peloponnes - Greece on 45 Minutes a Game

One of the Holy Grails every gamer used to pine for was the Civ Lite design—a game that captured the scope and strategy of Francis Tresham’s classic Civilization, but which could be finished in two or three hours.  You don’t hear as much about that as you used to.  For one thing, I think we’ve gotten smarter and realized that to some extent, an epic theme requires an epic period of time to be played.  There’s also the realization that if you’re willing to compromise on your Civ requirements just a bit, Vlaada Chvatil’s brilliant Through the Ages comes awfully close to fitting the bill.

That doesn’t mean that clever designers have given up the quest for a scaled down Civ game.  The recent trend is for much lighter games with a Civ theme that can be played in less than an hour.  These are designs that Mike Siggins calls “super fillers”, which give you some pretty impressive gameplay in a short period of time.  One example is Matt Leacock’s Rolling Through the Ages, which combines Yahtzee-style dice rolling with a Civ theme and succeeds very well.

I find games like this very appealing.  So when I got a note a few months ago from my pen pal Jeff Allers (Alea Iacta Est, Aber Bitte mit Sahne—aka the Pie Game) that his good buddy and sometime design partner Bernd Eisenstein had created a Civ super filler called Peloponnes which would be ready in time for Essen, I was intrigued.  Jeff offered to send me a review copy and I was happy to accept.  I’ve played the game three times (once with four players and twice with three), so I’m ready to give you my impressions of it.

Peloponnes is for 1-5 players and is the first release from Eisenstein’s own company Irongames.  The players control ancient civilizations just getting started out on the isthmus of Greece.  They will attempt to increase their influence by acquiring new lands and constructing buildings.  The player who does the best job of maximizing these acquisitions while also feeding his population will win the game.

Each player begins with a player mat which is used to track their possessions.  There are separate tracks for the three resources (wood, stone, and food), along with a special resource (luxury goods), and the civilization’s population.  Wooden tokens show the current level on each track.  The players are also dealt one of the seven beginning civilization tiles, which gives their starting population, money, and income.

There are 40 tiles in the game, half of which are Land tiles and half of which are Building tiles.  These each have a minimum bid, a victory point value, a one-time award (usually population, sometimes resources and money as well), and an income (resources).  15 of them show the letter “A” on their back, 15 show “B”, and 10 show “C”.  Prior to the game, they are sorted by letter and each stack is shuffled.  The “A” tiles will appear in the game first, followed by the “B” and “C” tiles.

On each turn, tiles equal to the number of players are exposed in a row.  Then, sufficient tiles to bring the total up to five are exposed in a separate Conquest row above the other tiles.  So in a three-player game, for example, there will be 3 tiles in the lower row and 2 tiles in the Conquest row.  The first player now has three options.  She can pass and take 3 coins from the bank.  She can place a bid next to one of the tiles in the lower row, as long as it’s at least equal to the tile’s minimum bid.  Or she can “conquer” one of the tiles in the Conquest row, by paying the tile’s minimum bid plus 3 coins (war is not only hell, it’s expensive!).  If she does the last action, she cannot be outbid and the tile is hers to keep.  The succeeding players have the same choices.  Bids can be placed against a tile in the lower row that a previous player bid on as long as the new bid is greater.  If this is done, the player who had previously bid on the tile must shift his bid to any other tile with a sufficiently low minimum bid.  He cannot change the amount of his bid.  Alternatively, he can take his bid back, along with an additional coin from the bank.  Naturally, it’s possible for a cascade of shifted bids to be triggered by one player’s choice.

Once the last player has placed her bid, the players take their tiles.  Building tiles are placed to the left of the beginning Civ tile and Land tiles go to the right.  Each type of tile has its own additional complication.  Building tiles have a resource cost in addition to the cost of the bid.  If the player can’t or doesn’t want to pay it, no worries, as the ancient Greeks were all about Easy Credit.  The player just puts a coin from his supply on the tile and places it anyway.  He gains all the benefits of the tile, but will eventually have to pay that cost.  Land tiles have no additional costs, but have an adjacency requirement.  Each Land tile gives the player Income of one or two types of resources each turn.  The first Land tile can be placed freely, but each subsequent one can only be placed if it shares a resource Income type with the Land tile on the right end of the row.  These restrictions obviously affect which tiles the players will bid for.

The turn order for the next turn is then changed based on the bidding.  The player who bid the most will go first, followed by the next highest bid, and so on.  The players who passed will go last.

