Scott Tepper: Better Late Than Never

I know the Day of Thanks has passed, but having a Monday slot means my column will never fall on Thanksgiving.  Since I have so many game related things to be thankful about this year, you’ll just have to indulge my tardiness…

I am thankful…

That Rick Thornquist had the confidence in me to allow me this forum to express my thoughts about the game world.

That Eric Martin courageously stepped forward to keep BGN alive.

For the patience my friends display when they allow me to practice teaching them new games, and allowing the occasional mistakes I make with the rules.

Publishers are reprinting titles that have been out of print, such as El Grande and Rette Sich Wer Kann, which allows gamers to experience some great games without having to pay substantial auction prices to play them.

That gamers share their game experiences on BGN, BGG and many other websites so that it’s easier to be an informed consumer.

For all the hard work that Jay Tummelson does to bring great games to the US and for everything that he has shared with me.

That we seem to be entering the golden age of boardgames.  It’s amazing that so many new, good games are finding their way to market.

Designers such as Alan Moon revisit their games to give us even better games than their original incarnations.

Smaller, newer publishers such as Eggert-Spiele and Ystari have accomplished the formidible task of continuing to produce creative, interesting games.

For Dale Yu’s sense of humor.

That Fragor Games goes the extra step to put cool bits in their games.

For Bruno Faidutti’s ideal game library.  It has prompted me to discover hidden gems of games that were not widely publicized elsewhere.

That Randy Chertkow, Derk & Aldie and Alan Moon arranged conventions that allowed really nice people to get together just to play games.

That the readers of BGN have been so supportive of what I’ve written and have been kind with their criticisms, comments and suggestions.

New game played:

Turquoise

This little game, (and when I say little, I mean that the box is 2.5” x 6” x 6") by Patrice Vernet is hard to find.  I had to order it directly from the publisher, Neuroludic, which is in France.  The first thing I noticed about the game was its’ unusual box.  Maybe it’s because of the type of cardboard they used, or possibly the way it’s reinforced, but the box is extremely sturdy.  The second unusual thing is that unless you’re looking at the top or the bottom of the box, all you see is white.  There is no printing whatsoever on 4 sides of the box.  I assume this is to cut the cost of production.  However, this means that if you have the game stacked face up or sideways on a shelf, there will not be anything indicating that this box is Turquoise.  Come to think of it, if the publisher was just going to use one color for the box, turquoise would have probably been a more appropriate color choice than white.

The game is a step up from an abstract.  The slight theme is that the players are building a pyramid.  There is a little bit of luck in the game, but throughout, it has an abstract-y feel.  Depending on the number of players(2-4), each player receives between 25-35 colored discs.  The 4-piece board is assembled, and each player places a disc on the 0 space of the scoring track that encircles the board.  Four angle tiles are placed on the appropriate corners of the board.  The single “Capital” tile(the final tile of the pyramid) is set aside.  The remaining 25 tiles are shuffled and set to the side of the board.  Four Special Ability tiles are set near the board as well.

The object of the game is to move your discs, which are considered to be pillars, onto the board.  When the pillars are in the appropriate positions, a tile can be built on four pillars.  If you build a tile(a new level of the pyramid) on your turn you receive points for each of your pillars supporting the tile.  Other players do not normally receive points when you add a new tile to the board.  The game ends when the final tile of the pyramid is built.  Players then lose points for any pillars they have on the board that are not supporting a tile.  The player with the most points wins.

On your turn, you have 3 action points to spend.  It costs one action point to add a tile to the board. The tiles are added to the board in a pyramid fashion.  The first level will have a total of 16 tiles(the 4 corner tiles are placed during the game preparation).  The second level will have 9 tiles.  The third will have 4 tiles, and the final tile placed is the one set aside at the beginning of the game.  If you add a tile to the first level of the board(in one of the 12 places that are unsupported by pillars), you receive one point.  You also receive points when you place a tile on YOUR pillars.  If you’re placing a 2nd level tile, you receive one point for each of your pillars supporting the tile.  When placing a 3rd level tile, you receive 3 points per pillar.  When placing the top tile, you receive 5 points per piller.  If, when you place a new tile, the tile is supported by 4 pillars of your color, you calculate your points as if you had 5 pillars supporting the tile.

