Being critical, it maybe suffers from too much description and not enough reviewing. I may well revise it at some point, if I find the time, but with so many other games, places, and who knows what else to writeup, it may just end up being a learning experience. Let’s just hope I learn from it Even if I don’t it’s still not /that/ bad .

Monies

One game that was causing a lot of buzz at Essen 09 was Factory Manager. I’d read about this one before I went, and was keen to try it out. Sadly, the author’s stand only had 2 test tables, and it was very very busy. Thus it was not until the Saturday that we finally managed to get a free copy at a table at the Rio Grande stand. Even then, we only managed an almost-complete set with German rules.

Some bartering, rules-reading and 2 failed attempts at starting later, and we finally managed to complete a 3-player game. First thoughts were positive, though the spread of scored across the 3 of us were quite wide (roughly 100, 150 and 250). A copy was purchased, and I’ve since played another 2 games, one as a 4-player and one as a 5-player. I’ve still not won, but I’m starting to get a feel for the game.

Again with the crappy phone-camera pictures, I’m afraid – I really should remember my camera when playing games if I am to continue writing these articles!

The pieces

The box contains 6 player boards (it’s only a 5-player game), a boatload of tiles, some meeple, some cash, some markers and a central board. Fans of power-grid will spot some familiar iconography on the money sheets.

Turn order tile

The central board largely comprises spaces for the futures market; a number of factory floor tiles that can be bought during the game. The spread of tiles depends on the number of players, and this is how the game scales.

Tiles

The game is predominantly made up of cardboard tile components, which likely contributes to its relatively low price (€25 at Essen). There are 3 broad categories of tile: turn order, energy price and factory floor.

The turn order tiles all have a large number (the turn order number). Some also have a smaller number on a yellow sign, which is always negative. This number represents a purchase discount during the action phase.

The energy price tiles range from 0 to +2. A tile is drawn every round to increase the energy price as the game goes on.

Workers placed in the canteen

Finally are the factory floor tiles. There are 6 different types of factory floor tiles; machines, production robots, automation robots, storage, control and efficiency.

Workers

Each player has a total of 7 standard workers to run his factory. Workers are used during all phases of the game for various uses, and so management of their numbers becomes highly critical; workers in the canteen cannot be used during the bidding or action phases, for example. During the action phase, a player can hire – at a cost of 7 electro each – up to 2 additional “seasonal” workers. More on all this later.

Setup

Each player takes a game board, 7 meeple  and 3 track marker cubes. There is also a set of 5 tiles, identical for all players, to form an initial board layout. Of the 5 tiles, there are 2 machines and 3 storage tiles. These are placed on the factory floor. At the top of each tile are the requirements and benefits that tile provides to your factory.

Production and storage tracks

Each initial machine requires (red background to the number) 2 meeple. These go into the “canteen”, a square in the factory. They cost (red background) 2 electro to power, and produce (green background) 1 “crate”. The electro requirements are tracked on the chimney at the left of the board, and the crates along the top.

Finally, the 3 storage tiles each provide 1 storage, also tracked at the top of the board.

A black cube is placed in the left-hand column of the energy price tracker, and the relevant floor tiles for the number of players are placed on the main board.

Finally, the 6 tiles from the ‘X’ deck are shuffled, 3 discarded, and the remaining 3 added to the market; the space below the central board.

Gameplay

The game is split into 6 phases: turn order auction, market construction, action, resolve sliders, income and finally re-dressing the board.

The market. Not being compared.

Turn order

The game contains 12 turn order tiles. In the first round, these are assigned as prescribed by the rules, and with fewer than 5 players some are removed from the game. In each turn order auction phase, the player with the highest turn order number goes first.

One tile for each player is turned over from the stock, and the first bidder nominates a tile to auction and places a start bid. Bidding currency is determined by the number of “available” workers the player has. Available workers are those meeple from the 7 which aren’t currently employed in the factory to run machines. Each player starts with 3 available meeple. The minimum bid is 0, and the maximum 1 fewer than the player’s total available. Bidding continues in decreasing turn order number, with each player bidding higher or passing until everyone has passed and there is one winner.

