Rick Thornquist: More Essen Games First Impressions

This week I’d like to give you my first impressions on three more upcoming Essen games - Tara - Seat of Kings from Surprised Stare Games, Take it to the Limit! from Burley Games Limited, and Ruse and Bruise / Kabale und Hiebe from Hans im Glück / Rio Grande Games.

Tara - Seat of Kings
First up is Tara - Seat of Kings, a new release from Surprised Stare Games of the United Kingdom.  I was able to play a production copy of the game three times.

Tara is a medium weight game and though there is a theme - for a player to be crowned the High King of Ireland at Tara - this is very close to being an abstract.  The board shows four triangular areas and each triangle is divided into rows.  Each row is further subdivided into spaces.  The rows represent ranks with the top position in each triangle representing the king position.  For a player to win, they must attain the king rank in a certain number of areas (in a three player game, two of them).

To do this, player take turns playing cards and placing their pieces on various spaces on the board.  If you place next to another one of your pieces, you can ‘promote’ another one of your pieces to a higher rank (with the cards you can only place on the lower ranks, you have to promote to get to the higher ranks - and the king rank).  Promoting can create a cascade effect where you can keep promoting up the ranks in the same turn.

Placing pieces doesn’t cost anything, but promoting does.  At the end of the round, players get income based on where they are placed in the different areas.  When placing pieces you have to not only think about trying to attain the kingship of a region, but also setting yourself up for income.  Note that when a player attains the kingship in a certain region they can lose it to another player, but that will take work on the other player’s parts.  When a player gets the king rank in a certain number of regions, they immediately win.

The game has lots of interaction, and some decent strategy.  It can be a bit on the chaotic side (other players can instantly undo your plans) and the luck of the cards can play a role.  Also to be noted is the playing time - the game is listed as 60-90 minutes, but two of our games were much shorter, around 30 minutes, while one was much longer.  I does seem that the length can vary somewhat depending on the card draw and how much players go after each other.  In the end, we all found it an interesting game - interesting enough to want to play again.

Take it to the Limit!
Take it to the Limit! is very easy to sum up in a few words - this is an advanced version of Peter Burley’s classic Take it Easy!  I played two games of a prototype with the final rules and what looks to be the final graphics.

The boards that come with Take it to the Limit! actually have two sides - this is because there are different variations on Take it Easy! included in the game.

The first variation is called the Nexus board - this one is Take it Easy! on steroids.  First of all, the boards are bigger - 7 hexes wide instead of 5.  Next, there are more pieces - 64 instead of 27 for each player.  Of the 64 tiles, half of them have a sun symbol on them and half have a moon symbol (as well as the usual lines and numbers).  The tiles also have bonus numbers on them that can score in certain ways.  Finally, each player also gets a Scrapyard board - a board 3 spaces wide.

The Nexus game plays the same as Take it Easy!, but you will not only play on your new big board, you can also play on your Scrapyard board.  Once both boards are full, the game ends and you score.  Scoring is the same as Take it Easy! with some added bonuses for the sun/moon tiles, bonus numbers, and the Scrapyard.  The Scrapyard scoring is neat - if your score on the Scrapyard board is greater than or equal to 60 then you get nothing, but if it’s less then 60 you lose 60 points!  If you are looking for a longer and deeper version of Take it Easy!, the Nexus game is your man.

The second variation is the Orchid board and this one is smaller and shorter than the Nexus version.  Here you only play with 32 tiles on a smaller board, and there’s no Scrapyard.  In this variation, you are allowed to set aside three tiles during the game instead of playing them on your board.  At the end of the game, you can place these tiles on your board on certain spaces.  This allows you to delay the placement of some tiles and place them ideally at the end of the game.  The sun/moon tiles don’t score anything in this one, but the bonus numbers do.  As usual, the player with the highest score wins.

All in all, two very nice variants on Take it Easy!.  If you are looking for some variation on the standard game, Take it to the Limit! should be what you are looking for.  If you don’t have Take it Easy! at all, this one gives you two variations of the game in one box.

Ruse and Bruise
The last game I’m going to talk about is Ruse and Bruise / Kabale und Hiebe from Hans im Glück / Rio Grande Games.  I only have the rules for this one and haven’t played it yet, but I can give you some preliminary impressions.

First of all, this one is quite a bit shorter and lighter than the standard Hans im Glück fare.  They say this is for ages 8 and up and they really mean it.

In the game, each player gets a deck of influence cards, each with a number and some with a special power.  A number of rounds are played and at the beginning of each round, a set of scoring cards are laid out face-up.  Each player gets a hand of three cards from his deck and the game begins. 

On his turn, a player plays a card and draws a card.  You play a card face down below one of the scoring cards.  If there is already a face-down card below that scoring card, that card is turned face-up.  If the turned-up cards has a special power, its power takes effect. 

A round ends when a certain number of cards have been played and then the scoring cards are distributed.  Basically, whoever has the highest sum of cards below a scoring card gets that card.  After a certain number of cards, the player with the highest sum of scoring cards wins (including some bonuses)

I was a bit surprised when I started reading the rules for the game because it all sounded very familiar.  And it is - the game has many similarities to Reiner Knizia game Dead Man’s Treasure, published by Playroom Entertainment (which was a new version of Der Schatz des Kapt’n Flint from Piatnik).  In both games there are scoring areas where you play your cards.  In both games you play your card face down and turn up the previous card.  In both games you score at the end of the round and whoever has the highest sum below the scoring area gets points (though in Dead Man’s Treasure, more then one person scores).  They are obviously not exactly the same, but the similarities are striking. 

That aside, this one looks to be a light one from Hans im Glück and Rio Grande with a little strategy and more than a little bluffing.

Games Played
Not much to report here - the only other games I played aside from the above were a game of Can’t Stop and a game of Take it Easy! (the original).

And that’s it for this week!

© 2006 Rick Thornquist

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Comments:

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Rick wrote: “If you are looking for a longer and deeper version of Take it Easy!...” Longer and deeper? I’m trying to take it easy! The rules for Ruse and Bruise / Kabale und Hiebe sound uninspiring, to say the least, but it definitely falls in the family niche. Posted by W. Eric Martin on Oct 3, 2006 at 08:26 AM | #

Take it to the Limit!:  Another game for the Ludoviel card “games whose names are song titles”. Posted by Doug Orleans on Oct 3, 2006 at 10:01 AM | #

I’ve always thought that the mechanics in Take it Easy were superb, so I’m pleased that the game has evolved further. Does Tara have any feel similar to Tim Jim’s Suzerain? Posted by Alan How on Oct 3, 2006 at 02:20 PM | #

The playing time of Tara is definitely on the erratic side in the first few games, but it seems to settle down a little after that. I think that the chaos is reduced to some extent too, as once you have a better grasp of the cardpool you can make slightly more informed tactical decisions. I saw a prototype version of Take It To The Limit some months ago, and it has been haunting my nightmares since then.  The upside is that I’ve been playing the original an awful lot more as a result. Posted by David Brain on Oct 3, 2006 at 03:46 PM | #

Alan - > Does Tara have any feel similar to Tim Jim’s Suzerain? I’m afraid I couldn’t tell you - I haven’t played Suzerain. - Rick Posted by Rick Thornquist on Oct 3, 2006 at 04:59 PM | #

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