|
‘Il Principe’ by Emanuale Ornella
Kendall arrives late. Dicken has been notified, so is not perturbed. Carol is under-the-weather, so the dining table has not had to be moved into the West Wing after all. Kendall has the new game (a Christmas present from Dicken), so he sets up while Dicken retrieves a tube of Pringles.
The first thing that hits you about ‘Il Principe’ is that it comes in a box much larger than is needed. This comes as no surprise to the Ragnars as they have read the reviews but still decided to purchase. Criticism of this aspect of the game production was also laid at the door of ‘1500 Gold’ and small game producers should stick together.
Tolerance for the rules cannot be so generous. Kendall is in need of vari-focal lenses, but to print size eight font, black on grey is taking liberties
One of the problems with rules that are ‘difficult’ for whatever reason, is that they are much harder to absorb and remember. Kendall has had two stabs at it thus far, and only feels able to lead the first turn through by literally reading each section aloud and then doing what’s asked together. Even so there is a considerable holdup when a key rule (when to carry out the Benefit of Roles), is found hidden away in italics, masquerading as an example of play.
The blessing is that the rules are only two sides long. However, the blessing is a cash saving for the producers at the expense of the players’ sanity.
Pringles and lager are absorbed.
The board is also small. But enough of this carping… people are playing this game and enjoying it all over the world! What happens exactly?
Well. Players try to build cities using building cards and money. If a city is built the player gets victory points and gets to put shields on the map, thereby gaining control of lands adjacent to the cities. Meanwhile building cards played go down in front of players to act as a kind of ….. influence thing??? The person with most cards of a colour (of which there are five) gets to collect a major role (the second most, getting the minor role). These roles also give victory points when a city is built, depending on which colour of cards were used to build, with the corresponding role benefiting the owning player to the tune of 2 vps.
Roles also have a benefit when collected (the rule bit in italics). When collected, half the cards in front of a player get flipped over, so the ownership of roles will tend to change. Players can affect this further by adding extra cards to the table from their hand. Now the hand is built up by being dealt 4/5 cards every new turn, of which 2/3 have to be ‘discarded’. These are grouped together by colour and auctioned (using money, which was also given at the start of the turn). The player winning the auction, collects the grouped cards and may at that point build a city (provided he has the right cards).
And so the game cycles on and on. But not for very long. About 5 turns in the 2-player game. By this time players have scored quite a few points (the track only goes to 40). The end scoring includes points for regions controlled, roles held, most cards on table, most cards in hand, most money, by which time both Dicken and Kendall have clocked up well over 80 points.
This is a tightly designed game with many choices. One wonders if there are any other choices that could have been added, but haven’t; but one is left with the feeling that there weren’t, because if there had been, then they would have been. Not a terribly good 2-player we felt, as one player invariably mops up the auctioned cards very cheaply due to the other player having built a city and used all his money up, but should be interesting with 3, 4 or 5. The theme is popular and one wonders if ‘Condotierre’ and ‘Princes of the Renaissance’ perhaps haven’t done it greater justice.
Dicken invites Kendall into ‘the bar’ area and a cup of coffee goes down well with a conversation about future Ragnar projects. ‘Canal Mania’ rules are up to the 30+ amendments and corrections stage and still going strong. Thank goodness we don’t have to translate them into Italian!
Dicken muses on the question of whether the Ragnars will ever get to Essen and how we could afford to manage the venture without losing too much money. Dicken proposes hiring or borrowing a big van and sleeping in the vehicle with the stock! Kendall looks askance and wonders if Dicken has eaten today. Still there must be a way to sell games at Essen without bankrupting the business….. Dicken muses some more and before things get too silly Zebedi says it’s time for bed
Go to top of page
|
