Rick Thornquist: The Gathering of Friends / Nuremberg Games - Part I

Sadly, another Gathering of Friends is now over.  Happily, I again had fantastic time.  I didn’t do daily reports this time so I thought I’d put together a summary of the occasion and the games that I played. 

There is usually a slew of new Nuremberg games at the Gathering and this year was no exception, though the pile was way smaller than it was last year.  I’m not sure whether that was due to the games being released later or that fact that just fewer of them made it to the Gathering.  Here are my thoughts on the ones that I played:

Notre Dame
We’ll start with this new Alea game though, truth be told, I didn’t actually play it at the Gathering - I played it at Essen.  Why start with this one, then?  Well, this was the game that most people were raving about. 

For those who missed my Essen description of the game, here it is:

The board of Notre Dame is made up of a number of city district boards which meet at the middle where the Notre Dame cathedral is placed.  Each player plays on his own city district, but you do have a piece that can wander to other player’s districts.  A player’s district is made up of eight spaces, each with a building (see a picture of the board below). Each player has his own set of nine cards, each of which is an action that you can take on your turn. To begin, each player shuffles their own cards and draws three.  You then keep one and pass the other two to your left.  You get two cards from the player on your right and again you keep one and pass the other.  At this end of this you’ll have three cards, one of which is yours and two others from other players.  At this point the cards are all yours - who they came from makes no difference. Now each player in turn plays one card and does the card’s action.  This goes around twice.  After that you will discard your last card - it will not be used. Most actions consist of placing cubes (people) into the spaces (buildings) in your district.  Each building gives you something - victory points, money, the ability to get more people, protection against rats (more on that in a minute) and more.  One action allows you to move a pawn of yours around the board to pick up victory point chips. Once all the actions are done, there is a phase where players can pay to do a special action.  Then, it’s time for the rats!  Yes, every turn your district is going to be infested by a number of rats.  You can avoid them by placing your people in certain buildings or by using a special action, but if the rats get to be too much you get a plague which loses you people and victory points. Play continues for a set number of rounds.  At the end the victory points are totted up and whoever has the most wins.

I very much liked it when I played it and everyone else seemed to like it as well.  A very nice gamer game and a good addition to the Alea line.

The rest I’ll do in random order.

Portobello Market
This game was designed by Thomas Odenhoven and the board art was by Michael Menzel, who seems to be taking over as the preeminent German boardgame artist since Franz Vohwinkel moved to the United States.

No, the game has nothing to do with mushrooms.  The actual theme has players building market stalls along a road.  Players take turns moving a guy between districts and where he is dictates where you can build stalls.  You can also pull meeples from a bag and these go at the end of the roads.  When a road is full of stalls it scores and may get multipliers depending on the meeples at the ends of the road.

This one is part of a seeming trend towards simpler and shorter board games.  The game is easy to learn and plays quickly - around 30 minutes or less.  It was fine and if I didn’t have Taluva already, I probably would have picked it up.  If you like games that are the weight and length of Taluva, you should look at this one.

Zooloretto
Zooloretto is the next in the Coloretto series of games from Michael Schacht and Abacusspiele.  After Coloretto Amazonas, which I thought was abysmal, they have come back strong with a well designed and very fun game.

Zooloretto is a big box game that has players collecting animals to keep in their zoos, which are represented by player boards.  It has the usual Coloretto mechanism of either flipping a new animal tile (yes, they are now tiles) or you can grab a set.  There is also an additional action where you can pay money to move animals around your zoo or other player’s zoos.  This can be used to maximize your points and minimize theirs.  At the end of the game, filling up the pens in your zoo gets you big points - having extra animals that you don’t have a pen for loses you points.  Whoever has the most points wins.

The game is a bit overproduced - the wooden ‘wagons’ that come with the game are totally unnecessary.  However, the game play is very fun - it really does feel like Coloretto kicked up a notch.  As with Coloretto the amount of strategy is pretty much illusory, but that never really bothered me in Coloretto and it doesn’t bother me here.  If you like Coloretto you’ll probably like Zooloretto.

By the way, Henning Kröpke suggested that this one is a good candidate for the upcoming Spiel des Jahres award.  I very much agree with him.  It’s exactly the kind of game that the SdJ likes and neither Michael Schacht nor Abacusspiele have ever won the award.  I’d be amazed if it wasn’t at least nominated.

Colosseum
Ah yes, the new Days of Wonder game - always of interest to gamers.  As with their previous games the production is lavish.  It is, however, a step down from Cleopatra - no big 3D pieces here, though there are a few fancy dobbers. 

The one has players building stadiums and producing events.  There are a bunch of events which all require different sets of tokens.  Players get some events at the beginning of the game and can later can choose more and bigger events.  The idea is to collect the tokens for the events via auctions.  At some point you can put on a show and the more tokens you have for the event, the better the show is.  The player that puts on the best show wins.

Of course, this being a Wolfgang Kramer game (along with Markus Lübke) there is much more than that - there are many different mechanisms and layers piled on.  Whereas I liked this aspect in Kramer’s previous games, this one felt more like a conglomeration of mechanisms than a cohesive game.  It works, and works pretty well mind you, but I thought it could work better.

Also, the game has something of a resemblance to Princes of Florence.  In both games you are collecting resources to put on your best work, uh, show.  I felt Princes does it much better, and if I’m in the mood for that kind of game, I’ll pick Princes every time.

