Expert
Alter
Spezial
da Vinci or Botticelli?
Florenza
Real artists at work!
It is always a pleasure to talk about a new game, especially if it comes from a new designer and a new publisher. If you also know that the designer team is made of gamers and the new release is a gamers’ game the interest really reaches a peak.
So I was really happy to approach Placentia Games in Essen, after a long exchange of e-mails, trying to get to try the game during the fair.
Of course it was impossible and Florenza got sold out during the Spiel. I got my copy some week later.
The game is really a gamers’ affair and it takes somewhat more than 30-40 minutes to explain the rules. Players are heads of the most important family in Florence during the Renaissance. The goal is to get the most victory points (prestige points) by commissioning famous artist to create works of art.
Works of art do need resources and money for those resources and the artist asks for money, too! You have to construct buildings in your district and deploy your workers to acquire the money and resources needed.
You can commission works of art, both in your district - you are the only one allowed to do that - or in the City of Florence, competing with the other families: you have to remember that resources and money are not the goal of the game but just tools to achieve your goals.
Every player starts with a district board, a reference sheet explaining all the buildings (costs and benefits), workers, markers, family crests and an initial nest egg of 300 Fiorini (money) and 1 resource of each kind. Finally every player has to decide on the 2 buildings he wants to start with. For the first game the designer suggests a nice mix and I think it is a wise choice to accept this little help since it is not easy at all to have an idea of what is going to happens and what you will need just from the rules.
The game is played in 8 rounds and each round goes through 9 phases but in the first round the phases number 1, 2 and 3 are skipped.
The players collect income, decide what the workers are going to do and then set the workers to work. Finally, the artists do their job and the turn ends. Of course it is not as simple as that and we will go into details later.
In phase 1 players collect income: there is a fixed income that could be increased by some benefits gained by complete works of art. It could be that works of art will give also influence on the Church or the Captain of the People.
In phase 2 and 3 Captain of the People and the Bishop use their power to secure an artist (Captain) or convert a worker (bishop). Captain of the People and Bishop are elected in phase 8 and one of the benefits of these offices is to be player 1 and 2 in the turn sequence.
Phase 4 is where the game is actually played. Players alternate in using their workers (4 each round in the beginning) to construct workshops, use workshops, hire artists, deal with the market or donate to charity. In this phase players just decide what to do but everything is resolved in phase 6. Since every workshop can host one worker it is important to secure the one able to give you the resources you need. Is also important to quickly build the workshop you want to have in your district since using other players’ workshops is expensive (you give to the owner 1 victory point) and there are 2 or 3 of each kind of some workshops but also a lot of unique workshops. It is also important to commission works of art quickly to be able to hire the best artist, because you get the artist as soon as you place the worker on the work of art. Actually everything is important and you need to do it in the right time and before other players do it: That IS the game and I think it is really well done since you are always in doubt about what would be the best action to choose, when to do it and you do not have that many actions.
In the first turn you have just only 4 workers but you can get more in the following rounds with some buildings or completing some works of art. Workers are important (they stand for the actions you can do in your turn) but having more workers than others doesn't mean you are going to win for sure. If you need more workers you can donate to charity (actually paying money to have more actions).
Phase 5 is the Market phase: Players with workers in the market are allowed to buy one resource, to sell one resource and to exchange two resources for one other. Sometimes this is the only way to get a resource needed for a work of art and/or a workshop.
In Florenza there are 6 types of resources: Wood is important for building workshops, marble is used in a lot of works of art. Other resources are: Gold, metal, textile and spice.
In phase 6 the actions in the districts happen. To have built a workshop is not enough to benefit from it; you also have to activate it with one worker. It is also important to remember that other players can use your workshops. The workshops in the district are numbered and activated in that order. That means that a worker placed in the place number 1 in one district will complete its action before any other worker placed in place number 2 in any district.
This is a really important feature of Florenza since in phase 4 you just commission the works of art but they are actually only completed by spending the resources in phase 6 and in a specific order. This means that you need a good planning strategy also for the order in which you set up the workshops in your district.
In phase 7 the works of art are completed: You have to pay resources and money for the work of art and for the artist. Works of art give players the main part of their victory points in the game. Every artist is competent in one or more of three categories and you need the right artist for the work of art you commissioned: You need a painter to make a painting and a sculptor to make a sculpture! To complete a work of art you need to roll a die to determine the quality of the artist's performance: every artist can give more or less points, depending on his ability and the roll of the die.
The number of artists available in Florence each round is fixed, depending on the number of players. Every artist will be in the game only for a fixed number of rounds and new artists will appear in the following rounds.
Which artists appear and when they will come into play is something that will change from game to game and is a factor that can really change the game.
Phase 8 is about the election of the Captain of the People and the Bishop. The mechanism for these elections are really well done: The player with the most prestige points will be the Captain in the next turn, will get prestige certificates representing victory points equal to his amount of prestige points and has then to set his prestige point marker back to zero. That means that the role of Captain will move from player to player in each turn. The office of Bishop will go to the player with most influence points for the Church. Being elected bishop twice in a row gives you the role of Cardinal, which scores you a lot of prestige points but sets back your amount of Church influence points to Zero.
Phase 9 is about all the management staff needed to complete the round.
At the end of the 8th round the player with more prestige from adding prestige points and prestige certificates will be the winner. There are also few points to be earned from money and resources left over.
Florenza is a really deep game with a lot of different mechanisms mixed together well. A lot of nice ideas have been well connected to the topic. The artwork of the game and the components are excellent. The fact that only a few artists from the artist deck are used in every game gives the game a high replay value.
I have only a small problem with the randomness in the number of prestige points gained by an artist completing a work of art. I'm sure it is nice to have a bit of randomness in the game and the way it is implemented is also really well connected to the theme, but in a game where sometimes you win or lose by a margin of 3-5 prestige points a really unlucky sequence of dice rolls could be really hard to overcome.
Anyway, despite this, my opinion about this game is really positive: I enjoyed all the games played and I'm looking forward to playing it again, as there is something new and something additional to learn about the game and new strategies to try, too. I'm sure it will get a position in the gamers games heaven.
Andrea “Liga” Ligabue
Spieler : 2-5
Alter : ab 14 Jahren
Dauer : ca. 150 min
Autor : Stefano Groppi
Grafik : Ivan Zoni, Valeria Gobbi, Daniela Zurla
Titel : ident
Preis : ca. 60,00 Euro
Verlag : Placentia / Heidelberger
www.placentiagames.it
Genre : Resources management game
Zielgruppe : For Experts
Mechanismen : Allocate resources, plan work sequence
Kommentar:
Very beautiful components
Featuring historic persons, authentic workshops and professions from the Renaissance
Chance element from the allocation of prestige points from works of art
Vergleichbar:
The Princes of Florence and other games with resources management and worker placement
Meine Bewertung: 6
Andrea Ligabue:
I like this game, it is well-connected to the topic, features lots of interesting and interacting mechanisms, and the randomness of the prestige points earned by a work of art is only a small irritation.
Zufall 2
Taktik 2
Strategie__ 3
Kreativität
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