In the early stages where tile costs are low and money short, the higher turn-order tiles with higher discounts are more attractive. As the rounds progress (there are 5 in total), however, and money becomes relatively less important, going first becomes increasingly important.

Energy requirement

Interestingly, if a player bids and then everyone else passes, the player can raise his bid before taking the turn order tile. In the first couple of games, this seems a somewhat odd rule, but as I play more games I have found myself to often have a surplus during the action phase. If low in the turn order for the action phase there is a benefit to making less tiles available to other players, to restrict their options.

Market Construction

Once each player has taken a turn order tile, they return their order tiles from the previous round to be shuffled back into the stock. Next, each player – now in ascending turn order from their newly-acquired tiles – brings down a number of tiles from the futures market (the tiles on the central board) into the current market. The number of tiles brought down by each player is equal to their remaining available workers. Workers used during the bidding phase in a successful bid are no longer “available” for the market and action phases of this round. The final player in this round can optionally bring down additional tiles, the quantity dependent on the number of players.

Extra space - at a price!

The final player has to decide whether to bring more tiles down; if they do then it will likely be the higher-value tiles that will be taken by other players. On the other hand, if they don’t bring down better tiles, there simply may be no useful tiles left by the the time of their turn in the action phase. Going last in our first game, I brought down some very powerful machines which effectively handed the game to my opposition. Bad mistake!

Action phase

With the market constructed, players start to buy tiles and place them in their factory. To buy a tile uses one available worker. To remove a tile from your floor also “costs” one worker. Tiles can be purchased and placed beside your factory, to be used at a later time.

Machines, robots and storage can be placed anywhere in your factory, but only 10 spaces are available for free. At the edge of your factory are 2 additional spaces which can be used at an additional cost of 10 electro each, which is only paid once.

Board after a couple of rounds

Each tile has an associated cost, printed in the lower right hand corner of the tile. Players start the game with 18 electro which doesn’t buy a lot of tiles, but as each player only has 3 available workers a player couldn’t buy many at the start anyway!

There are only 2 spaces for control and efficiency machines; 1 for each, and robots cannot outnumber machines. This little tweak to the rules is very important; without it, every player would just ignore machines and fill their factory with robots; providing each player with the full complement of 7 available workers. Furthermore, it provided the downfall to our second aborted attempt to play the game :-/

Early on, while energy is cheap, it’s good to go for production and storage to boost income (see income phase). It’s very easy, however, to neglect the energy reductions available and find yourself hemorrhaging cash in the later stages paying for an inefficient factory.

Seasonal workers - they point alot

If a player is short on actions, they can hire up to 2 seasonal workers at a cost of 7 electro each.

Resolve sliders

Once a player has completed their action phase, they adjust their 3 tracks and the meeple in their canteen, based on the new values on the tiles in the factory. During the income phase, the player will only receive the amount of money associated with the lower of the production/storage tracks. Therefore, if a player is over-producing, they can opt to “shut-down” a machine during this phase. A shut-down machine costs no electro this round, and requires no workers in the canteen, but obviously does not produce.

Income

With each player’s board updated, the next energy market price modifier tile is overturned. The number on the tile represents how many columns on the energy market the black cube is moved.

Energy prices can not go down as well as up

The new price is multiplied by the number on the energy track, and this is that player’s energy cost for the round. This is subtracted from the earnings as described earlier.

As income provides the money for the next turn’s action phase, it’s important not to get left behind early on, or the effects are compounded across the game.

To dress the board, all tiles in the market are returned to the futures market.

Conclusions

In the final round, it’s important to note that you can fill your canteen with all your meeple except 1, so the factory tiles which reduce meeple required become less useful.

Also in the final round, income is doubled, which can exacerbate any lagging behind other players.

Poor planning in my most recent game meant that in the final round, it was actually more monetarily beneficial to me to not take any actions. This meant effectively my game was over at the end of round 4. I lost the game by <5 electro and so I really wish I’d though ahead from the 4th round to plan for a final round in which I could have improved my lot.

