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Cornish Smuggler

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Do you know Cornwall? – The south-west corner of England? – You are not really sure? – But, surely, yes! – at least a substantial percentage of ladies will know this very well: This part of England is where the film Kitsch or soap operas for Saturday or Sunday evenings on TV or for a contrast program to soccer matches. Beautiful cottages, manors, high cliffs and green meadows, populated by third-class actors – they only need to be cute! – who have usually to decide between two women or men and it is clear after three minutes who will win the heart! For this nonsense to keep going for 90 minutes it is enriched with jealousy dramas, accidents, usually car accidents or as an alternative someone falling off a horse and with problems about keeping up the old family manor. Rosamunde P. sends her regards!

The landscape is reported to be really marvelously beautiful by all people who have visited Cornwall, but the real day-to-day life of people there in the “good old times” surely was hard on this peninsula surrounded by roaring seas; the main means of living, besides agriculture, has been fishing. There were hardly any other opportunities for earning money, so smuggling definitely provided additional income for many people. And this takes us right into the middle of the “Cornish Smuggler” scenario.

The board shows us a lovingly designed map of Cornwall that shows all villages and small towns and the roads connecting them and also the surrounding sea; some sea monsters remind us of the dangers lurking in those waters. The map also depicts the shipping lanes with their intersections. In the water at the edge of the board three ships are anchoring and showing storage capacities symbolized by square cases.

Each player is embodying a smuggler who brings goods in from the great deep-sea ships anchoring out there, hides those goods on land and wants to sell them, unnoticed by the customs officers. To achieve this, you need a boat, a storehouse if possible in order to hide those goods until you can sell them, that is, until no customs officer is around, and of course you also need many accomplices to assist and support you – a so-called network, represented by colored wooden cylinders. The controlling government forces are represented by black pieces for customs officers, sometimes carrying a colored elastic ring in the color of a player, denoting that this officer has been bribed, that is, will be looking somewhere else when this player is selling goods.

„Lubricant“ or bribing currency is gold which you use to hire persons – up to a maximum of ten; a wooden piece which is placed on a location on the board and provides a card for your player display giving you certain abilities). You also use gold to buy goods from the deep-sea ships und to bribe customs offers and to pay for a variety of other action options. You can also increase your „reputation“ for being a capable smuggler, represented by small cardboard squares, on the one hand by money, but also by doing business successfully; it is a witty detail that you diminish your reputation when you accept “honest work”.  

At the end of the game the total sum of gold and reputation, which is also strengthened by accomplices you acquired, determine the winner.

In our initial first games of „Cornish Smuggler“ we repeatedly had problems with distinguishing between „reputation“ and „influence“ (yet another resource that is represented by small wooden cubes, probably due to the fact that our native language those two terms describe something similar“. The “influence” resource can be used similar to gold, but with two essential differences: At the end of the game influence does not earn you victory points, but during the game it is much easier to acquire than gold.

The game is placed in rounds: Each player has one action, which has to be paid for with gold, influence or reputation, some of them even with a combination of resources. When all players have passed, because they cannot pay for more actions or do not want to spend more money, the round ends. Actions offer a broad variety of options; even more actions are introduced by some of the person cards one acquires (those are turned over when being used and are only available for use after the income phase – reputation on the cards earns you influence cubes). Movement on land or at sea are one action each, as are acquiring or selling of smuggled goods, bribing, acquisition of character cards or “Secret Cards”, and there is even the action of “Raiding the Customs Office Building” to acquire goods that have previously been confiscated. Only passing your turn is free of charge; nearly all resources can be replaced by another one for paying; influence prices are usually cheaper than gold prices; and do not forget that influence does not give you victory points at the end of the game.

