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what appear to be religious zoning districts, or - as I call
it - "abbey clumping".
When the last tile is played,
the game ends immediately. Any thieves still on the board are
scored for what road segments they have, any monks for how many
tiles surround their abbey, and knights get 1 point for every
city tile connected to the one they control, plus 1 point for
each shield symbol on those tiles. It's easiest to get this
all resolved, before proceeding to the scoring of farmers. As
stated before, farmers have the potential for pulling down a
lot of victory points at the end of the game - often enough
to alter the fortunes of all players with farmers. This is truer
of farmers placed early in the game, as these will tend to be
more in the center of the board at the end, since the board
will roughly grow outward in all directions. Too, completed
cities have a tendency to reside closer to the center, than
along the periphery.
Indeed, the relative importance
of farmers is a good reason to commit the player to keeping
that farmer on the board until the end of the game. Even a farmer
whose field is clearly defined and can grow no more stays on
the board until the end of the game. Primarily for this reason,
players are reluctant to place more than 2 or 3 farmers during
a game. It's also a very good idea to try to always have at
least 1 follower available for placement - particularly when
there are still abbeys to be played.
To date, CARCASSONNE has yet to
grow stale for me, and this alone is worth mentioning. There
are far too many games the play of which seems to reveal some
form of flaw, after only a few playings of it. If I had any
complaint about CARCASSONNE, it is that the game could actually
do with a little more variation in tile types - different combinations
of road and city segments, for instance. While the ever-different
board contributes to my overall impression of the game, there
are other games with randomly- or player-generated boards that
haven't been as interesting. The other beauty of the game is
that it plays equally well with any number of players. In fact,
I wouldn't mind at all seeing an expansion set containing, say,
20 more tiles, and two more colors of player pieces.
At $12.80 through Boulder Games,
CARCASSONNE is an excellent value. I recommend it to anyone
looking for something that takes about an hour to play, or looking
for that game suitable for the family. While CARCASSONNE will
never be confused with TIGRIS AND EUPHRATES, there is something
to be said for a game which, having a modest scope, keeps itself
within that scope, and is pretty much flawless in design. If
CARCASSONE was a precious stone, it would not be the biggest
rock at the party, but purity and brilliance of color, and the
excellence of the cut would make it a more coveted piece than
many of the bigger stones.
Darrell Hanning lives in Jacksonville,
Florida.
A
COUPLE MORE "GAMES OF SPEED"
reviews by Mike Bialecki
Speed
games, sometimes referred to as real-time games, are
characterized by simultaneous play, so that speed of play is
usually the deciding factor towards victory. To me, these are
the most frustrating genre of games. They highlight a certain
aspect of one's hardwired intelligence that I seem to lack,
quick-thinking. It seems some people have a natural propensity
towards being able to quickly notice patterns and solutions.
Although the card game SPEED is a
classic example of a real time game, many new members of this
genre have come out in the last few years. James Ernst's BRAWL
is a clever twist on SPEED with a new expansion, CAT FIGHT, due
out in June; Bruno Faidutti's BONGO is a luckless dice game; and
Alex Randolph's RICOCHET ROBOT is a competitive puzzle solving
game. Recently, two new games have arrived that I describe
below. FLICKWERK by Friedemann Frieses is a fantastic little
tile-laying game and LIFT OFF by Marcel-Andre Casasola Merkle is
a less than stellar real-time card game about planetary
colonization.
FLICKWERK
In
FLICKWERK, players compete to be the fastest to connect computer
terminals within their offices. Behind this gossamer curtain
that is the theme, lies a multi-player solitaire pipe-laying
game. Computer terminals are represented by orange and green
VINCI-like wooden discs and are arbitrarily placed around the
edge of a mach-office. Discs of the same color must be connected
using tiles depicting sections of cable in various
configurations (i.e. straights and curves). Each player is given
an identical set of 12 tiles she must use to make her own
office. The competition comes down to speed: the first player to
make a legal office consisting of a 3X3 grid of tiles wins the
round. The game ends after the 12th round, which should take no
more than 20 minutes.
