UNSERE REZENSION
SWISS VILLAGE IMPRESSIONS
HELVETIA
FAMILY LIFE AND BUSY WORK
The cover of the red box features a white cross in which you can see mountain peaks. Many players, who I did ask about this, have expected a game on topics like mountain climbing, cheese, skiing or a quiz on Switzerland due to this cover. But this game is far from all this!
In this game you found a village and try to turn it into a flowering community, mainly engineered by setting-up different building in the guise of tiles.
At the start of the game each player receives a village center, 16 village inmates, 8 men and 8 women, 4 action discs and 17 delivery cubes.
The plan is laid out, he shows a track for victory points, spots for goods delivery, an area for the school and one area each for the professions of of Builder, Carter, Night Watch, Priest and Midwife.
The building tiles are sorted by their back sides into the basic buildings tiles, marked with letters A to E, and into tiles numbered “1”, “2” and “3”. Tiles marked with “3” are shuffled face-down and placed next to the board, and then you add building tiles numbered “2” to the stack.
All building tiles marked with ”1” are placed next to the board.
Now players choose 1´three building tiles from the 15 basic buildings. These basic buildings enable you to produce one of the basic raw materials, grain, wood, stone, water and bricks. Building tiles that were not chosen go back to the box; they do not come into play in this game.
A building for the 6th basic resource, ore, can only be acquired in the course of the game, as this is among the buildings marked with a „1“.
The player who did choose a building last is starting player. In Switzerland, according to the rules, direction of game play is traditionally counter-clockwise; therefore this game is played counter-clockwise, too.
Before the game starts each player takes up 3 of his woman and 3 of his men figurines. Each player places a man on one of his building tiles and a woman on one of the other, remaining tiles. Then he places a man or a woman into the school. If a man is in the school, he must place a woman on his last remaining empty building, or a man, if the figurine placed in the school was a woman.
Now you are left with one woman and one man. One of these two you marry to a figurine of your left neighbor, by placing his figurine on the building which he wants to marry his figurine into. Of course, he can only place a man with a woman or vice versa. Due to this marriage he can use this building of his neighbor. You cannot marry into buildings already occupied by a couple or which is empty. All in all there are 6 action discs in play for each player, two of those are not assigned for your use at the start, but you place them into the village centers of the two players next to you on your right side.
These action discs you can acquire in the course of the game, when you marry into the village of the respective player.
In the course of the game players now set up buildings in their own village, marry into the villages of other players, deliver goods and try to earn victory points with all these activities.
Each delivery of goods earns you a victory point, and it must be noted that you can deliver each kind of goods only once in the game; for the more valuable goods there is an advantage available for the first player delivering a certain good, he will receive an additional victory point for it.
In the course of the game raw materials are immediately changed into victory points, when you produce them, hoarding raw materials is not possible and you can only always produce one item of raw material for each building you use.
One of the special features of the game is that the starting player already starts with one victory point; this is of course only important at the end of the game, as the starting player changes continually.
One round of the game continues until only one player has action discs left.
Each player has 4 action discs at the start of the game representing 4 actions, he can place them one by one or place all action discs on the same profession, see further down.
In one of my test games the players were my daughter Isabella, her friend Andreas, my husband Walter and I.
Isabella was start player. She placed one of her action discs on the profession „builder“. At the start of the game she had chosen the building tiles for producing wood, grain and water. On her building tile for wood production she had placed a man. He was now laid down to indicate that he had produced wood, which she immediately used to acquire the building tile “Eisenhütte” for ore and to place it into her village. By laying down a figurine, in this case this of the man, the figurine is put to sleep and cannot be used for further production before the figurine has been woken up again.
As Isabelle still had a woman not yet assigned to a building, she placed her into the „Eisenhütte“.
Building tiles are laid out around the village center. You try to be the first to completely surround the village center with buildings, because this will earn you 4 victory points.
The the later stages of the game building tiles will become available which yield victory points, but do not enable you to produce anything; these buildings need not be activated by a man or woman figurine. All production buildings must be occupied by a man or a woman figurine to make the buildings productive. If you want to earn the victory point tile for completing the ring of buildings around your village center, you must have a man or woman figurine on all of the production buildings.
As you play in counter-clockwise direction, it was my turn now and I placed an action disc on the profession „Priest“. I had placed a woman into the school and had one man left in the village center; as I wanted to marry into the “Eisenhütte – ore building” in Isabella’s village, I needed a man and therefore I took the figurine from the village center and placed it into Isabella’s Eisenhütte; so now iron production was available to me. You cannot refuse a marriage in this game. With this marriage I also acquired my action disc that was situated in Isabella’s village center and so my total of action discs rose to 5 and I had still 4 left over for further use.