I think this last point is the key to this game. There’s not a massive amount of variety in the actions available to each player, and as such the complexity is maybe going to be in how many rounds ahead players can plan.

The action phase is hard to plan for, as opposition players constantly catch me by surprise with their selections meaning when it comes to my turn I’m presented with a market I was certainly not expecting.

I’ve far from figured this one out, and hope to get many more games of it. I think the complexities are quite subtle, but that just distinguishes it. The theme tie-in is strong, but the mechanic does borrow quite a lot from power grid.

Herd of horseeples

Last night, I finally managed to get a game in of Agricola: Farmers of the Moor. This is the first expansion to Agricola, and as mentioned before on my blog, I was not expecting this to be available in English at Essen this year. To my delight, however, Z-Man games pulled through and had it available for €25, and thus it was with a big smile on my face that I came home from day 1 with my copy.

Events conspired to prevent me from playing until last night, but I’ve finally got a round in, and posted my thoughts on the game. You can read them here.

Setup fairly straightforward

Agricola: Farmers of the Moor is the first expansion to Agricola, and as mentioned before on my blog, I was not expecting this to be available in English at Essen this year. To my delight, however, Z-Man games pulled through and had it available for €25, and thus it was with a big smile on my face that I came home from day 1 with my copy.

Sadly, I didn’t take Agricola with me to Germany, and it was not until 2 weeks after Essen that I got my first opportunity to test it out. We played with 4 players, and below are my thoughts on the game. The review assumes you are familiar with the base game. I apologise for the quality of image, I forgot my camera and had to make do with the facilities provided by my mobile phone.

Energy

Setup

The setup for the expansion is fairly straightforward if you’re comfortable setting up the original Agricola. There are 14 new Major Improvements, 10 of which sit underneath the original Major Improvements, and 4 which sit on 2 new spaces provided by new boards. The idea behind this “stacking” seems to be to force players to take the original MaIs to work through the stacks and get to the new ones. The drawback to the approach is that, as new players, we weren’t familiar with the cards and therefore didn’t really appreciate what it was we were missing out on.

As well as the new Major Improvements, there’s also a new “Infirmary” space to add to the board. This space becomes an action space available throughout the game (more on this later). The expansion provides 3 “levels” of complexity to the rules, of which we played the 3rd; the most complex. In essence, this is the full game of Agricola with all the additions of the expansion, which provides new Minor Improvements (but no new Occupations) which are dealt out with those from the base game in a pre-defined ratio (3 from the base game, 4 from the expansion).

An initial board layout

The main addition to the game, which all the improvements are there to supplement, is the addition of Moor and Forest tiles. At the start of the game, each player is dealt a different board layout card. This card mandates a specific arrangement of forest, moor and room tiles on the player’s board. Every player has a different layout, which will affect their strategy going forward as they decide how to best make use of their farm’s natural environment. Despite the differences in layout, each player starts with the same: 2 wooden rooms as per the base game, 3 moor and 5 forest tiles.

Finally, there are a number (which various depending on players) of “special action” cards placed alongside the main boards.

Plenty of wood

Brrr, it used to be cold

Part of the theme in Agricola is that life was tough and food hard to come by. It took hard work to establish a regular source of food before a family could decide to expand with children and a larger house. Farmers of the Moor adds a new dimension to this struggle in the form of heating. At each harvest, a player not only has to feed his family, but also heat his domicile; 1 energy per room.

Energy is, in general, obtained from the new forest and moor tiles. For each “turn” in a round, a player must now choose either to take an action as normal or a “special” action. Special actions do not require a person token to use, and allow farmers to cut down trees or harvest peat, which can in turn be converted to energy. Wood (either from trees or collected elsewhere) can always be converted to energy, so players are not forced to take these special actions.

The penalty for not heating your home is the loss of players for the next round, described in the rules as “bed instead of beg”. An unheated home leads to illness resulting in people whose only available action in the following round is to visit the infirmary. You do gain a food for this though.

