played for you

Artificium

Use Castle, Swordsmith or foundry

Craftsmen and production are the keys to a prosperous town and demand uninterrupted production chains.

You sue building cards for resources or production – those cards yield victory points – or action cards, those give action options, but no victory points. There is one kind of marker in the game which represents resources or money in relation to where they are placed on a player’s resources board.

Four rounds of four phases each begin with the starting phase: You draw five cards or fill your hand to five cards. Then – in the market phase – you draw and display six cards for the market. Each player in turn can swap a card from his hand for one from the market or pass. The first swap is free, each additional one costs two coins. When all players have passed, they all play a card simultaneously in the card phase, put it down and reveal it. Action cards for cards, money our resources are resolved first in turn order, then building cards for production. Before you resolve actions or buildings, you can buy or sell resources. For use of building you get victory points immediately. After four rounds you sell all resources, change money into victory points and win with most victory points.

A solid game with good rules and very nice, good components, all in all best standard. The kick of the game is in the market phase to achieve the best possible production chains. Especially important and probably too powerful are Knight or Wizard, who are produced virtually, the resources for them are transformed immediately into victory pints and either loss of victory points for another player or additional cards for the active player.

Players: 2-6

Age: 8+

Time: 50+

Designer: Timofey Shargorodskiy

Artist: Timofey Shargorodskiy, Serhiy Banytiuk

Price: ca. 23 Euro

Publisher: Lifestyle / Asmodee 2014

Web: www.asmodee.com/de

Genre: Optimization, production

Users: With friends

Version: multi

Rules: de en fr

In-game text: no

Comments:

Especially nice for two and three players

Interaction can ruin plans

Good components

Good, easily understood rules

Wizard / Wizard’s tower

Compares to:

Production optimization games using cards

Other editions:

Russian edition, Lifestyle

Chance (pink): 1

Tactic (turquoise): 2

Strategy (blue): 2

Creativity (dark blue): 0

Knowledge (yellow): 0

Memory (orange): 0

Communication (red): 0

Interaction (brown): 1

Dexterity (green): 0

Action (dark green): 0