Friends
Alter
Spezial
Commerce and artisans
NORENBERC
in the medieval town of Nurnberg
(deutscher Titel: Nürnberg)
Andreas Steding is a well known game designer and he usually produces games for expert players so it was with high expectations that I opened the box of Norenberc, finding it filled with a lot of materials, but … no game board!
Instead we find 6 small heavy cardboard tablets reproducing artisan houses of the medieval town of Nurnberg (known also by the original name of Norenberc). Each “house” belongs to a Guild and shows, on the ground floor, four artisan shops, one storehouse for the produced goods and one insignia. On the first floor we find also four rooms for the future guests of the Guild. In each game we will use a number of Guilds based on the number of players: with five players, for example, we will use all 6 Guilds; with three players only Guild 1 to 4, and so on.
Each Guild has a small deck of 11 artisan tiles and a reserve of 12 goods (made with pretty shaped colored wood): each “tile” shows a picture of the artisan, a VALUE (ranging from 2 to 7) and the Guild Insignia (a yellow BEER for the brewery, a pink PASTRY for the bakery, a brown BOOT for the shoemaker, a white PAPER for the printing house, violet SCISSORS for the tailors and an orange HAT for the hatter’s shop).
Each player get a small deck of 6 cards (one for each Guild), 8 agents (colored wood figures), a two faces disc (that shows a Agent on the front and the “moon” on the back), 25 Talers (coins with value of 1, 3, 5 and 10) and a coffer (a small carton board used to hide the player’s money and to count the Victory points at the end of the game).
The game starts sorting randomly 5 artisan tiles for each Guild and putting them on the ground floor shops: one on the first shop on the right (this will be the Guild Master of the first turn), one on the second shop, one on the third and two on the fourth shop. Then all the goods are placed on the Guild’s storehouse and each player receive one good from each Guild. Finally four “coat of arms” tiles (showing the Guild’s insignia) are placed on the house. The unused artisan tiles are placed on side for future use (but I suggest to use a small cloth bag to keep all the available tiles as they will randomly selected during the game).
We also find in the box 26 “citizen” tiles and four “prestige” coat of arms: the citizens are a sort of bonus that will help the players during the game (i.e. giving you an extra Agent or some extra money, or allow you to take goods from other players, swap artisans, etc.) or will grant extra points at the game end. They are divided into three categories: tiles to use immediately (with a white star on red disc), tiles to use at the end of the turn (with a moon symbol) and tiles to use at the end of the game (with a sun symbol).
You mix the 26 citizens together with the unused artisans (thus the utility of the bag) and randomly pick up THREE tiles for each Guild, placing them on three of the first floor rooms, starting from right and proceeding to left. Each room has a pictogram that explains how to invite this citizen to join you during the game (more on this later). The unused tiles are placed aside (or on the bag) for later use. Finally you place one of the four “prestige Coat of Arms” in the Guild that has the Master with the higher value.
There are different possibilities to win the game, but in general you should try to have a majority in more than one Guild, if possible, and a good collection of coats of arms. Extra points are assigned to the richest players, or to the players that own at least one artisan per guild, or from bonuses granted by some citizens.
Randomly decide the “play order” of the first turn and mark this with colored wooden cubes (one for each player) placed on a special rack printed on the first Guild board (the brewery). All the players initially get four Artisans while the remaining four are placed aside to be assigned (possibly) later in the game. They also keep one card for each Guild from their initial deck (the unused cards are putted back in the box).
Now all the player make their “planning” for the first round of the first turn (the game last four turns, divided in a variable number of rounds). In practice they select one or more cards and they place them (covered) on the table. When all the players have placed their cards Guild 1 (brewery) is checked: all the brewery cards are revealed and, in play order, the players place one agent on the card and make one of the following four actions:
- You may select the SALE action and thus sell any number of goods to the Guild: you multiply the number of goods by the Master’s value and you get the total in Talers. The goods must be of the type produced by that Guild.
– You may BUY up to THREE gods from the selected Guild: you multiply the number of goods by the Master’s value, you pay this amount in Talers and you take the goods in front of you so that the other players can see them.
– You may also invite one of the guest citizens of the selected Guild: you pay the number of goods shown on the pictograms under the selected room and you take the citizen. Then you may move your turn order cube and place it on top of the rack, pushing down the other cubes. Finally you get a number of Talers that is equal to the number of agents already placed on this Guild. This action is a very important move as you may “invite” a citizen in one Guild just for the purpose of being the first to act in a following Guild. Sometimes it happens that if you arrive too late you cannot find any good to purchase and thus you risk to lose a move (and an agent)
– You may also pass and do nothing
Whatever is the action that you decided you must place your agent on the selected Guild (even if you pass). Then you take back your card and you place it with the other in your hand. All the Guilds are “checked” in this way and all the players use their Agents to perform one of the above actions. Then the round is closed and all the players that still own one or more agents may start a new round (again with a planning phase, followed by the agents’ placement, etc.).