Picking up resources seems easier

Changes in mechanic and dynamic

Whilst a standard draughty wooden hut requires 1 energy per harvest to heat, there are benefits of -1 and -2 energy requirements for building a more heat-retentive clay or stone hut respectively. This changes plans over the base game slightly, encouraging players to upgrade their houses sooner rather than later, compared to my standard strategy of 2 renovations in the closing round or 2.

The addition of special actions adds an extra dimension of player interaction and “chicken” to gameplay. In the base game, unless playing with the ‘I’ deck, player interaction is largely limited to the order in which players take actions. Special actions, which don’t use up a person token to play on, require an extra element of “if I take this, will the action I want be gone by my next turn”.

Herd of horseeples

Special actions cost nothing for the first player to take each one each round, and 2 food for the second. Each card can only be used by 2 players each round, so there is still vying and competition for these actions between players. Furthermore, a player must have at least 1 remaining person token to play in a round to be allowed to take a special action, so the order of taking actions vs special actions becomes important. It’s very easy to forget to take a special action before running out of people or not realise you’re the last player and not take a free special action. I guess these are beginner mistakes that would soon iron out, but we got caught out by them a few times in the first play.

Resources seem easier to come by in this game; partially through players concentrating on peat/forests, and partly through the additional resources provided via special actions/the new Minor Improvements. I was able to amass unprecedentedly large quantities of wood in quite a short space of time in this game, although the dynamic always various based on number of players, and 4 is not a number I have played often.

Some cards are no longer clear

Another addition to the expansion is the new animal: horses. Horses didn’t play a large part in my first play, so it’s hard to write too much about them. They are obtainable as one of the special actions, and count for 1 point each (no limit) during scoring. A number of the new Major Improvements revolve around horses, and it’s a shame we didn’t concentrate on them too much. They did provide benefits to myself personally through the Peat Charcoal Kiln improvement, which gained me an extra fuel every time I “cut peat”.

Strategy, what strategy?

For the first few rounds of the game, I tried a strategy of playing as I would for the base game with my standard actions, and gaining energy through special actions where I needed it. This elicited cries of mirth from my playing partners who thought trying to apply strategy with all the extra complexity going on at the start was madness. In a way, though, it allowed me to make progress whilst beginning to learn the intricacies of the additions, allowing me to merge the energy-gathering and base game growth as the game progressed. For those struggling to get to grips with the game, I would definitely advise this as a good way to pick up the expansion.

My player board in the final couple of rounds

In conclusion

In general, as with all of Uwe’s games that I’ve played (Agricola, Le Havre, Loyang) the rules are very clear. The additions complement the game so well that although they introduce a lot of new complexity in terms of decision making, the changes to player actions are limited. There were a couple of points where clarification would have been useful, such as in the case of the Tenant Farmer, where we were unsure as to whether or not horses should be included. The rules could also maybe have benefitted with more detailed card descriptions a’la the original. Overall though, the majority of our queries were mentioned somewhere in the rules.

To sum up, Farmers of the Moor is an excellent expansion. It adds a new level of complexity, some excellent minor improvements, and the horseeples are great. The additional player interaction introduced with the special actions provides a new layer of brain-melting decision making, which will hopefully keep anyone who found the base game too simple amused! When compared to Factory Manager, €25 for an expansion vs a whole game seems quite steep, but considering the number of cards, the quality of the artwork and the seamless integration, it’s definitely worth it. I will be playing this one more; I fully expect it to be a de-facto part of my Agricola games from now on.

Rating

4-day pass to joy at Spiel 09

I am just back from the Internationale Spieltage 09 in Essen. The phrase of the weekend has been, quite simply, “so many games”. When I get time, I’m going to add full reviews (as far as I can recall) of all the games, as well as my experiences on the convention itself, but here I’m just going to jot down some initial thoughts. Particular highlights for me were Comuni (a 2008 game), Dominion: Seaside and the presence of the English version of Agricola: Farmers of the Moor from Z-Man games.

Read on for a list of all the games I’ve played over the weekend, and a couple of words on them.

