Our review

Control areas

Deus

Build temples

Besides Orléans, Deus (Latin for God) from the Belgian publisher Pearl Games was deemed to be one of the highlights for experienced players at the SPIEL 2014 Fair at Essen, and rightly so, albeit with a few small deficiencies, as we were to find out.

Deus is an area control game, using a great number of cards and a variable board, consisting of four to seven continental boards – depending on the number of players – and each of those boards in turn shows seven landscape areas, always twice water in different locations, mountains, swamp, forest, fields and a Barbarian village. Each of this landscape areas – with the exception of water and the Barbarian village – is assigned a corresponding resource, but why wood is represented by brown discs when the wood area is green, will probably remain a mystery. Barbarian villages, which may not be adjacent to each other, are equipped with as many victory point markers as there are areas adjacent to them, that is, minimum three and maximum six markers.

Each of the two to four players is given a player board, which very clearly shows the core mechanisms and turn options. The board also features storage areas for five types of buildings –production, civil, science, military units and temple. Each of those storage areas is immediately equipped with two buildings out of a maximum of five of its kind. Each player also receives five pieces of gold, five victory points, five randomly dealt building cards and one marker for each type of resource, wood, stone, clay and wheat.

A turn in a game is relatively simple, as it only offers two options, either to build a building with the assistance of a card, or to „offer a sacrifice to the gods“ which usually means nothing else but drawing cards and buildings.

If you want to construct a building, you play the corresponding building card, must of course have the corresponding building in storage on your personal board, pay the respective costs of resources/Gold and place the building either adjacent to one of your own areas or in any of you own areas. In each area on a continent board only one building of each kind of any player is allowed. Ships can, of course, only be placed on water. It is very important to remember that each resource that you might lack can be replaced by four pieces of gold, a rule that you should not forget, because it is one of the important basic rules without which the game would not work.

And now we arrive at the heart of the game, its chief attraction: Each card also describes what the card itself has to offer besides being a building card. This can be various resources, money or even victory points, and so on, which in itself is not yet special. Each card you play is placed next to your board. Each additional card of the dame kind is then handled normally – paid for and the building is placed – and added to the card(s) already there, whereby now the effects of all those cards – from bottom to top – can be implemented again, the effects of the newly placed card come last. This means that usually the first card is activated up to five times, the second one up to four times, and so on. This can, given suitable planning and luck of the card draw, result in absolutely bombastic options for your turn. Sometimes, if you are really lucky, they are that bombastic that it is a bit depressing for other players to watch the lucky one winning. I have already seen combinations which gave a player that much money that he could practically buy all necessary resources while other players struggled to acquire their urgently needed resources.

Again, for my liking, too strong are some military cards, that, if they are introduced into the game too early and, of course, can also be activated up to five times, offer enormous options for acquiring victory points, especially as they can be snatched away from other players under their noses from a Barbarian village or even can be obtained directly from a player. Furthermore, military cards offer the only possibility to move military buildings, that is, units, for instance a War Elephant, across the boards according to specific rules and thus to close in on a player directly.

But how do you acquire victory points? Basically, there are three options for this: Some building cards give you victory points themselves (of course also several times), as do the temple cards, which are scored at the end of the game, but are very imbalanced, and then there are the Barbarian village, as mentioned earlier. Should a Barbarian village be completely surrounded, regardless by how many players, the victory points of the village go to the player who has placed the majority of military units for this. Only in case of a tie the number of other types of buildings is a deciding factor.

New cards are acquired by sacrificing a minimum of one card and up to a maximum of ten cards to a god, that is, discarding them, whereby the topmost card in the discard pile that you are discarding at that moment decides, which god receives the sacrifice. Basically, you get as many new cards as you have discarded cards. Depending on the god you get a corresponding building of your color from the maximum three that are still available and either money, resources, more additional cards, building markers or victory points. For a temple card on top in your discard pile you can choose any god. Should you manage to play all cards and to pay the cost for this, gets five new cards instantly and thus saves a specific card discarding turn.

The end of the game is triggered when either all victory points have been taken from the Barbarian Villages or when all temples have been build. One more complete round is placed and the game is scored.

My conclusion: Deus is a very well-working game for experienced players, with some small deficiencies due to imbalanced cards, but offering a new „repeating card effects mechanism that – due to the variety of cards – keeps enticing you to play again and to try new strategies.

Gert Stöckl

Players: 2-4

Age: 14+

Time: 60+

Designer: Sébastien Dujardin

Artist: Christine Deschamps, Ian Parovel

Price: ca. 45 Euro

Publisher: Heidelberger Spieleverlag 2014

Web: www.heidelbaer.de

Genre: Development, area control

Users: With friends

Version: de

Rules: de en fr it nl

In-game text: yes

Comments:

Simple Basic rules

New method to repeat card effects

Cards partly imbalanced

Variety of cards enables different strategies

Compares to:

Brügge

Other editions:

Pearl Games, Asterion Press, Asmodee

My rating: 5

Gert Stöckl:

A well-working game for experienced players, with some imbalanced cards, but offering a new „repeating card effects mechanism”.

Chance (pink): 2

Tactic (turquoise): 1

Strategy (blue): 2

Creativity (dark blue): 0

Knowledge (yellow): 0

Memory (orange): 0

Communication (red): 0

Interaction (brown): 2

Dexterity (green): 0

Action (dark green): 0