When the agents of all the players have been used the turn is over and the game stops for a few minutes for a sort of “administration” phase. You check again all the Guilds (starting from number 1: brewery) and you assign the Master artisan, together with a coat of arm, to the player who owns the majority of goods of this Guild. If a Guild has also a special coat of arms the winner of this Guild takes it, too. Then all the agents are taken back and the players receive 3 Talers of taxes. The artisans on the ground floor are moved one place to the right and thus you determine the new Masters of each Guild. Finally you move to the left all the “guests” in the rooms and you fill the empty rooms with new guests (citizens or artisans) taken from the common reserve (the famous … bag).
It is very important to decide on a strategy from the beginning because it is very difficult to change it after first turns: so if you were able to get the majority in a couple of Guilds you may decide to insist on those Guilds in order to be certain to add new artisan tiles to your reserve and thus win the final confrontation or to change your target in order to collect extra coats of arms and try to get at least an artisan per type to qualify for the special bonus at the end of the game.
The amount of money that you have is quite limited and you have to carefully decide where to invest; remember that you always see who will be the next master in each Guild and this should guide your decisions. Let’s suppose that the actual Brewery Master has a value of “2” while the following one has a value of “6”: if you buy three goods now you spend only 6 Talers and you are already on the way of getting a majority on this Guild. In the next turn you may sell the same three goods for 18 Talers (as the new Master has the value of 6) and then invest this money in another Guild. Usually all the players try to buy the cheapest goods and thus the same Guild is selected immediately, so sometimes it is necessary to diversify your purchases in order to target the majorities, also if this means to spend most of your money.
Another possibility to get a majority is to buy a certain kind of good from another Guild. This is possible because when you invite a guest you may pay the fee with different goods and these are placed in the storehouse: the cost of all the goods of each Guild is determined by the actual Master so it happens very often that you may find a cheaper good in a different Guild.
Some citizens and/or artisans grant you a new Agent: if you can gain this tile (either inviting it from a Guild or winning the majority in that Guild) you receive an extra agent that you may immediately use. So always keep an eye on all the rooms in search of those guests and be prepared to pay the requested fee: plan in advance how to be the first to play in that Guild and remember to verify that you have the right number of goods to invite the guest. Most of the fun in this game is to bypass an opponent arriving first in a Guild and deprive him of the selected target (either inviting an interesting guest or buying all the remaining goods).
In one of our games a player was able to get all the extra Agents at the end of turn 2 while the others players had only 5 or 6. On turns 3-4 he had a certain number of goods in stock and was able to win the game playing one card only per round and “passing” each time (in order not to spend money): then, when all the others players finished the agents he planned carefully the last rounds selling goods to get as much money as possible and winning majorities with only 1 or 2 goods. In effect he simply looked at the opponent’s stock and played on the Guilds where it was possible to achieve a majority at the minimum cost. In the following games everybody hunted the special tiles with the extra Agents so this kingmaker strategy was no longer possible.
At the end of turn 4 a final Victory Point (VP) phase is done. Players turn over their coffer (showing a VP track), take the turn order cube and use it to mark their points. Look first at the citizens bonus (some of them just assign 2-3 VP extra, other add VP if you arrive second or third in a Guild, etc.) then total value of artisan points for each Guild (just add the value of all the artisans of this Guild that you own) and assign 5 VP to the higher value, 3 to the second and 1 to the third.
If you get 30 value points or more in a Guild you get extra VP.
If you have at least one artisan of each Guild you get 5 VP
If you are the riches players (total number of Talers) you get 5 VP
Finally you look at how many different coats of arms you collected and you get extra VP accordingly (i.e: 0 VP if you have only 1 or 2 coats of arms, 9 VP if you have 5, 20 VP if you have 7 or more, etc.) The player with most VP wins the game
We enjoyed this game and we went back a few times to it to try different strategies: so we may frankly suggest NORENBERC to clubs, newbies or even in family because it is not so difficult to explain and to play it, but even if it is a very good game that we will play again in the future, after the excellent HANSA TEUTONICA we expected a little more from Norenberc.
Players: 2-5
Age : 12+
Time : 90-100 minutes
Autor : Andreas Steding
Grafik : Joshua Cappel
Titel : Nürnberg
Preis : ca. 45 Euro
Verlag : Huch & Friends 2010
Genre : Resources Management
Zielgruppe : With friends
Version : en
Rules : de en fr nl
In-game use of language : no
Kommentar:
Good Components
Topic and mechanisms go well together
Easy to learn and explain
Also good for families
Compare to:
All resources management games
Meine Wertung: 5
Pietro Cremona:
A pretty, well-working game that allows several strategies for winning, also suitable for families.
Zufall 1
Taktik 3
Strategie__ 2
Kreativität
Wissen_
Gedächtnis
Kommunikation
Interaktion 3
Geschicklichkeit
Action