Now it was Walters turn; he had chosen the production buildings for wood, stone and brick at the start of the game. He placed three action discs on the profession of „Carter” and in consequence delivered the three goods wood, stone and brick and placed one delivery cube each on the spots for wood, stone and brick on the game board. This instantly earned him the victory point tile which is awarded to the first player delivering exactly this combination of three goods.
Due to this production/delivery Walter put his figurines to sleep in the production buildings for wood, brick and stone.
Andreas hat chosen the production buildings for grain, stone and brick at the start of the game. In addition to this, he had married into the wood production building in Isabella’s village at the start of the game. He now placed two action discs on the profession of „Builder“ and used this to produce wood in the building in Isabella’s village, put the woman there to sleep and immediately used the wood produced to acquire and build an “Eisenhütte” building for ore.
For his second action disc on „Builder“ he he acquired a building tile which enabled him for the rest of the game a 1:1 exchange of all six basic resources, always only one raw material for one other raw material.
This building tile cost him 1 brick, so Andreas put the woman in his brick production building to sleep.
The figurine in the center of Andreas‘ village was a man; he placed him into the building for exchanging raw materials.
Andreas could not place a figurine into his new Eisenhütte, as there was no figurine left in his village center.
Isabella now placed 2 action discs on the profession of “Midwife” and placed one figurine in a way that showed the “child” marker into both production buildings in her village where there were already couples. Persons in buildings can marry and have children while sleeping, but they cannot produce when asleep.
I in my turn now placed an action disc on the profession of „Builder“ and followed Andreas‘ lead in acquiring the building for exchanging the raw materials. This building is only available twice in the game, and so Isabella and Walter would not be able to acquire this building for their village.
Of course, I had to put to sleep the figurine on my production building for bricks to enable me to build the exchange.
As I had no figurine left in the village center I could not place a person on the building for exchanging raw materials.
Walter now placed his last remaining action disc on the profession of „Night Watch“ and woke up all figurines in the left quadrant of his village, which were the two persons for producing brick and wood. The figurine producing stone could not be woken, because it was situated in another quadrant of the village.
To wake up persons you chose one quadrant of the village, as viewed from the village center, where you wake up all figurines, also those other players you did marry into this building.
Walter was now out of action discs.
Andreas placed an action disc on the role of „Midwife“ and took a figurine from stock, turned it the show the child mark and placed as a child into the building with his couple.
Isabella placed an action disc on the profession of „Priest“ and married her child in school, which was a woman, to Walter’s man figurine in the stone production building in Walters’s village. As Walter held one of Isabella’s action discs, she received this immediately and again had one disc available.
I now also placed an action disc on the profession of „Night Watch“ and woke up my figurine in the brick production building.
Andreas placed his 4th and last production disc on the profession of „Carter“ and put his person on the grain production building to sleep, this enabled him to place a delivery cube on the grain spot on the board.
When Andreas had finished his actions the situation was as follows: Isabella had one action disc left, I still had 2 action discs on hand. As it was Isabella’s turn again, she placed her 5th action disc on the profession of “Night Watch” and woke up her wood producing person in her village.
As she had spent her last action disc for this action the round ended immediately. I could not use my two remaining actions discs in this round.
This immediately resulted in me becoming the new start player and receiving the start player marker.
Now we checked who had placed the most action discs with which of the five professions.
On the space for the “Builder“ profession there were 2 action discs from Andreas, and one action disc from Isabella and one of mine. With his two discs Andreas had the majority there and received the tile for the supplementary “Builder” action. This tile enabled him during the following round to take an additional building action. A supplementary action can only be used after a normal action done by placing an action disc, so it does not matter which action is implemented due to the action disc placed.
The tile for the supplementary action “Carter” went to Walter, as he had placed 3 action discs there and Andreas had only placed one.
The supplementary action “Night Watch” was not assigned as Walter, Isabella and I had one action disc each in the space for this profession and so nobody hat a majority there. By the way, when you hold a supplementary tile from a previous round and nobody could acquire a majority in this profession in the current round the tile remains with the player who did acquire it in a previous round. The supplementary action “Priest” was not assigned, either, as Isabella and I both had one action disc in this profession’s space. The supplementary tile for “Midwife” was assigned to Isabella, as she had 2 action discs in this profession and Andreas had only placed one action disc there.
Now all of us with the exception of Isabella took our children from School. Isabella had no child left in School, as she had already married it during the previous round.
The children were now grown up and – for the time being – placed into the village center. When there are unoccupied building tiles in your village you must place one of the children immediately on one of the free buildings. If there are more buildings unoccupied than children coming back from school, you choose where you place a man or a woman figurine.
Then the victory points for the round were scored. I had the start player symbol, but no other additional victory points. Walter had placed three goods on the board and thereby acquired one victory point for this delivery; furthermore he held the supplementary tile for the “Carter” action, which earned him another victory point.
