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THE NEW ROAD TO INDIA
VASCO DA GAMA
Worker placement with time markers
When Caylus by William Attia was published in 2005 the world of board games was enriched by a wonderful new mechanism. Each player has at his disposal a certain amout of workers which are placed on action areas to implement the action available there. As Caylus was a very well made game all around there really was nobody around involved in gaming who could ignore the new prodigy. Since then many games have been published who did take on the mechanism of worker placement. The common game geek quickly got used to it. No bigger display of interest than “oh, its worker placement again” is normally heard at the games table. Unless it is a game that is nearly perfect in total, as was Agricola, or something else is different or a new game offers an interesting variant of the worker placement mechanism. And thus we have arrived at Vasco da Gama.
Vasco da Gama was presented at the Essen Fair of 2009 by the Italian publisher What’s Your Game? , and very successfully, too, because sold out very quickly. This fact made it easy to find a publisher for other language versions. Hutter Trade was successfully in acquiring the rights for the German edition.
Two to four players adopt the role of Portuguese explorers trying to find a new road to India.
Vasco da Game is played in exactly five rounds which are segmented into several phases. The most interesting one of these phases is the first one. In this phase, as is to be expected from my introduction, players in turn place workers. There are only four areas for the placement of these workers and each of these areas can only accept a certain amount of workers in relation the number of players. The new feature and the highlight of this placement is, that you must place a so called time marker with your worker. These time markers have values of 1 to 20 and are available from a general stock at the start of the game. The actions of the areas are implemented in the order of the time markers. Of course, in general, it is better to have your turn early as you have a wider selection at your disposal. But be careful, not all actions are free. In each round there is a limit. Actions carrying time markers equal to this limit or higher than the limit are free. All actions with a time marker lower than the limit must be paid for, the price is equal to the difference between the time marker and the limit. If the limit is 8, for instance, action 2 costs 6 units of money.
Should you be inable to finance an action or – for whatever reason – not want to implement it, you can renounce it and receive money instead – 1 unit of money for actions #1 to #5, 2 units of money for actions #6 to #10 and the full amount of 3 units of money for actions #11 to #20.
This implementation of actions is done in phase 2 of the game. In order of the time marker values, starting with #1, the corresponding player is asked whether he wants to implement the action or if he renounces it to earn money. If you implement the action, you pay the difference to the time limit – if applicable – and then immediately implement the action. As already mentions, there are only 4 areas of action:
1 – You can recruit seamen and / or captains. Seamen are available in four different colours. You can take any number of seamen from one of four areas. In an area you can have 5 seaman. The more different colours you pick the higher is the price you pay. If other players were before you, you must make do with what is left. In addition to seamen or instead of seamen you can take a captain of your own colour, his price s the same as you did pay for your seamen – if you did not take any seaman the captain is free.
2 – You can choose a character. These yield various advantages, as there are additional actions, the role of starting player or a fifth colour of seamen embodying missionaries, the characters and their advantages remain with the player until another player claims them.
3 – The area “buy projects” is refilled at the end of each round with 7 new projects. These projects come in the shape of tiles and represent different kinds of ships. You can buy these projects via actions and then launch the ship by discarding the appropriate number of seamen in the colours depicted on the tile. The launching is marked by turning over the tile to the side showing the ship. The ships have different values for navigation and can earn you income or victory points in each rounds, later more on that.
4 - These ships can be sent to one of the harbors within the navigation range, using the action “expediton”. To do so a slot must be available in the harbor of your choice and the navigation value of the ship must be equal to or higher than the value of the harbor slot. Furthermore you need an individual captain for each ship. The captain is placed on the ship tile and so marks ownership of your ship. The navigation value of the harbor spot is immediately credited to you in the form of victory points. Furthermore, the harbors yield additional advantages as there are money, seamen, captains or new projects.
When all actions have been implemented, the third phase begins. Players receive
for all ships in the navigation range the coins and victory points depicted on
the ships. Following this, all fully occupied harbors are emptied. Players
receive again the victory points for each ship. Should there be empty slots
available in the next harbor – harbors are arrainged in a chain – you can move
the ship there, if its navigation value is equal to or higher than the
navigation value of the free slot. If no slot is available or the harbor being
emptied be the last one in the chain, the ship is discarded, the captain goes
back to its owner.
Then the “end of round” is implemented, comprising preparations for the next
round, some players now score bonuses for their characters.
If the round was the final one of the game, a few more victory points are given out for money and ships launched, including captains, and the winner of the game is the player with most points.
Vasco da Gama is a beautiful game all around. Graphics and components are excellently done and the mechanics of the game seem polished and complete. The game works very well and is very balanced. The rules, too, are excellently written and leave nothing unanswered. But you should plan for a longer introduction / explanation time before your first game. It takes a while to grasp the unusual mechanism. Once you have it fixed in your mind, the game flow is fast and smooth. Playing time, accordingly, gets shorter with more experience and games played. The unusual mechanism using time markers to decide the sequence of actions makes the game attractive. In the first game some brain racking and mistakes are unavoidable – there will be lack of money, because it will come in the next action, or a ship cannot be made ready before the expedition action is implement, because the action of hiring seamen comes afterwards. The limit value for the action is determined by chance in some parts: Beginning with a pre-set starting value a number between -3 and +3 is added after the placement phase, but before the implementation phase. Players can guess at the actual limit, but don’t know it exactly.
This of course invites speculation. You can play for safety and get at the end of the line with your action or take a risk in the full knowledge that you might not be able to implement the action. The little money you get for this failed implementation is not really a consolation. But I do not mind this little amount of chance / luck and it fits nicely into this allover rather dry game.
My first impression of Vasco da Gama was very positive; after a first introductory game the interest to play again soon was very high. But unfortunately this interest dwindled quickly after a few games. There are now diverse strategies to try and the tactical considerations get repetitive, too. The unusual game mechanism is not strong enough to countermand that and loses its attraction rather quickly as well. The only variety comes from the interaction with other players. This does not change the fact that the game is very good and works very well, but it will be played again rather rarely by me. But tastes differ and Vasco da Gama is always worth at least one game or two.
Markus Wawra
Alter : 12
Spieler : 2-4
Dauer : 60-120 min
Autor : Paolo Mori
Grafik : Mariano Ianelli
Vertrieb A : Hutter / Piatnik
Preis : ca. 40 Euro
Verlag : What’s your Game? 2009
Genre : Optimization game
Zielgruppe : For experts
Mechanism : Worker placement
Kommentar:
Excellent mechanism
High interaction
Chance sometimes a deciding factor
Lots of tactics, no strategy
Beautiful components
Well-structured rules
Vergleichbar mit:
Fresko, Tribun
Atmosphäre: 5
Markus Wawra:
Vasco da Gama was one of my surprise hits of 2009. It is a beautiful well-working game that fascinated me at the beginning with its interesting mechanism. This euphoria disappeared quickly, the long-time interest in the game is limited.
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