Those that won tiles get to add the one-time award from the tile to their displays.  All the players then get income from all the tiles in their row.  Wood, stone, and food each have maximum levels; any resources gained in excess of this level are recorded as luxury goods instead (which reflects that the civilization has enough of a surplus that it can trade with its neighbors).  Two luxury goods can be substituted for any resource or for a coin in the event of a shortage.  So they’re less efficient than the real thing, but give the owner a lot of flexibility.  Players also earn tax income from their population—the higher the population, the more coins they get.

Any Civ game worth its salt has disasters and Peloponnes is no exception.  There are five of them and each causes the players to lose different kinds of resources, money, and population when triggered.  There are 16 disaster chits—three associated with each disaster and one blank.  Each turn, two of these are exposed.  When all three of a disaster’s chits are drawn, the disaster takes place.  Since there are eight turns in the game, each disaster will be triggered exactly once each game.  Some of the buildings gives the owning player immunity from one of the disasters and these are much prized.

One of the B tiles and one of the C tiles triggers a supply round when it is exposed.  When this occurs, each player must feed their hungry people by losing food equal to their population level.  If there isn’t enough food, the unfed folks starve.  The players must also pay for any of the unpaid buildings they acquired on Layaway.  If they can’t or don’t want to pay for a building, it’s lost.  Either way, they get their coin back.

At the end of eight turns, the game is over.  There is one last supply round and then everyone determines their victory points.  This is done by calculating two values.  The first is the sum of the VP values on all of the tiles in the player’s row.  The second is equal to three times the player’s final population.  The lower of these two values is the player’s score and the highest score wins the game.

Peloponnes is one of those games that doesn’t seem too exciting when you first read the rules; much of what is here has been done before and the innovations are small ones.  But the proof of the pudding is how it plays and it plays very well.  This is a very smooth and elegant design, with no sharp corners.  Eisenstein has said that he worked on refining this game for several years and it shows—everything fits together like clockwork.

The best thing about Peloponnes is how fast it plays.  Expose the tiles, place your bids, adjust your displays, reveal a couple of Disaster tiles, and boom!, you’re ready for the next turn.  The duration is listed at 15 minutes per player and that’s just how long our games have taken.  And yet, there’s a number of interesting decisions everyone has to make during that time.

Much of this quick play comes from the bidding procedure.  It uses Evo-style bidding, but in the game’s principal innovation, players aren’t allowed to change their bids should they get overbid, which would seem to restrict your choices.  However, as we’ve seen numerous times in the past, restricting choices leads to more skillful play.  You have to put a lot of thought in not only which tile to bid on, but how much to bid.  If you get overbid, you’ll want to have a reasonable backup tile to slide your bid to.  Having to bid first can be brutal in this game.  Trying to pick up a bargain with some of the cheaper tiles can be a huge risk, since you may not be able to move to a more expensive tile if you’re overbid.  So your bids might be higher than you’d like, just to make sure you don’t wind up empty-handed.  This might make bidding for the tiles in the Conquest row (where you can’t be overbid) attractive (by the way, these tiles are another small innovation that works well).  And it’s often not a bad idea to pass; not only does it give you extra money for succeeding rounds (always nice, since money is tight), but it should get you to the back end of the turn order, where life is a bit simpler.  In general, it’s always a good idea to consider the effect of your bidding on the turn order, which gives you yet another thing to think about.

Deciding which tile to bid on is far from straightforward, even though you only have to choose from five tiles at a time (another thing which keeps this game moving).  Balancing your income in the three resources is tough and you’ll always feel as if you’re not doing as well as you’d like.  The restrictions on acquiring Building and Land tiles have to be weighed as well.  Taking a Land tile with only one type of income is a bit of a gamble, as you might be locked into that resource type for a while.  And even though you can buy Building tiles on credit, you still have to ensure you’ll be able to afford them when the bill comes due.  Besides, temporarily losing the use of that one coin can put a surprising crimp in your bidding options.

The Luxury Goods rule is another mechanic that plays better than it reads.  Normally, in games of this kind, you strive to have a balance between the different resources you earn, which, given the competition from your opponents and the restrictions on Land tiles, can be difficult to attain.  Luxury Goods give you a different option; namely, specialization, which might be easier to do.  A balanced income is still superior, but there’s something very comforting about a pile of Luxury Goods that can be substituted for anything you run short of in the game, including money.  So it’s nice that this additional strategic path is present.

Much of the game’s advance planning deals with the supply rounds and the disasters.  Feeding your people is a must, as it can be tough to recover from the loss of early population—not only might it hurt you at game’s end, but your income each turn will be diminished as well.  So ya gotta arrange to have food during those critical feeding rounds.  None of the disasters are crippling, but in a game with tight supplies, all of them will put a hurt on you.  The way they come out is just right; you have some advance warning, but there’s still the chance for surprises in their timing.  I like the fact that all of the disasters will be triggered each game, as that reduces the luck factor, while still leaving some randomness in the order they arise.  The end of the game is particularly nasty, since there will be a minimum of one disaster hitting, and usually two, followed by a supply round.  This gives a dramatic finish to the game and rewards the player who planned ahead best.

