Larry Levy:  Still a-lovin’ Alea

When I first discovered the wonderful world of German gaming, I tended to focus on the games’ designers, rather than the publishers.  This seemed perfectly natural—I certainly didn’t care about publishing houses when I bought books or recording studios when I bought records.  Different designers had different styles, which was both interesting and helpful in guiding my game buying.

But soon enough, I realized that there are differences among publishers as well.  Some featured a lot of games I enjoyed playing (like Hans im Glück) and others had spottier records (Queen used to be a perfect example of this, but they’ve become more dependable lately—maybe they’ve spent some of that Alhambra SdJ money wisely).  There are other distinguishing features:  obviously, you can always identify an Adlung game, but even publishers like Amigo and, in the past, Goldseiber tend toward very distinct patterns.

But for me, there’s one publisher whose track record far exceeds any other’s.  Alea.

What brought this to mind was the demo of Alea’s latest big box game, Notre Dame, at Essen.  Following the pattern they’ve set for several years, the company presents an almost completed design at the Messe and then releases the final version at Nuremburg.  The game was extremely well received; it finished on top of the Fairplay list with a very impressive score of 1.33 (that’s in the standard 1-6 German rating system; it would probably translate to something like an average score of 9 in a 1-10 rating system).  There were also numerous comments from gamers expressing joy that Alea was “finally backâ€?.

Well, I don’t think they ever left.  They may have been a victim of their own success, but I still think Alea’s track record over the past few years is the rival of any publisher.

I think there’s a reasonably large contingent in our hobby who feels that Alea jumped the shark after the release of Puerto Rico.  I’d like to dispute that, but first, let’s look at the company’s early releases that gave them such a mighty reputation in the first place.

In Alea’s first four years (1999-2002), they released six big box games of unparalleled quality (I’m not counting Adel Verpflichtet, since that was a straight reprint).  Ra isn’t a personal favorite, but it’s in the Geek’s all-time Top Ten.  Chinatown and Traders of Genoa are two of my favorite negotiation games.  Taj Mahal is a classic.  And Puerto Rico and Princes of Florence are, respectively, my first and third favorite games of all time (they’re also first and sixth in the Geek’s rankings).  An amazing run and absolutely impossible to live up to.

The smaller games weren’t quite as successful, but for the most part, they did nothing to diminish the company’s reputation.  Royal Turf and Wyatt Earp were both big successes.  Only Die Sieben Weisen was a flop.

The beginning of the end for Alea in many gamers’ eyes was the big box game that followed Puerto Rico, Mammoth Hunters.  Now, anything would have looked bad after the appearance of THE game, but Mammoth Hunters was truly skewered.  To be fair, it isn’t a very good game.  Some good ideas, but way too chaotic.  I asked Mr. Alea himself, Stefan Brück, about it once and he explained that no suitable game could be found, so he was more or less assigned to do this one.  He said that given another six months, he could have developed it into a good design.  That’s a rather surprising insight into the importance of game development, but given Stefan’s reputation, I have no doubt he could have managed the task.  But Alea needed a Spring release that year, so Mammoth Hunters came out before its time and suffered accordingly.

The next big boxer, Fifth Avenue, didn’t fare much better.  In this case, though, I think the game was the victim of some bizarre Gathering groupthink.  It’s not a great game, but I find it quite enjoyable and the need to make many temporary alliances gives it a different touch.  But it never recovered from the whuppin’ it got in Columbus.

The coup de grace for many was last year’s big box game, Rum & Pirates.  Alea doing a family game?  You would have thought from the uproar that it was like Fellini directing a slob comedy.  I didn’t see what all the fuss was about; Alea has financial responsibilities like any other company and if they felt they had to release a game like that, it certainly wasn’t my place to tell them they couldn’t.  They made it very clear that this wasn’t a game likely to attract many hardcore gamers, so it wasn’t as if they were releasing the game under false pretenses.  But to many, it was an unforgivable sin.  That isn’t to say I liked the game—I didn’t.  But I didn’t expect I would.  Actually, my main problem with R&P was that I didn’t think it would satisfy gamers or families.  However, I’ve seen a number of favorable reviews, so it has clearly found its audience; in this case, I’m rather happy to have been proved wrong.

Alea seems to suffer from the same fate as professional boxing.  Fight fans may enthuse about the lighter weight champions and talk about pugilists who are “the best boxers, pound for poundâ€?, but when it comes right down to it, nothing inspires excitement like a strong heavyweight fighter.  There’s just no substitute for a man who can beat the living crap out of all comers, regardless of size.  Similarly, Alea fans always seem to focus on the big box games.  That, in my opinion, has led to much of the misguided thought that the company has been on the rocks in recent years, because their best efforts have come in smaller packages.