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FLICKWERK
offers quite a bang-for-your-buck, costing about the price of a
single admission to a first-run movie. Within the 20cm X 10cm
ziplock bag is enough components for four players. However,
simply purchasing an additional copy allows nine players to
enjoy the game. The quality of the tiles in FLICKWERK is a step
above that found in Cheapass's VERY CLEVER PIPE GAME; they are
made from a relatively strong card stock and feature glossy
color artwork. The actual art, however, may be subject to taste.
The furniture and cable depicted on each tile look as if they
were computer-generated from an Atari 2600. This blocky art is
probably intentional to convey the feeling of playing a computer
game, but I would have preferred something more substantial. The
rules are short, simple, and can be taught to anybody in
minutes.
Game play can be summarized as 12
rounds of frantic puzzle solving. From the moment each round
starts, players' heads are face down in their tiles struggling
to put together a legal office until one opponent declares that
she is done. During the first few rounds of FlickWerk, I
couldn't dismiss the feeling that I was taking some strange I.Q.
test. However, as the game went on, I came to enjoy the
challenge of trying to beat the other players who seemed
hopelessly quicker then I could ever be. Each round became a mad
race as I dreaded that final shout of, "I'm done" from
a superior player.
So, if you are the type to enjoy
the challenge of a good puzzle and have a knack with spatial
relationships, then I highly recommend FlickWerk. However, if
you demand more player interaction from your games or don't like
to be rushed, then perhaps you should steer clear of this one.
Lift Off
In
Lift Off, each player represents a different human faction
trying to settle new planets. To do so, they load their ships
with settlers, energy tanks, and solar modules then "lift
off" towards planets such as Quadra 137b, Vega Eciepsis or
Pios Proxima. It is only after lift off when these star-faring
settlers may mine profitable ore and terraform uninhabitable
planets they wish to colonize.
Each player receives an identical
deck of 30 cards, consisting of blue cards such as settlers,
energy tanks, solar modules, and security guards; red cards that
include terraforming, mining, and thieves; and five yellow
"lift-off" cards. In addition, there are two sets of
five planet cards that make up the "gameboard". The
cards are about the same size as standard playing cards and
almost the same quality. The "cartoony" artwork on
each card is attractive and fits well with the science fiction
theme; I find it to be one of the strongest aspects of the game.
After each player receives her
deck, planet cards are displayed in a pattern determined by the
number of participating players. Each player shares a
predetermined number of planets between her right and left
neighbors. Upon a given signal, players turn their decks face up
and simultaneously play cards on to their side of the planet
cards in front of them or on to a discard pile that cannot be
used again during the current round. Additionally, players may
place a card back to the bottom of their deck so that it may be
used later in that round if it comes back to the top before the
current round ends. There are only two rules that need to be
followed when laying cards on a planet. Blue cards or a single
yellow "Lift Off" card may only be played directly on
a planet or on a previously played blue card. Red cards may only
be played on a yellow card or on a previously played red card.
The round ends when one player has completely exhausted her
deck.
Although these rules are simple,
scoring is more complex as is usual for many German-style games.
To score any points on a planet, a player must have played a
"Lift Off" card on that planet (you can't very well
colonize another planet if you've never left your own). To score
points for having the most settlers on a given planet, the
planet must have been made habitable, which requires between one
and two terraforming events. I find this aspect of the game
interesting. Although each planet requires terraforming to be
habitable, it doesn't matter which player terraforms it.
Therefore, one player may sink many resources in completely
terraforming a planet, yet may miss out on the points awarded
from the planet because her opponent sent up more settlers.
Finally, players score one point for each mining card that they
play. However, planets can be mined a limited number of times,
so it is important in what order players played their mining
cards; the player whose mining cards were played closer to the
planet gets the points first.
To make things even more
interesting, terraforming and mining cost resources that must
have been played on the same planet; mining costs one energy
unit and terraforming costs 2 energy units. In addition, thief
cards allow a player to steal a blue card from another player,
which can be stopped only by playing a security guard.
Therefore, there are many factors one must consider while one is
frantically tossing cards onto planets, discard piles, and
rifling them back to the bottom of one's deck. Unfortunately, I
find there to be too much to think about for a real-time game.
As much as I want to like LIFT OFF because of the great theme
and
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