The key rule is that your final score is the lesser of your tile VP total and your population VP total.  This gives the game an extra dimension and increases the tension in your juggling act that much more.  Like the other decisions in the game, these aren’t brain-bending, but still require thought.  Peloponnes is a middleweight game, but there’s still plenty of stuff here to challenge those who like meatier designs.

The game works very well with both 3 and 4 players.  I see no reason why it wouldn’t work just as well with 2, and I can see it being an excellent 30 minute “just before bed” game for a married couple.  The 5 player game might prove to be a little more chaotic and I think I’d miss having any Conquest tiles, but I’d still be very willing to try it out with that number; I might well wind up being pleasantly surprised.  The designer also provides a couple of solitaire versions.  One of them is to help in learning the game (which is how I first “played” it, and it did its job very well).  The other is a series of solo games, similar to the solitaire games in Agricola.  There isn’t the kind of variety the cards give you in solo Agricola, but I still want to try this version out, as I think it’ll be fun.

Three games isn’t enough to decide about the title’s replayability, but I don’t think it’ll be a problem.  The order the tiles come out, as well as how the disasters and supply rounds play out, can really change the game.  Plus, having 7 beginning Civ tiles in a game with no more than 5 players guarantees some variety.  All of our games played out differently and we’ve still got plenty of work ahead of us to try to master this game.  And even if things get a bit stale, Irongames will be selling an expansion (Peloponnes Erweiterung) at Essen, which adds the capacity for a sixth player as well as letting your fledgling civilizations navigate the seas.

Since this is the first title from Irongames, a discussion of the components is particularly relevant.  Peloponnes is a fully professional production.  The box is sturdy and appropriately sized.  The tiles, which are about a third larger than those from Carcassonne, look like they should hold up well to repeated use.  The artwork is nothing to write home about, but it’s adequate.  The artist did do a good job in presenting the information on the tiles, however.  Some tiles have as many as six different pieces of data on them, but they are presented clearly and consistently, which is quite important in a game like this.  The player mats are made of coated flexible cardstock and, again, do their job well without being overly stylish.  There’s information at the bottom of the mats which is supposed to remind the players about the game ending procedure, but it’s pretty confusing and might do more harm than good; fortunately, the game ending procedure is easily remembered.  And the coins are small wooden discs which, again, are perfectly adequate to their task.  Peloponnes is not a work of art, but neither is it ugly.  The components all fill their role well and in no way detract from the design’s fine gameplay.

I have only one complaint about the game and that is that it isn’t too closely tied to its theme.  This is unusual for me, as tenuous theming doesn’t usually bother me too much.  But as I said at the beginning of the review, civilization building is a topic that interests me, so I was hoping for something a bit stronger.  Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t a poorly themed game; all the trappings are there and the players won’t feel like they’re building a shopping center.  But neither do you get the strong feeling of a civilization slowly acquiring new capabilities, until it becomes a power to be reckoned with.  I think the main culprit here are the tiles.  The Land tiles are, by necessity, generic, so there’s not much to be done there.  But the Building tiles aren’t tied too closely to their function.  With all the data on them, there’s not much room for an illustration, so that’s one thematic problem.  Moreover, the names of the tiles are either so generic (like “Bridge") or so obscure (like “Tiryns Fortress") that they add little atmosphere to the game.  Worst of all, the names are hard to read, making it even more likely that the players will be bidding on “that 4 VP tile”, rather than the “Barracks”.  Given how quickly this game plays, perhaps it’s asking too much for a strong tie to such an epic theme.  But I think with a little more care and finesse, this could have been handled better, which would have made the game even more interesting.

But that really isn’t a strong criticism.  Overall, I’m very happy with Peloponnes.  It’s a game with an interesting theme that plays very fast, with intriguing decisions throughout.  If I had to pick another game that occupies the same niche, I think it would be Web of Power, which also packs a lot of game into a short duration.  Right now, I think I’d rank Peloponnes higher than the Schacht design, for its more varied and interactive gameplay.  That’s pretty high praise, but we’ve really enjoyed our games so far.  Designer Eisenstein has created other games, including Alea Iacta Est, Pack & Stack, and Maya, but I think this is clearly his best design.  Each year, there are a number of surprise hits at Essen and it wouldn’t shock me to see this title come out of nowhere to do well.  So if you find yourself at the Fair, wander over to the Irongames stand and see what you think.  Who knows, you might see history in the making!

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