OUR REVIEW

For the environment

Green Deal

Green economics

Kickstarter games or projects about board games on other crowdfunding platforms are no longer a rarity in the board game community nowadays. Green Deal belongs into this category, as it was produced with such a campaign. In general, it should be mentioned that such crowdfunding games normally are not edited by a publisher’s editorial team, which often puts the game to a disadvantage. This is the case with Green Deal, because the game is good, albeit seemingly not completely finalized, it seems a bit half-baked - why? Stay with me, I will explain more fully.

The title of the game gives a good indication on the fact that it is a game with an environmental topic. In the year 2050 companies have to face the challenge not only to run their business making a profit but also dealing with changed parameters like environment, scarcity of resources or civil unrest. Players in this game take on the role of businessmen who deal with environmental problems and challenges, a topic that is very actual already today.

Green Deal is played over 10 rounds. In those rounds four scorings are made which will let you earn additional victory points. Those victory points are important to be the the most profitable and most environmentally friendly business in the end. With each of the rounds you deal with four phases, which are an auction phase, an accounting phase, an investment phase and an expansion phase. Each of those phases is implemented by all players at the same time.

Before the competition can begin you must do some preparations. The game board is laid out and each entrepreneur chooses a color representing his company; player dice are placed on the board directly. The starting capital with which you begin your business dealings changes with the number of players, you receive a starting capital of 8 in case of three players, of 7 in case of four players and of 6 units in case of five players. As an entrepreneur you need not only income, but also cash which you can use for investments to increase income.

For both aspects of money the board provides tracks and you place your company markers on the corresponding cases. A third marker is placed on the track for victory points. At the start of business dealings there are, of course, no victory points yet. You also place markers on the four categories of the sustainability track, all players begin with a value of zero on the four scales of different colors. Each player also receives a token marked with a turquoise sticker, set down in front of each player.

In each round you begin with a new row of available cards on display. This display of cards always comprises the cards currently available in the four categories and the corresponding draw pile, of which the top card is also revealed. In this way entrepreneurs can plan ahead for the next round, therefore it is important the the cards are clearly visible to all players. There are different cards, in four colors, for the sustainability projects. Green indicates environment, blue indicates jobs, red stands for social matters und orange for research. You need to invest in all those categories to accrue more profit for your company.

Not only today, but also in future times, in the year 2050 of the game, media are of paramount importance for businesses. Therefore you cannot neglect company Public Relation, which is represented by the turquoise card. It is not an advantage for a business if it invests in new more environmentally friendly or social projects and does not inform the public about this. This information is represented in the game by the victory point track. You can use Public Relations to increase your prestige. The cards in purple are available for additional actions and also as tax refund that you can claim anytime.

As not all goes according to plan at any given moment in a business, you can also take out a loan. Those loans are indicated by the yellow cards. The amount of those loans varies. But you must keep an eye on those loans and make sure that you pay them back before the end of the game, or else the sum of your loans will be deducted from your victory points. The individual cards already indicate at first glance that you must not only invest in new project and publicize them will, but that you must take care also to stay solvent. Thus you have to pay attention to many details during the game.

The last important point before we begin to play is the fact that the size of the world map, which is indicated on the board, is determined by the number of players, too. Three players play on 1 5x5 map, four players use 6x6 cases and five players use 7x7 cases. To facilitate play all sizes have been marked with different colors.

When all preparations have been finalized the competition can begin. In the auction phase all players simultaneously bid for the turn order. To place your bids you use the auction wheel and must, afterwards, pay for bids with cash, so that you can only bid a sum that you have currently at your disposal. Whoever wins the auction is the starting players and begins the phase of investments, the others follow in decreasing order of bids.

In my opinion this is an interesting mechanism to determine turn order, something fresh, especially as you must take care not to spend too much cash in this phase, because cash is of course also necessary in the following phases. You pay for your bid in the second phase of the turn, the accounting phase. The amount of your bid is deducted on the track and then you receive your current income for your cash reserves.

Those two first phases are rather unspectacular and very easy to implement. The really interesting phase of the game begins for all players with the investment phase. In this phase you buy cards, using one of the five basic options provided. You can buy a sustainability card, albeit with the restriction that in a game of four only three players can buy such a card, that is, always one less than there are players. This means that in each round one player is always deprived of the opportunity to invest in a new sustainability project. Therefore it is important to be among the first players in the turn order to make sure that you can buy a sustainability card if you want to this.

Those sustainability cards show four different quantities: In the top left-hand corner of the card the value of project in which you are investing, is indicated. This value is important because your marker advances accordingly on the corresponding sustainability category track. The bottom half of the card shows three numbers next to each other. The left number shows the price of the investment in cash, which must be paid immediately. The middle number indicates how your income is affected by this investment, it can raise or fall. It has to be mentioned that the decrease is usually bigger than an increase in income. The right-hand number of the three indicates the number of victory points, by which you can advance your marker on the track.

And this is the point, where, in my opinion, we have reached the most half-baked or unfinished part of the game, because the sustainability project are not balanced. Not balanced means for me, that my investment that I lay out in cash or income for the project, is not always correlating to the victory points I can earn with it. An example: A project from the environment category of size Five which costs 11 units in cast and five levels of income, but only yields six victory points, a fact that I would call an imbalanced ratio. There are other examples, for instance Project Two in category jobs costs you 1 unit of cash and one level of income, but also yields six victory points.

There are only two examples of projects, there are more to be found in the game, and I think that would have needed a bit more work. Editorial work surely would have spotted this, especially as this leaves a feeling for one player that he has been fleeced by the other players.

