Princes of the Renaissance' by Martin Wallace
Games night....... 13th May 2004 ‘Princes of the Renaissance’ by Martin Wallace
Dicken arrives at Kendall’s for a third successive week bearing his new game,
‘Princes of the Renaissance’. Kendall continues ushering his children to their beds and Dicken sets up whilst talking Kendall through the day's email orders for 'Viking Fury' - it's going well. 'Princes….' has reached him from Roger, via Phil and transported by Kendall’s parents (talk about round the houses). Roger was able to sell to Dicken at reduced cost as he had helped with some of the rule writing. Well done Roger. Phil kindly took off the shrink-wrap when it was in his charge .... ‘I just couldn’t stop myself’.
A few more minutes and Spiller arrives accompanied by Robin and Michelle. It promises to be a good evening – a new game and guests. Some time is spent talking about the hamster, who is barrelling around the room in her plastic ball. Then the party moves to the table. Robin has brought wine and a big bag of crisps which bears the inscription ‘Made in Devon’ – nice.
As if on cue, Spiller asks about last week’s visit to the mayor’s office (Ken’s, no less) and Dicken and Kendall are happy to recount their attempts to ‘sell’ the great Ragnar commission (see last week’s review). It proved to be an interesting and satisfactory visit.... but it’s still Top Secret.
The Devon crisps have all but gone, despite being ‘slightly salty’ (how unusual) and Robin is pouring a second glass of wine. There’s still no sign of Dicken’s explanation of the rules. Could it be that the errata are proving debilitating? Apparently the four page rule booklet has two or three important elements missing. Well done Roger. (N.B. Angola had an A5 sheet of errata, so the Ragnars are also familiar with the problem).
Dicken begins. There’s a map of Italy with very little on it. The very little includes five principle cities and five smaller cities. It also includes five card spaces that are ‘filled’ with a marbled design or is it a snapshot of Jupiter taken from the Voyager space craft as it hurtles by? There are lots of cards, which are of the 5cm x 3cm, thick variety. There are five factions that correspond to the five main cities and five player tokens that correspond to the five minor cities. In addition there are military cards, treachery cards and event cards for each of three decades of play.Then there are counters for Gold, Influence and military victories. Dicken meanders on through the rules. Somewhat worrying is the way he keeps turning back to earlier pages. Thank goodness he’s only got four to go at. Even more worrying is that no one (yet) has a clue how the game works.
Dice are rolled and Michelle gets to choose her family token first and then everyone else in turn. Michelle looks concerned that she may have to start, but then Dicken announces that the dice have to be rolled again to determine this. Michelle wins again and starts.
Robin and Michelle are very good sports. They come along with their crisps and wine. They laugh at lots of bad jokes. They never swear or moan. Kendall worked with Michelle for three years and never once found a fault. They could well be a pair of angels. But, do they .... have a secret?
With no idea what might happen the players work their way through some of the options available. Kendall auctions and wins an artist (3 victory points), Robin hires some cavalry (6 Gold), Spiller curries favour with the Genoese (lots of Influence points), Dicken thinks about a treachery card (1 Gold, 1 Influence).
At the end of each decade there’s a chance for player’s to draw more Gold and Influence. In between time, player’s essentially run down their resources by buying with Gold or Influence. The buying is either in an auction format or a straight payment.
The first decade ends and everyone has bought some things, and everyone gets some more Gold and Influence, and then they can buy some more things in the second decade. Who’s winning? Well, Kendall has 5 Victory points for his two artists, Michelle has a merchant (1 Victory Point) and then the major cities values stand around 5 or 6 status points, which means that Naples is heading for 10 Victory Points at game end for being top city. Robin has one character from Naples, so he would get 10 Victory Points (1 X 10).
The second decade begins. Robin goes to war. As in many games, this is where it starts to get good. First Robin announces which two major cities will fight each other and then he puts a 4x4 chunk of wood on each of their marbling to show this (very artistic). Then there’s an auction to determine who will be Condotierre for each city (receiving a payment from the city that’s placed on the player’s minor city) and then the war starts. Players add up their armies (attack or defense respectively), roll a dice and the highest wins. Very often there will be a bit of treachery thrown in. Quick, simple and very effective. Particularly satisfying is that no one ever loses any of their army! What is lost (and gained) is city status. The loser drops 1 space, the winner rises 1 space unless the winning margin is double the lowest troop total and then the cities slip or rise two status points.
There are a few other bits of rules here, so perhaps no wonder why the assembled company struggled to get brains into gear. Robin, meanwhile is a winner and Naples rises.
Spiller likes the look of war, so he starts another. There are only five wars allowed in any decade – how did he manage to fit these rules into four pages? Robin fights again, this time as defender of Naples. Robin wins, Naples rises. Kendall buys a Neapolitan character, hoping to cash in at the end should Naples remain top dog. Of course the price is higher now, but then that’s the stock market.
And so it continues, with everyone beginning to grasp something of what the game allows them to do. Robin finishes the wine. Kettle crisps float down with the beer, like so many paintings in the Tiber. Naples continues to rise.
The third and final decade ends with Dicken snapping up several low priced Milanese, hoping for a cumulative hit with the final victory point calculation. Time for a sheet of paper (not included!) to add up the scores. It looks fairly even, apart from Michelle who proves to have scored just 6 points – how did she manage that? Kendall, Spiller and Dicken come in on 19, 18 and 20 points respectively. But Robin (Mr Condotierre) roars in with 27 points. The Ragnars make a mental note to start more wars and to ‘Get Robin’ next time.
This seems like top quality stuff and hopefully will prove so on many future outings. Well done Martin. Keep the flag flying, bring on Euro 2004.
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