Grupo Martes: 25 October

Tonight we started with Kingdom Builder. Kingdom Builder is the latest game from Donald X. Vaccarino of Dominion fame. In this game you have a bunch of houses to place. At the start, you can only place two houses per turn. You draw a card that represents one of the five or so terrain types. You must then place on that terrain. If you have houses that already exist adjacent to the drawn terrain type, you must place there before you place elsewhere. You play until one player runs out of houses. 

To add variation, there are a number of different game boards to choose from. You also get three random additional victory conditions. For example, in our game, you got extra points for having the most houses in a quadrant or points for your longest row of houses. There is always the standard rule of three points for houses next to a city. 

There are a number of other special locations that grant additional abilities. For example, a ship. This enables you to move one of your houses onto an adjacent water hex. Another one enabled you to add an extra house to a pasture.

I find the game relatively quick and easy to play. It is one that I can imagine sitting down to with a group of gamers and non-gamers on an evening where we do not have anything else planned. Obviously that is not a strong endorsement of the game, nor should it be interpreted as one. I find the game entertaining, but not attractive; both in the sense of a strong desire to play and the somewhat garish board. This game is clearly in a similar category to Carcassone. If you love Carcassone and still want to play it, you'll like this game.

Flowers, desert, forest, pastures, and water cover the board; ugh.

Lena, Miriam, Michael, and Udo.

 I cannot remember who won. Michael and Miriam played together, but I think Udo won. I just remember coming in second.

The Endgame

 Afterwards we played Santiago de Cuba. This is a simplified version of Cuba, which came out in 2007. I never played Cuba, but I am told it is a long complex game. The game reminded me of an even older classic with a Carribean theme, Puerto Rico. As in Puerto Rico, you are interested in gathering resources such as tobacco, sugar, rum, and fruit and shipping them overseas.

In Santiago de Cuba, each player moves the old brown car another step on the track. You then get two actions. In the first action you act on the person you are parked in front of. Pedro gives you two bales of tobacco, for example. If you do not want to stop in front of Pedro, you can spend a Peso and drive on to Martinez, who gives you three Pesos. For your second action you look at the color flower the person has. The buildings are grouped according to these colors; three to a color. You may choose one and mark it with your marker. This prevents the others from using that building until you move your marker. (There is also a way to buy the building so that you get victory points every time someone uses the building, but I forget how to do that.)

The old jalopy parked in front of Martinez. Three Pesos please.

Pedro looking manly with those bales of tobacco. Huba huba!

 When the car makes it around to the harbor, it is time to load the ship. The dice were rolled the last time the ship came around, and it shows the demand for goods. The players take turns loading their goods onto the boat, collecting victory points. Key is to make sure you get your goods on the boat, before the others do. So if you are the only one with cigars, load your fruit on and satisfy the demand, so that your opponent cannot load his fruit.

The Harbor in Santiago de Cuba

To ensure replayability, you shuffle the buildings and personas at the start of each game, so the people and buildings are always in a different order.

I found this an enjoyable game. It takes a bit longer to play than Empire Builder and is simple enough. I think this is a welcome simplification compared to Cuba. Still I do not think this is a game I would choose to buy. I find the play order a little too rigid and predictable. I commented to a friend that I think the game needs a mechanic to keep me from always landing on Jose. He pointed out, that is what spending Pesos is for. I had to grudgingly admit he was right. The mechanic is there. I just did not see it. Still, the car goes around the harbor a little too quickly for my liking. Adding Pesos just makes it go even faster.