The 60 Secret Cards (see above) offer you additional action options; some can be played anytime, some can only be paid in case of certain events; frequently they need to be paid for when being used, others earn you resources, customs officers can be used, and so on. When another player is able to sell goods, all other players can take a free Secret Card” and the Customs Officer nearest to the venue of the sale starts to move towards that location. Another nice detail is the “Gold Wheel”; at this wheel a marker is moved for as many cases as you did earn money. When this marker passes over the last case you advance a black piece on the “Customs” track. This not only raises the price for bribes but also introduces more Customs Officers which increases the dangers of being caught at smuggling and this is not only due to the rising number of controllers. In each harbor town there is a certain risk that a load of goods is spotted; the amount of smuggled goods determines how far the nearest Customs Officer is moving; if he arrives at the location the goods are confiscated and taken to the Customs Office building. By discarding influence cubes you can lower the risk by reducing the movement of the Customs Officer.

In order to reduce the „network“ of a player you must hire characters; those characters extend your abilities in the game; some of them secret caches for goods, give you money and – very important – cardboard reputation tiles (green tiles showing a symbol similar to a vine); you will receive as mine tiles as there are vines depicted on the card. Those tiles are victory points (!) which you can also use to make payments. Furthermore, each player receives, in the income phase, as many influence cubes as there is reputation depicted on all cards that are on open-faced display. Please note: If you use the special abilities of a character, you must turn the card (this is the good old tapping of trading cards); as already mentioned, the cards do not yield influence in this case.

The game ends when all goods have been sold or when the marker on the Customs Track reaches the last case, which happens quite frequently, according to our experience.

One more tip – if you spend all your money at the start of the game you will have a lot of problems because gold is coming in sparingly and characters cannot be acquired with influence alone.

„Cornish Smuggler“ is a lovingly designed game with quite a few interesting ideas; the rules are also laid out nicely, easily understood and very nearly complete; some mistakes have already been corrected after publication via information available on the internet. The inventive topic has been well implemented and carries a lot of atmosphere. In short, when you pick up the game and browse for a bit in the rules you really want to own the game and to play it. Graphics and pictures are very well done, for instance character cards with distinctive features, that really look like a villain or a fisherman, a maid or a priest, a politician or a business man, very individually drawn in each case.

After several games you find out that the outcome of the game is not decided by big tactical finesses but by the chance element in play. There are many options available for trying out, but also too many cards and actions that are never used or played and, on the other hand, too many cards that are too powerful and that other players were not able to counteract. Several times one of us was forced to again and again by new Secret Cards hoping that maybe he would acquire something useful. Many cards have options that are too limited – only at a certain time or at a certain location and are therefore very often just superfluous. The winner will usually be whoever has the necessary luck in a few moments in the game.

This imbalance in the game reminds of many an old game from the 80ties and 90ties with chaotic game flows, usually we loved them and therefore we will bring Cornish Smuggler to the table once and again just because of this.

Dr. Christoph Proksch

Players: 2-5

Age: 12+

Time: 120+

Designer: Henry Jasper, MNG Collective

Artist: Sam Brookes, Rachel Dobbs, Donald McLeoad, Francesca Stella

Price: ca. 45 Euros

Publisher: Grublin Games

Web: www.grublin.com

Genre: Simulation, use cards, move characters

Users: For experts

Version: en

Rules: en

In-game text: yes

Comments:

Marvelous design

Unusual topic

Not a lot of tactics, rather chance-driven

Surprisingly accurate simulation

Compares to:

Historic simulation with action and event elements

Other editions:

Currently none

My rating: 5

Dr. Christoph Proksch:

A beautifully designed game on smuggling in Old England (Cornwall), a bit chaotic and nice for specialists and good friends, with a strong element of luck, a sympathetic and atmospheric game, with a medium playing-time.

Chance (pink): 2

Tactic (turquoise): 1

Strategy (blue): 1

Creativity (dark blue): 0

Knowledge (yellow): 0

Memory (orange): 0

Communication (red): 1

Interaction (brown): 2

Dexterity (green): 0

Action (dark green): 0