When you have acquired a project you also receive the corresponding tile with project size and of the color of the category, which you can use in the expansion phase of the game.

Furthermore, players can take out a loan and/or buy an action card. The final option is simply not to acquire a card at all, which is an option that in all our games has been chosen very rarely, really only when all other options were not feasible. The action card Tax Refund can be used by all players in a round. When this option is chosen a player can either take a free PR token that is available or raise his cash reserve by 4 levels.

In addition to those options, players as entrepreneurs can do three more optional moves. They can buy a PR token, albeit only one per player and round. They can also pay out a dividend, resulting in more cash, but this can only be chosen once per round. The amount of the dividend is determined by the current income level, the income track is marked with several segments accordingly. And, finally, as a last option a player can play an action card that they already had in hand or have just bought. Those action cards provide advantages to the player using it, either immediately in the competition or for the final scoring.

In the final phase of a round, the expansion phase, the sustainability projects, which you acquired in the investment phase, are placed on the world map. The first project tile can be placed according to choice, all subsequent tiles must be placed horizontally, vertically or diagonally adjacent to a tile already in place. Should you encounter the edge of the board in this way, you can continue on the other side of the board.

When placing those project tiles you will, sooner or later, encounter tiles of other players. In this way either a cooperation or a competition situation can spring up between businesses. In a cooperation the two tiles that meet must come from the same sustainability category, and both players will get an advantage out of this, because both will increase their income in this way - the mean value of both projects is rounded down and the resulting value equals the rise in income for both players. An example: For a Project of size Two and one Project of size Five the mean value would be three, which is the amount by which both players can adjust their income.

In the case of competition among player projects the tiles must also come from the same category, but the tile of the active player must have a higher project size than that of the other player. Contrary to a cooperation situation only one player gets an advantage out of it, the other player is put to a disadvantage, as the player with the bigger project advances his marker on the income track accordingly, the player with the lower size must retreat his marker accordingly. Using the same example as before, the player with the bigger project could raise his income by three levels, the other player would have to decrease it by three levels.

If an encounter of tiles results in a competitive or cooperative situation is always decided by the player who is the active player placing the tile. Should I have placed the Size Two tile in the example, I can only choose cooperation, and would of course choose competition if my tile just placed would be the Size Five one.

This is quite an interesting mechanisms that leaves the decision to players and does not force players to always adhere to a rule. What I also like in this mechanism is the fact that it provides a means of interaction among players, which is rather non-existent in the game otherwise.

When the last tile of this phase has been placed the round ends. The current display of sustainability projects and action cards is relegated to the discard pile and new cards are placed accordingly for the next round. Depending on which round you just all finished there might be a scoring at the end of the round: There is a Public Relations scoring at the end of Round 4, A sustainability scoring at the end of round 6 and another Public Relations scoring at the end of round 6. Final scorings happen at the end of round 10, you start with scoring victory points for certain action cards, followed by a sustainability scoring, after which comes a company scoring and, finally, a Public Relations scoring.

In a Public Relations scoring round the Public Relations tokens, which you own, are activated. Players place them on the Public Relations summary in the respective sustainability categories. You can place several chips on a single category. You also have the option to hold back one single token for the next scoring. To do so you place it in the middle of the summary and all other tokens go back into general stock after being scored. When the tokens have been placed on the Public Relations Summery a value is determined for each sustainability category. The image marker on the corresponding track is placed on top of the actual counting token. For such an image marker you use the token with the turquoise sticker that you received at the start of the game and which is now used for the first time.

So, when a player is on level three in the category Environment and uses a Public Relations token of value 2 he may place his image token on level 5 of the Environment track. The player whose image token is furthest advanced on a track, has the best image in this category and my advance his marker by eight victory points. The player in second place may advance four steps on the victory point track and the player in third place advances his marker by two steps. It is important to know that you can only advance on a track when your counting token is at least on level 1. Should you be on Level 0 you are not allowed to use your image token. The scoring is done individually for each category, as you have only one image token. When the scoring is done the image tokens go back into players’ stock.

In case of a sustainability scoring the sustainability category that is the least developed one is of interest. You only score points for the level that you have reached with every individual category. If you are on level 3 for Environment and on higher levels in other categories you only score 18 victory points all the same. SO it is important that you invest in all sustainability categories in order to acquire a lot more victory points.

In the company scoring, which only happens once after the last round, you receive victory points for income. The player with the highest income scores 12 points, the one in second place eight points and the one in third place four points. When all scoring after round 10 is done, the game ends and the competition is won by the player with most victory points on the track.

All in all this is a good and interesting game, but unfortunately the imbalances in the game distract a bit of fun to play. If those things would be repaired Green Deal would be an even better game. That it was successful as a crowdfunding project despite those flaws tells us that the packaging of a game does not really tell you about the content.

Isabella Prior

Players: 3-5

Age: 12+

Time: 90+

Designer: Juma Al-JouJou

Artist: not named

Price: ca. 35 Euro

Publisher: Karma Games 2014

Web: www.karma-games.com

Genre: Economics

Users: For experts

Version: multi

Rules: de en

In-game text: no

Comments:

Interesting mechanism to determine turn order

Little interaction

Imbalances diminish the good impression

Compares to:

Development games with environment and economics topics

Other editions:

Currently none

My rating: 4

Isabella Prior:

It would be an even better game if a bit more work would have gone into the imbalances, in some places the impression now is that of a not finalized game.

Chance (pink): 2

Tactic (turquoise): 1

Strategy (blue): 1

Creativity (dark blue): 0

Knowledge (yellow): 0

Memory (orange): 1

Communication (red): 0

Interaction (brown): 1

Dexterity (green): 0

Action (dark green): 0