All in all, Essen has been an amazing experience, topped off with some excellent dunkel in the Rüttenscheider Hausbrauerei, and I’m already looking forward to 2010.

Thursday

Steam, Tzaar, Yinsh, Titanic, Batt’l Kha’os, Krysis, At the Gates of Loyang

Anna gets bored of waiting for Tim

Steam is excellent fun, with more to it than most train-based games I’ve played, Interestingly, we only played the basic version, so look forward to playing the standard rules.

I’m not, in general, a fan of the more abstract games; I like a theme and good tie-in. Tzaar and Yinsh, then were possibly not my first choices to play, but I found them reasonably fun. Yinsh is effectively an evolution of reversi/othello, using 3 axes of movement instead of 2, and a slightly different laying/winning mechanism. It was nice. Tzaar, which was this year’s offering from the GIPF project starts by laying out discs on an isometric grid. Each player (black and white) has 3 types of piece. The object of the game is to remove all of 1 type of the opposition’s pieces, or prevent them from being able to move. You can “upgrade” pieces by stacking them, but this will obviously remove a piece of one your types. I won both games I played quite quickly, which I don’t think would happen again now my partner knows my tactic; which was to target the piece type with the lowest number of discs. Fairly quick to play, and reasonably interesting… for an abstract game .

Titanic is less a board game, and more of a logic puzzle, but has kept us amused for a good while .

Batt’l Kha’os is a very interesting tile-laying game, but at €20 was too steep for me. This is a shame, I’m going to keep an eye out for this one at a lower price.

Krysis I liked, and would like to play more of. The plastic gems are nice pieces, and the artwork is very cool. It also plays quite quickly, but retains enough depth to keep it interesting.

I also picked up a copy of Loyang on Thursday, which we played a couple of hands of during the evenings. It’s a lot lighter than Agricola or Le Havre, and I’m a fan of the huge complex game style those games embody. Loyang is still a very good game however, though it lacks somewhat in player interaction in the 4-player game. I also feel the granularity of the scoring isn’t fine enough, though this may just be because I haven’t played enough rounds to know how much money above a point on the scoring track is a “good” score. All in all, still a very good game and well worth getting.

Friday

Rise of Empires, Dominion: Seaside, Priests of Ra, CirKis

At first glance, Rise of Empires looks like a risk-style game, with obviously more depth. As the game wore on, however, it became clear that there is very little need for warring between players (though you can go down that route if you wish). There’s a lot going on in this game, and as soon as we were done, I could see so many ways to improve/refine my game. I hope to play this one again sometime.

One of my main criticisms of the excellent Dominion is that I don’t feel it’s very closely tied into its theme. I’m big on themes, and it’s always been a bit of a let-down. The added player interaction in Dominion: Intrigue seems, from the few hands I’ve played, to improve the base game but not really contribute much to tie it down to the theme. For me, Dominon: Seaside addresses this issue far better. You can really feel like you’re being a pirate when playing the Pirate Ship cards. Looking forward to many more hands of this, now I have bought it. This game must have been one of the most-played at Essen – I saw it at at least 4 separate stands.

Priests of Ra was fun, but I can’t see as it differs too greatly from the original to be honest.

CirKis was… fine, didn’t really float anyone’s boat in our group.

Saturday

Factory Manager, Havana, Samurai: The Card Game, Tobago, Rotterdam: Masters of Trade

It took us 3 attempts to complete a game of Factory Manager, and that doesn’t count trying to find a spare table. This one generated a lot of buzz, and it seems justified. Very good fun, and not too long once you know the mechanics. Not sure as to how many available strategies there are, but that will only become clear with time. I agonised over whether or not to pick up a copy, but as a friend did, I’ll just play his copy. Theme works very well.

Havana is a card game in the Cuba world. We only played 1 hand, which was reasonably quick, ~30 minutes. Good fun, but a bit steep at the €25 Rio Grande were charging. I’ve still not played Cuba, so I don’t know how it compares.