Andreas had delivered one grain and had the supplementary tile for “Builder” which earned him 1 victory point. Isabella had acquired no victory point tiles and had delivered no goods, but she held the supplementary tile for the “Midwife” profession for 1 victory point.
This resulted in a score after the first round as follows:
Walter – 5 victory points
Andreas - 2 victory points
Isabella – 1 Victory points
I myself – 1 Victory point
The best scoring method is to set back the victory point markers of all players to zero and freshly add up all victory points of the round. Why? Because one of the interesting features of Helvetia is that there is no accumulation of victory points, you only mark the points acquired in the current round. If you managed to acquire 6 points in the previous round and 8 points in this round, your score is 6 and not 14! ,
As the recording of a complete game would result in an enormous amount of pages, I break off here, as all the basic mechanisms of the game have been explained in the player actions described for the first round.
I would just like to mention which raw materials can be delivered or produced during the game. With water you can make beer or goats in the corresponding buildings, from ore you can produce iron and from grain either cows or bread, again only if you acquired the corresponding buildings for these goods. An example for producing bread: You put the person in the grain production building to sleep and then the person in the building for production bread.
This is a good point to remind you again that raw materials/resources/goods can only be produced to be directly delivered or used for a building action.
The game continues until a player in a game of four tops a score of 18 victory points in the simple version and 20 points for the full version of the game, at the end of the round, which of course includes handing on the starting player symbol to the player who could not use all his action tiles, this scores him one victory point. Walter did win with 20 victory points.
The game offers an enormous amount of tactical and strategic possibilities and choices.
Especially the marriage mechanism is very innovative, as this enables a player to use the buildings of other players and produce goods for which one could not or would not build the buildings oneself.
A player is often confronted with decisions between several equally interesting possibilities for actions; very often it can be an advantage to use several action discs at the same time for the use of a profession to be able to implement this action several times in a well-thought-out sequence.
The game seems very balanced and the game was won in several different ways in our test games. You can win by building victory point tiles and restricted deliveries as well as with delivering lots of goods and building less. Building of production buildings and marrying into production buildings of other players depends only on the chosen strategy of the individual player. Both ways can win you the game.
Interaction and communication are lively and rather high in this game.
In the course of many games the marriage mechanism initiated many funny comments from the players, one example: One of our female players accosted her friend with “I want to marry you!” For a moment he looked at her, very irritated and a bit confused, until he understood that she intended to marry his wood producing man in the building and did not mean him at all. His face was causing quite a few laughs among players.
The strategic and tactical elements are very strong in the game and so all in all I can only call this game an absolute highlight.
The components of the game are extremely pretty, support game play very well and give a comfortable felling to the game. One really feels that one is developing a village and marrying one’s denizens well and with a purpose.
My only points that I want to criticize are the rather bland cover of the box and the figurines of man and women, sometimes they are rather hard to distinguish. The third point does only come into play when the table is not right – if players sit too far apart is is not easy to keep all one’s figurines in view, not to mention raw material symbols on the buildings of other players.
Despite those rather marginal points which in no we reduce the fun in playing or the performance of the game Helvetia for me is one of the best games I ever reviewed or played.
Mechanism-wise the game does not offer lots of new ideas, but the unorthodox mix and the clever mechanism of marrying the workers in this game provide lots of good game play.
The flow of the game, which is different every time, provides a high incentive to play again, even after many games already played.
In my opinion, it is slightly too complex for a family game due to the slightly complex rules, so I would categorize it as a game for the group Games with Friends.
But of course, the game also can be recommended as an absolute highlight to all experienced players and I can only suggest trying it out and playing it, it is an absolutely rewarding experience.
Players: 2-4
Age: 12+
Time: 60-90
Designer: Matthias Cramer
Artist: Imelda & Franz Vohwinkel
Price: ca. 30 Euro
Publisher: Kosmos
Web: www.kosmos.de
Genre: Worker Placement game
Users: With friends
Version: de
Rules: de
In-game text: no
Comments:
Very attractive components * not really new mechanisms are combined excellently and surprisingly different * Man and woman figurines not easily distinguishable * all in all a fantastic game
Compares to:
Puerto Rico for the choosing of professions, Caylus for worker placement, Blood Royal for marrying and having children
Other editions:
Currently none
My rating: 7
Maria Schranz:
Helvetia is one of the best games I ever reviewed and played, a highlight that should be in the collection of every experienced player!
Chance (pink): 0
Tactic (turquoise): 3
Strategy (blue): 3
Creativity (dark blue): 0
Knowledge (yellow): 0
Memory (orange): 0
Communication (red): 3
Interaction (brown): 3
Dexterity (green): 0
Action (dark green): 0