OUR REVIEW

Statues. MArble and Urban development

Die Paläste von Carrara

The King is coming, the King is coming!

Quick, set up another statue, fix a Coat of Arms over the portal and polish the marble. White marble under a morning sun impresses the king most of all ….

We players are Italian princes who were ordered by the king to construct magnificent buildings and from time to time we invite the king to inspect our progress. This earns us more money from him and we also rise in this esteem.

The king’s money we spend on the marble market for new building blocks. The marble just delivered from Carrara is very expensive; the longer it lies around unnoticed by buyers the lower the costs get. Often you are given a gift of of complete load of marble blocks of minor value.

With those marble blocks, the lighter the more expensive, we set up buildings in attractive towns. But the most remunerative building orders are gone quickly, so don’t miss your chance.

But let’s take it in turn and from the start:

The appealing game components are meant for two to four players and for each of them a personal screen shaped like a palazzo, seven scoring pieces and a personal player board are provided.

30 building tiles showing costs of one to five building blocks and depict six different kinds of buildings. Seven wooden pieces in each of six colors represent marble in different levels of quality. 36 wooden markers in six different shapes represent prestige objects; 40 card board coins of „1“, „5“ and „10“ and a bag for replenishing the building blocks complete the components of the basic game. A sealed envelope holding an expansion is also included; I will get back to this envelope later.

On the main board there is room for nine different building projects, which are building tiles, and for the Prestige objects which you can buy and which are name objects somewhat casually in the rules. The image of the cities in which you build, is used to mark the scoring of a city. The marble market is represented by the somewhat dominant revolving disc, which shows the current costs. All that is surrounded by a „Kramer track” to mark your Prestige points.

Your personal board shows six towns in which you build by placement, and the six kinds of buildings for which you can trigger a scoring.

A „card track“ shows the winning conditions for the basic game (minimum number of scorings, of prestige objects received, total costs of buildings already built) and the prestige points for the final scoring.

Players who their moves in turn must implement one of those three actions:

BUY BUILDING BLOCKS from the Market, as many as you can pay for and want to buy, but only from one sector. Before you buy the wheel is turned by one position (this makes remaining building blocks cheaper) and the Market is replenished to a total of eleven blocks.

BUILD A BUILDING: You choose one of the nine building projects on display, pay for it by returning the necessary building blocks into the bag and place the buildings next to your player board. Depending on the city you can only use the best quality marble or building blocks of any quality.

SCORING a city or a type of building: To score a city is only possible once in the game for each city and is therefore marked on the board. To score a city the scoring player must have build the minimum number of buildings indicated on the board for this city. Varieties of buildings each player can score once for himself on his own board. In a scoring you are rewarded with prestige objects, prestige points or money, but those rewards are only received by the scoring player.

By the way, money is only available from scorings when buildings have been constructed in the cities which also yield money.

After those three actions you can always buy a prestige object if you are able to afford it and if there are some prestige objects left. Each prestige objects scores three prestige points at the end of the game.

The course a game usually will be as follows:

Players use their starting capital of 20 coins to buy marble from the marble market (the revolving disc) until they have acquired enough blocks to complete a building project. For this they take a building tile from the board, build it by putting the necessary building blocks back into the bag and place the building next to their own player’s board. In this way you buy and build until there are enough buildings to score varieties of buildings or to score cities. If you have money left you can buy prestige objects.

You must always pay attention to the best time for buying which kind of marble to avoid that other players grab the necessary building blocks before one can buy them; the same goes for the buildings featuring the coveted but limited prestige objects. As cities can only be scored once you have also to pay attention to the number of buildings an opposing player has built in a city to avoid that another player scores the city for himself.

This chain of events is continuing until the last building project has been taken from the board and was built, or until one player complies with all three winning conditions of the game. This player can then announce the end of the game and scores another five prestige points for doing so. In both cases play goes on until the player to the right of the starting player, so that each player will have had the same number of turns-

The final scoring is done easily and quickly:

You score the total of building costs for the buildings you did construct as prestige points, each prestige object that you collected scores three points for you and each remaining sum of 5 money scores 1 prestige points. If you have the highest total of prestige points at the end of the scoring and therefore are most esteemed in the King’s favor, you have won - what a big surprise.

But this game box also holds a sealed envelope, marked in huge letters on the seal with:

DO NOT OPEN!

Only open when you have played at least two games with the basic game.

If you want to be surprised, you should stop reading here. For all others I did look into the envelope and have discovered the following:

An additional expansion for the rules, 6 new buildings with building costs of 8, 31 cards and 8 tiles „Aufwerter”, that is, Upgrader.

First you turn over your personal player’s board to reveal its back side; you find now two additional scoring spaces for City buildings (brown background) or Country buildings (green background).

Those 6 new building tiles are set out next to the board and can be built in the same way as all other buildings. New is that you can upgrade or rise buildings; you replace any building of your choice with one of higher building costs and have only to pay the difference.

If a building with costs of 8 was built, you can choose one of the Upgrading tiles and place it on the corresponding spot on your player’s board. This then results in a scoring with receiving more money or more victory points or, maybe, even both.

Six brown, six purple and six grey cards guarantee us new conditions for winning the game over and over again. Donald X. sends his regards. Eight green extra cards offer additional victory points for the final scoring.

I have talked only about THE expansion game, but in reality the envelope offers three expansions: You can restrict yourself to variable winning conditions, or you can use the expensive building cards separately or use the extra feature of the special cards. The Upgrader tiles, too, could be added separately and by themselves.

This keeps the game interesting and varied for a long time to come, provided that you like the topic. The idea with the envelope is nice and and fancy, as casual gamers or families would be swamped by this plethora of expansions. For the experienced gamer playing the basic game is an easy entry, the extra features provide more depth for the game and demand varying tactics.

Wolfgang Kramer and Michael Kiesling have taken care that each feature of the game works perfectly in each constellation of players and that rising tension and challenge is introduced to the game. Franz Vohwinkel has contributed the right flair and mood for the game with his illustrations. The rules are not too complicated and can be well explained due to examples and illustrations. This facilitates the access to the game for casual gamers. A solid game that can excite experienced players and can also be played by families.

Heinz Frühwirth

Players: 2-4

Age: 12+

Time: 90+

Designer: Wolfgang Kramer, Michael Kiesling

Art: Franz Vohwinkel

Price: ca. 35 Euro

Publisher: Hans im Glück 2012

Web: www.hans-im-glueck.de

Genre: Resource management

Users: With friends

Version: de

Rules: de

In-game text: yes

Comments:

Well structured rules

Beautiful components

Expansions already included

Very small element of luck

Compares to:

Macao, Der Palast von Alhambra, Die Burgen von Burgund

Other editions:

Z-Man, USA; Filosofia, Canada;

My rating: 6

Heinz Frühwirth:

No impressive innovations but a surprisingly fresh and solid game; complete with useful and well-working expansion; a little gem among the many new releases.

Chance (pink): 1

Tactic (turquoise): 3

Strategy (blue): 0

Creativity (dark blue): 0

Knowledge (yellow): 0

Memory (orange): 0

Communication (red): 0

Interaction (brown): 2

Dexterity (green): 0

Action (dark green): 0