All this being said, the game does work pretty well.  I probably wouldn’t shell out the big Days of Wonder bucks for the game, but if asked I’d be pretty happy to play.

Thurn und Taxis: Glanz und Gloria
Next up is the Thurn und Taxis expansion Glanz und Gloria.  Let’s get the bad things out of the way first.

First off, in my opinion, this should have been marketed as a full game instead of an expansion.  The only bits you need from the original game are the houses - everything else is new. 

I think there are instances when an expansion is warranted - witness the Alhambra expansions which just add a few rules and a few bits to the game.  In this one, however, practically everything has been updated.  I’d much rather have it all in one box and pay a few bucks more and there are two reasons for that.  First, so I don’t have to drag T&T along whenever I want to play G&G .  Second, for those who just want G&G they aren’t stuck having to buy T&T.

Secondly, the box insert is really crummy.  Who designed this thing?  The rider figure doesn’t even fit in it!  I tossed it out right away.

How about the game itself?  Well, aside from a rule getting rid of the carriages and replacing them with a friendlier mechanism, it is pretty much the same as T&T with a new map.  The friendlier mechanism is for those who balked at having to lose their entire run of cities when they can’t pick up the right card - this can’t happen in G&G.  It does have the downside of reducing the tension of the game quite a bit.  The new map is something, though.  For those of us who have played T&T a lot and were getting a bit tired of the old map, the new map is breath of fresh air.

So basically, if you want a friendlier version of the game or a new map, get G&G.

Two more comments on this one.  First, I’d really be interested to know if the Seyfarths actually designed this game.  Andreas is known as a perfectionist and has a reputation for taking a long time to design his games.  This one was cranked out relatively quickly - was it actually his work or the work of another, perhaps someone at Hans im Glück?

Secondly, for those who get the game, a small tip.  Put a little bit of glue on the base pieces of the rider figure and it won’t fall apart when you move it (ditto for other games that have pieces that fit together - like Caribbean).

Stay tuned for Part II where I’ll go over more of the new games.  Part III will have the remainder of the games plus a smattering of other Gathering news.  Stay tuned!

© 2007 Rick Thornquist

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Two more comments on this one.  First, I’d really be interested to know if the Seyfarths actually designed this game.  Andreas is known as a perfectionist and has a reputation for taking a long time to design his games.  This one was cranked out relatively quickly - was it actually his work or the work of another, perhaps someone at Hans im Glück? I’m nuts about T&T, and I absolutely love the new expansion, played it many times already.  I feel alot of time went into the new map and new rules and think it has been tweaked to perfection and adds some nice new depth to T&T. Posted by Phil Schwarzmann on Apr 11, 2007 at 03:39 AM | #

This was report was a nice surprise.  Thanks for posting it. I was under the impression that the T&T expansion was exactly that:  an expansion.  Thanks for clearing that up. Posted by Kevin Wood on Apr 11, 2007 at 06:49 AM | #

I agree with Kevin.  A very nice surprise. It is great to see the Picasso of boardgame writing in action.  Is that too shameless of praise? (LOL) Another well-written article, Rick.  Although I have to say you and Greg are talking me straight out of buying Colosseum. Posted by Ryan Bretsch on Apr 11, 2007 at 07:24 AM | #

Thanks for the review Rick. I find it funny that you mention T&T:G&G (gotta love this acronym) should have been a complete game. When TTR:Europe was released, a lot of people complained that it should have been an expansion for the exact opposite reasons that you mention. In fact, the number of people owning only TTR:Europe is probably much less than those owning both the expansion and the original. That’s a lot of unneeded plastic trains. :) Posted by Philippe Beaudoin on Apr 11, 2007 at 08:04 AM | #

It’s great to see a post from you, Rick! I had Glanz und Gloria, Notre Dame and Colosseum on my want list. After the Gathering reports, I think will be dropping Colosseum - I have enough of a problem getting Princes of Florence to the table and I don’t need another, apparently lesser design competing with it for play time. I had heard some info that Glanz und Gloria would be using very little from the original game, so this is not as much of a surprise for me. I still want it, as Thurn und Taxis has been a solid hit with the folks I have played it with. Philippe, you raise an interesting point - I would have been very happy to buy Ticket to Ride Europe as an expansion. I have consolidated the two games (and the 1910 cards, too) into one box on more than one trip, so I know that it works. Having them all in one box also causes the tinkerer in me to try out different ideas, like using stations and large and small tickets of the Europe set with the original game (using the 1910 cards to add in some additional long routes). It worked pretty well, and made for a little easier time for some new (and younger) players. I am just fine with Glanz und Gloria being an expansion (as long as the pieces fit in the original game’s box… Posted by David Reed on Apr 11, 2007 at 08:51 AM | #

Whoops! Clarifying the last post - I use the rules (and station pieces) from Ticket to Ride Europe with the cards (including the 1910 cards) and board from the original game. I thought it made sense when I wrote it… Posted by David Reed on Apr 11, 2007 at 09:05 AM | #

My theory is that Andreas had both maps designed when he approached Hans im Gluck and they opted to only print one map instead of a double-sided map - a real shame IMO. If I had the option of buying the new map with the carriage cards and houses from the original edition I’d do so. As it stands, I’ll likely stick to playing other people’s copies. Posted by Jasen Robillard on Apr 11, 2007 at 10:56 AM | #

Rick It’s good to see you writing about boardgames again. Thanks for the column. Posted by Marc Magnera on Apr 11, 2007 at 08:12 PM | #

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