I have not played Samurai, so I can’t really compare, but we tried a hand of Samurai: The Card Game at the Rio Grande stall, and really enjoyed it. It’s a card game, as opposed to the tile-laying original, but from reading up, it seems they are very similar. Obviously there are only 4 edges to the cards, compared to the 6-edged tiles, and there are no ways to alter the layed cards once played. An interesting scoring mechanism, and at 30-45 minutes a good short game.

I have to admit, Tobago has taken me a bit by surprise. Initially, we played a round because the board looked cool. Once I’d read the rules though, it looked pretty simplistic, although the theme tie-in is excellent. The other 3 in my group really enjoyed it, however, and having played again, I’m starting to see the attraction. The idea is to “search” for treasure by laying “clue” cards which narrow down the possible hexagons on the board until only one remains. This is then where the treasure is. There are multiple treasures available, so it’s not a first-to-the-treasure wins scenario. We bought a copy and will be playing this one some more.

Masters of Trade was a “oh there’s a spare table” find. We didn’t even realise initially that we were playing the expansion. I probably enjoyed this one more than the rest of the group; the theme tie-in is very good, and there’s more to the game than we played through in our single game. Not sure if there’s enough for me to buy it though.

Sunday

Comuni, Wings of War, Opera, Last Train to Wensleydale

Comuni was an excellent surprise. We headed over to play Ad Astra, but all the tables were full, so we sat down at a Comuni table instead. I’m glad we did. Although this was a game from 2008, it was still being pitched this year. You build up your city in 4 different categories (defense, architecture, religion and treasury), and then use this city to generate income. 4 times during the game, Italy is attacked. You can either commit your troops to Italy, or to your own city. It requires faith in your other players, but by committing to Italy, the sum of all the players’ troops sent to defend the country are used to repel the attack. It’s an interesting mechanic, and all 4 of us were very impressed with this game.

Wings of War… fine, good for a laugh to fill half hour, wouldn’t buy it.

Opera was one of the busiest games at the fair, and nigh-on impossible to find a table for. We managed to book in at the author’s stand for a 3-round (of the 9 in the game) intro. The game is centered around buying opera houses in various cities and getting operas to play there. There’s a market mechanic to buy unrated composers and make them more famous. The theme tie-in is excellent, and it was a shame we only got 3 rounds in – especially as I didn’t fully understand the player-order bidding in the first round. One of our group bought a (signed) copy, and I hope to get a full game in soon.

A celebratory beer to mark the end of our 09 adventure

Last Train to Wensleydale is a new train game from Martin Wallace, the author of Steam. This was our final game on the Sunday, and was not set up at all. There was also no-one available to explain it to us and the set was missing various pieces (which we took from the other copy on the stand). This probably tainted our view, but the setup for this game is pretty involved and takes quite a while. It also results in a very messy board. Once we’d played through a single round, we’d picked up the mechanic well enough. Seems interesting, but not a classic, but by this point we’d had 4 solid days of gaming and it wasn’t the optimum way in which to test the game. Maybe one to try again sometime, but with so many more obviously awesome games available, I wont be rushing back to this one.

Uwe Rosenberg

I’m a big fan of Agricola, which I own and have won the 3 games of  Le Havre I’ve played so far (which always adds to the enjoyment, but it’s a good game anyway). This means I’m really looking forward to both contributions from Uwe Rosenberg this year.

The new Agricola expansion, Farmers of The Moor, promises to add another layer of complexity to the game. Players start with a board layout including forests and moors from which wood and peat can be harvested for energy. At each harvest, a player must not only feed their family, but heat their house also. I was sad to see a couple of forum threads on the ‘geek that suggest the English version of this game wont be available to buy at Essen. Guess it wont be too long to wait though, and on the bright side it will leave more space in the boot for other games.

At the Gates of Loyang is the third “trading” game from Rosenberg, the rules of which can now be downloaded. The only game of the 3 to sport no central board, I read somewhere on the ‘geek that this was actually the first game of the 3, and it’s just taken this long to refine. I’m really itching to give this one a spin, and hopefully pick up a copy.