W. Eric Martin: First Thoughts on Tobago, Mosaix, Loyang, Beer & Pretzels, and Gonzaga

I’ve played a few games that debuted at Spiel in late October 2009 at least twice, so I thought I’d offer early impressions, with more detailed reviews to follow once I’ve played them a sufficient number of times. Here goes:

• Tobago – Bruce Allen has created a fun deduction-style game that contains no deduction. On an island with different types of terrain and landmarks, players play cards that reduce the possible locations of a treasure until only one spot remains. (Cards have pictograms noting things like “adjacent to a palm tree,” “not within two spaces of a mountain,” and “in the largest lake.") Once a player reaches that spot with his land-cruiser, that player and everyone else who has contributed to isolating the treasure gets a share of the loot, with those who contribute more getting more shares and those who contribute later in the discovery process getting first dibs. This scoring method encourages players to cooperate in a treasure hunt, even if they’re nowhere near the treasure; cursed treasures create an incentive not to go it alone as you risk taking nothing home despite all your work.

In September 2009, designer Bruno Faidutti described Tobago as “the first serious contender” for the 2010 Spiel des Jahres, and I can see where he’s coming from as the game has enough luck to allow players to come back from early deficits and enough skill that players who care to do so can play better than casual folks.

• Mosaix – As Dale Yu noted in one of his columns, he and others were touting this as a great little ten-minute game. This Christof Tisch design fits the Take it Easy! model of each player completing her own board and scoring points, yet it has enough interaction to stand out as something different.

On a turn one player rolls four dice that have three symbols on them – circles, triangles, Xes – then arranges these dice in some manner. Each player marks that dice formation on her individual board, possibly overlapping the edge of the board and not using some dice. At the end of the game, for each symbol you score points equal to the number of groups that contain at least five of that symbol multiplied by the total number of spaces that contain that symbol. The game is mostly solitaire, but you can examine other players’ boards to avoid making a dice combo that will boost them more than you. My top score is 138.

• At the Gates of Loyang – This would make a great game on SpielByWeb. In person, I’m less sure of its appeal as some turns go on and on and on. Unlike Agricola and Le Havre, two previous Uwe Rosenberg designs in which players take a single atomistic action on each of their turns, in Loyang you can string together complex molecules that connect in any number of ways, thereby encouraging you to sit and ponder in order to squeeze out an extra coin or two, which might boost you up the next rung of the scoring ladder. In general I enjoy the design, but I feel like it needs (a) a time limit for a player’s turn and (b) no takebacks to prevent dithering. Your play style might vary, of course.

• Beer & Pretzels – On Friday morning at Spiel, I visited Ted Alspach in his Bézier Games booth to chat about this-and-that, and while there I started demoing Beer & Pretzels, a ten-minute game in which you throw coasters bearing images of pretzels into a central location, scoring for those pretzels completely uncovered once all players have finished, with an exposed beer doubling your score for the round. After a number of rounds equal to the number of players, whoever has the most money wins.

This game was built for weekends at Spiel as it’s quick-playing with visual appeal that will catch the attention of passers-by. What’s more, the game immediately draws players in emotionally as after the first turn or two, someone will cover one of their coasters and they’ll yell “Hey!” and vow revenge. Ten minutes later, they’re done, gloating about their comeback or promising to pay someone back later. I loved demoing games when I worked retail in the early 1990s in San Francisco for precisely this kind of reaction: People being transformed from disinterested parties to players and caring about what happens to them. Sometimes you’ll have to search a while to find the right design for someone, but you can usually find something that puts the itch in them.

• Gonzaga – In a December 2008 article by Liga on BGN, representatives from dV Giochi described Gonzaga as having “the ‘gateway game’ feeling of masterpieces like Ticket to Ride.” While that’s a fair comparison, I’d offer a more encompassing one, saying that Gonzaga is akin to Amun-Re’s Ticket to Power Grid of All Seasons: You’ve got a connection bonus, role selection, hidden bonuses and a map with inactive regions that shakes up the strategy from one game to the next. All in all, Gonzaga is a good design that I appreciate more with each play as I can see how to make better moves, but it’s not as intuitive as Ticket to Ride. In that game you create chains of links over marked paths which allow you to clearly see all the possible connections; in Gonzaga you must visualize how the the multihex pieces will fit together on the board, which plays are legal each turn, and which back-up spaces you might claim should someone block your path. Players averse to spatial reasoning will blanch.

(Disclosure: I received review copies of Beer & Pretzels and Gonzaga.)

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