OUR REVIEW

Rich Merchants

Brügge

Canals, houses and Assistants

The scene is set in Flanders, to be more exact, in the town of Bruges, at the time of its heydays, in the 15^th century. Bruges was a town of rich merchants and accordingly players take up the roles of merchants and try to accumulate wealth, power and influence. During the game players can increase their prestige, build canals or use connections; for all this they make use of valuable henchmen which assist them in their efforts. But take care! There is also harassment in Bruges, and danger, too. Who will be the one to handle all this best and to be on top at the end of the game?

The game:

Each player is given a henchman of each color and five guilders for a starting treasure chest. Then you also receive the majority markers in your color, which are set down grey side up and you mark your canal on the board. The playing pieces of each player are placed on the Town Hall and the scoring track. The stack of cards is shuffled and split into five parts. Then you take a number of those small stacks equal to the number of players and shuffle them together, split this stack in two and set the two resulting stacks down as draw piles. The remaining cards are stacked and set aside as the extra pile. All other components are kept within reach.

Whoever has been the one who last fried something (French fries were invented in Belgium, after all) is the first starting player, takes the Coat of Arms of Bruges and draws five cards from the two stacks, one by one, you see only the color of the card taken. Those colors are very important during the game, there are altogether five different colors. Then, in turn, all other playes draw their cards.

After cards have been drawn, the starting player rolls all five colored dice and places them in ascending order on the dice track. For each 5 and 6 that was rolled each player (!) must take a threat marker in the color of the respective dice. As soon as you have accumulated three threat markers of a color, something aggravating happens, for instance, you might lose all your money or three victory points. You should therefore try to get rid of those markers quickly.

After the dice phase you can buy prestige at the Town Hall, the price is calculated as total of all 1s and 2s on the dice. You can only acquire prestige if 1 or 2 was rolled!

After all players have bought prestige, if they wanted to, or not, you play four of the five cards in hand.

Those cards can be used for one of the following six actions:

- Build a house - you discard a henchman in the appropriate color, that is, the color of the card, and place the card face down on the table. The house is worth one victory points.

- Take money - you discard the card and take money in correlation with the color of the card you played and the value of the die of the same color.

- Take a henchman - you discard a card and take two henchmen in the color of the card you discarded

- Get rid of one threat marker - again, you discard a card open-faced and return a threat marker of this color back into stock; this earns you a victory point which you instantly mark on the victory point track.

- Build a canal segment - your canal was marked at the start with a seal of your color placed into the gate house. When you manage to finish building a canal you receive victory points for this at the end of the game and for finished segments you take the top statue tile and also victory points at the end of the game. The card used for the canal segment is discarded, too.

- Last but not least you can place the person depicted on the card into one of your houses; for this you pay the related cost in guilders. The person does not need to be of the same color as the house. Persons are available with permanent effects and with once-only actions, which are implemented instantly and only once. For some persons you need also to discard a henchmen to be able to use the person. And, finally, there are persons that earn you extra points at the end of the game.

During your turn you can use additional effects of persons at any time.

After all have played their cards the board and personal displays are checked for majorities. Majorities can be achieved for canals, prestige and number of persons. It is enough to achieve such a majority once; if you manage one, you turn over your corresponding majority tile and do not lose it again during the game. For each majority tile thus acquired you score four victory points at the end of the game.

As soon as one of the two draw piles is finished you take the extra stack for the rest of the round and finish the current round. Then there is a final scoring - you add the points for persons on display, houses in your display, and advantages of persons showing a laurel wreath, built canal segments and statue tiles as well as the advancement level that you achieved. If this results in the highest score for you, you win.

Brügge is a very beautiful tactical game for friends. The element of chance is rather high due to the drawing of the cards, but adds some challenge and thrill to the game.

As already stated, Brügge is a tactical game and you react always to the current cards. This restricts your possibilities to plan far ahead, as you never know which cards will appear in the next round.

The mechanism is a bit similar to San Juan from alea or Race for the Galaxy rom Abacus, where you can also either use text on the cards or use the cards for money. In Brügge, contrary to those games, you can do more than just give them away to manufacture persons, therefore the frustration is not that big, because Brügge offers you a lot of choices for the use of those cards.

In my plays of Brügge I have noted that people either like it a lot or not at all. Furthermore, there is the advantage in this game, that it is fun to play with two or with three or also with four players and that it works excellently for all numbers of players.

Components and design are very attractive, but for my taste the victory point track is a bit too small. It would also be an advantage, if you would order yourself a card holder, because the cards are a bit slippery and so you often see the color of the coming cards, which should definitely not be the case.

In my opinion, Brügge is one of the most beautiful and best games of this year and it definitely merits the nomination for Kennerspiel des Jahres 2013.

Katharina Knoll

Players: 2-4

Age: 10+

Time: 60+

Designer: Stefan Feld

Artist: Michael Menzel

Price: ca. 30 €

Publisher: Hans im Glück 2013

Web: www.hans-im-glueck.de

Genre: Tactical game

Users: With friends

Version: de

Rules: de en fr nl

In-game text:

Comments:

Beautiful components

Rather tactical despite the element of chance from drawing cards

Compares to:

Other editions:

999 Games, Filosofia and Z-Man Games

Statements:

A good and beautiful game and deservedly a candidate for Kennerspiel des Jahres, and also on of those games that you love or hate. I love it!

Chance (pink): 1

Tactic (turquoise): 3

Strategy (blue): 0

Creativity (dark blue): 0

Knowledge (yellow): 0

Memory (orange): 0

Communication (red): 1

Interaction (brown): 2

Dexterity (green): 0

Action (dark green): 0