Each tile has 4 spots for pillars.  Imagine a Tic-Tac-Toe diagram.  The pillars can go where the lines intersect.  But all the tiles vary with lines missing either from between the pillar spots, or from the the places where lines eminate outward from the pillar spots.  As tiles are placed, you’ll see the lines(in the game they are considered bridges) connecting pillar spots on one tile with pillar spots on another.  But because some lines are missing, sometimes you’ll have an incomplete connection between pillar spots.

The other main way to spend action points is by adding or moving pillars.  When you add a pillar to the board, it must first originate from one of the bridges that surround the board.  You slide your pillar onto an empty pillar space.  You must stop moving your pillar when it gets to the first empty pillar space it encounters.  Here’s the catch:  If you move your pillar over a pillar of another player, you must pay that player one of your victory points.  It is acceptable to move your pillar over an incomplete or totally missing bridge between two pillar spaces, but this costs you an additional action point.  Moving or removing a pillar that is already on the board is acceptable as well.  All the rules for adding a pillar apply to moving a pillar.

There’s an additional twist to the game that is the nudge that pushes Turquoise from the strictly abstract realm.  On your turn you can auction off one of the 4 Special Ability tiles if it is currently not in the possession of another player.  The auction is multiple times around, and the players bid with their victory points.  All of the Special Ability tiles are one-use tiles that can be held for as long as the player wants.  As soon as the special ability is used, however, the tile is returned to the general pool, so that it is now available to be re-auctioned.  A player can possess more than one special ability tile at a time.

The 4 Special Ability tiles are:
Place a pillar on any empty pillar space(costs 1 action). 
Remove 1 or 2 pillars from the board and return them to their owner(s) (costs an action point).
Take an additional action on your turn. 
When another player adds a tile to the board, you may score your pillar(s) supporting the tile as if you had placed the tile.

The game ends when the final pyramid tile (the Capital tile) is placed.  The players subtract 1 point for any exposed pillars they have on the ground level, 3 points on the 2nd level, and 5 points if they have any exposed pillar(s) on the 3rd level.  The player with the most points wins.

So how does it play?  The game feels slightly chess-like to me.  You try to get your pieces into positions so that you can more easily slide into places that would support the next level of tiles.  Simultaneously, you are also trying to position your pillars so that they’re in the way of other players, hoping that they will give you points as they move past you.  At the beginning of the game, there is enough space on the board so that this doesn’t happen very often.  But as the game progresses, the pyramid starts to rise and pathways are cut off, it sometimes makes more sense to give up a victory point to an opponent than to use 2 action points to “jump” a broken bridge.

It does happen occasionally later in the game where a player cannot use their 3rd action point.  This is usually a matter of poor planning, and I don’t expect it would happen as much to experienced players.  The rulebook doesn’t address this.  I considered suggesting that a player who gives up one action point receives a victory point, but since victory points are given out so scarcely in this game, an additional victory point for an action point may be too generous a reward.

The Special Abiltiy tiles add an interesting dimension to the game.  Since you are bidding with your victory points, the bidding doesn’t take too long.  Having a special ability can make a large difference on your turn.  For example, using one of the ability tiles, you could remove a player’s pillar.  Then for your second action, you could move one of your pillars into the now empty space.  Then you could add on top a tile to score it.  This could be a very nasty combination.  Sometimes you will bid on a tile just to prevent another player from having the special ability, not because you want to use it.

I do need to mention the rules.  The back of the box is in French, but the rules that I received with the game were in English.  I imagine they sent me English rules because the game was being shipped to the US.  While almost all of the components are language independent, the 4 special ability tiles do have their descriptions written on them in French.  As these are only 4 or 5 word phrases, it’s pretty easy to figure out what they do, since they are translated in the rulebook.  The rulebook itself is passable.  It doesn’t appear that the rules were written by a native speaker, but they did a pretty good job.  There are a couple of vague spots in the rules, and a few more examples could have helped, but as the rules are only 5 1/2 short pages, it is possible to figure out the intent of the designer.

All in all, the game comes together pretty well.  The game plays just as fine with 4 players as it does with 2, although with 4 players, it is more difficult to score points.  Turns move along quickly, and you do get the feeling that you’re contributing to the raising of the pyramid.  The variation in tiles guarantees that each time you play the game, the paths will be different.  The endgame (which reminded me of the unused post offices in Thurn & Taxis) scoring is very important as you want to have a lot of your pillars on the board during the game to make it easier to move your pillars around, but they can be costly if they’re exposed at the end of the game.  This can either lead to very tight scores at the end of the game, or a wide swing in scores if the players aren’t paying attention.

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