Exhibit #1 for the defense is the last of the small box games, San Juan.  This sequel to Puerto Rico has been both a popular and critical success (it’s currently the 33rd highest rated game on the Geek) and continues to get frequent and enthusiastic play (I’m willing to bet that more games of San Juan are played these days than Puerto Rico).  It’s certainly one of the best and most popular card games released this century.  Another small boxer, Edel, Stein & Reich, is also a solid game that is well rated, but for some reason, Alea doesn’t get much credit for these fine designs.

Then there are the new mid-size games.  The first of these, Louis XIV, has to be considered a staggering success.  It won the DSP (the third Alea title to achieve that honor, the other two being Taj Mahal and Puerto Rico) and maintains a high rating on the Geek and elsewhere.  But it seems you hear more about the endgame controversy than its excellent gameplay.  Palazzo is a quick-playing, enjoyable building game that seems to have been mostly ignored by gamers.  And this year’s Augsburg 1520 has gotten mostly mixed reviews.  I’ve only played it twice, but I thought it was a very good auction game with a innovative bidding mechanic.  Maybe now that the Rio Grande version has come out, people will pay more attention to this title.

So for me, Alea PPR (post-Puerto Rico) has been almost as good as ever.  Both Louis and San Juan are in my top twenty games of all time.  Augsburg and Palazzo both make my Top 100.  There’s simply no other publisher that can come close to matching that record, at least in terms of percentage of games released.

The dominance of the Alea games in my personal rankings is amazing.  No fewer than 7 of their titles are in my Top 50 (and Augsburg could easily join them, once I play it some more).  No other publisher has more than 3 such titles.  There are a total of 9 Alea games in my Top 100, matching Hans im Glück’s total, despite many more total games in the HiG line.  What makes this truly remarkable is that Alea has only released a total of 17 games in its brief history!  Yes, Alea is truly the one for me.

So, like the rest of the gaming world, I eagerly look forward to Notre Dame’s release next spring and consider it a very likely purchase.  The return to success of the storied Alea big box line would be a very good thing for gaming.  But if it does turn out to be as good as advertised, it won’t be a return to the good old days for me, but just one more success for the Greatest...Game...Company...Evar!

© 2006 Larry Levy

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Comments:

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I don’t think Alea’s reputation has diminished that much over here--game designers certainly still dream of the chance to get their names on an Alea box!  One factor to the criticism may be the success of newer publishers like Ytsari and Mind the Move producing good Alea-like titles. One reason why Alea doesn’t get much credit for Edel, Stein & Reich is because that, like Adel Verpflichtet, is also a reprint--of Basari.  It was further developed, however, to accodmodate 5 players and takes out the dice (although I liked the innovative use of the tired roll-and-move mechanic in the original). Posted by Jeff Allers on Nov 11, 2006 at 04:04 AM | #

I agree about ESR, Jeff, Alea gets fewer brownie points for that one.  And gamers seemed pretty evenly split over which game they prefered.  Still, the development was reasonably substantial, so I give them more credit for that than for Adel, or for, say, Queen developing Showmanager into Atlantic Star (how hard can it be to screw up a theme?). Your comments about Alea’s rep in Germany are interesting.  Here in the States, I feel we often get a skewed view of gaming.  I had wondered if the company was more highly prized in the English speaking world than in Deutschlund.  For example, I had heard that Puerto Rico had sold more English versions than German ones.  It’s nice to hear that they’re considered the gold standard in the country of their origin, as well as elsewhere in the world. Posted by Larry Levy on Nov 11, 2006 at 10:37 AM | #

What about Hans im Glueck?  The have 15 of the BGG top 100, and 3 of the top 10 (though Die Macher might be considered a reprint).  They’re more prolific than Alea, and thus have more bombs, but they’ve been around longer and most of their lower-ranked games came out before Alea started. Posted by Doug Orleans on Nov 13, 2006 at 12:50 PM | #

Oops, I somehow missed that you already mentioned HiG.  Sorry about that. Posted by Doug Orleans on Nov 13, 2006 at 12:56 PM | #

Larry, I think you’ll like Notre Dame.  I’ve played 1.5 games of it, and it’s got a lot of interesting choices.  Nothing groundbreaking, but it all fits together well… It’s only slightly meaty, maybe 6ish on the complexity scale, but it feels like it’ll clock in at the 60-80 minute range with players that know the rules—which is just right for a game of that weight And, you’ll buy it just to see the tessellations of the board.  Quite clever. Dale Posted by Dale Yu on Nov 13, 2006 at 09:09 PM | #

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