Review

Work and Living Space for Settlers

Die Kolonisten

May the best settlement win

Under orders from the Emperor, 1 to 4 players try to found a new settlement and to settle as many colonists as possible there. But those colonists not only want accommodation, but they also jobs, education and so on. Over up to four epochs – starting and end epoch are up for selection and determine the duration of the game – players send out their stewards to accumulate wealth for the settlement.

At the start of the game you select 4 out of 9 possible colonies; the colonies influence the various aspects of the game and can have a huge impact on the tactic for a game. At the start of Epoch III a fifth colony is selected, that is, if you play that long.

At the start of each epoch, the instructions of the Epoch card are implemented (lay out tiles, prepare card stacks, etc.). One epoch comprises five years, and each of those years is divided into a summer and a winter term. In each term, each player has three turns, so there are 30 turns for a player in each epoch.

A turn comprises moving your steward by one case to one of the locations on display and resolving an action there. At the beginning, there are very few options – (see image 1 – set up), in each year three new location tiles are added. There are six different types of locations: 1. Market – sell goods, receive goods or special action. Prices, gods and special actions change for every year, that is, five times in an epoch. 2. Resource places - receive new goods. 3. Sustainers – Provisions like Food and Clothing can be acquired or sold there. 4. Builders – they allow you to build a building in your own settlement, that is, place building tiles on the player board. 5. Refiners-  you can upgrade goods, wood is upgraded to planks, clay to bricks, etc., and 6. Others – locations that fit into none of the abovementioned categories. You need to remember that you must pay a fee to another player, if you want to activate a case occupied by this player. This is normally the only interaction between players. Furthermore, you can only enter cases that you are able to activate. When you cannot do an action within your range, the steward must jump to a market case and choose one of the three action options there – you can always receive goods, even if you have to discard them if there is no room in your own storage facility.

A very special challenge is this game is provided by the question of storage. Tools and money can be stored without any limit, but there is only limited space available for building resources and provisions. Each player begins with three pre-printed storage areas and one case of a Warehouse. Additional storage areas and extensions for the warehouse can be acquired during the game. Production and Sustainer Buildings can do intermediate storage in so-called buffers, for goods provided by those building. Take care! Only goods in storage areas are available to players for actions. Players can re-arrange their goods, between warehouses, intermediate buffers or storage areas, but not within an action.

The core of the game is the extension of your own settlement. Main aim of the game is to construct as many buildings as possible and fill them with colonists. Accommodations give you additional colonists, storage and production places need colonists of the respective colors to be used and to produce goods: Green farmers are generated by farms and are necessary for use in the Hunting Lodge or the Forester’s House, where then wood or food are generated. Yellow citizens that live in accommodations, for instance, operate the theatre. There are also buildings that generate money and buildings that active special abilities. Not all buildings are constructed directly, many of them are upgrades that must be constructed on the respective basic buildings.

The third option to extend your own settlement is called Diplomacy. With the location action “Diplomat2 you can in one of the four or maybe even five colonies from Epoch III, build up diplomatic relations and, later in the game, extend them. Those relations offer various advantages to players, for instance swapping of goods, additional storage opportunities, acquisition of Improvements, greater range of movement for the steward, etc.

After each player hat his three actions, the current term ends; after a second such term, a year ends. New location tiles for the steward are laid out, and each player can distribute his colonists at his likes: Yellow citizens and red Merchants, buildings that are activated and work must be provided with food and clothing. Green farmers provide for themselves. All production buildings produce goods and the next year starts.

After five years, an epoch ends; if this was the last one that you wanted to play a final scoring is done. The money value of all buildings and improvements is added to your cash and the money value of the working colonists. The most valuable settlement wins the game.

The first thing you notes with „Die Kolonisten“, is the huge amount of components. 381 tiles, 139 wooden pieces, 45 tokens, 180 cards and four player boards weigh a total of 1.9 kg. If you have a chance, I would recommend that you include at least one player who already knows the game or has at least taken a first look at the rules.

A big plus is awarded to the game for its practical and handy box size, the box is filled nearly to the brim with components. A small negative mark is awarded for the interior of the box, you need 19 plastic bacs to begin to introduce some order to the chaos. An inlay might not have been amiss.

I must confess that I have not yet seen or experienced a game over all four epochs. A game covering three epochs and being played with four experienced players took nearly five hours to play. I am therefore very pleased with the fact that “Die Kolonisten” offers the option for a shorter game, albeit the fact that the basic idea of constructing and developing your own settlement might not be fully exploited in a shorter game. Even in the solitaire game if one epoch 30 minutes are a very ambitious goal and you should definitely plan for more time. I would also advise against a game of four players, as the waiting period between player turns (specialist speech “Downtime”) will become too long. For me, “Die Kolonisten” are a very good game for two players, and this is also the point to favorably mention the solitaire version which is set up completely in the same way and is played without a single change in the rules. The aim in this version is to beat your own score.

Carina Katinger

Players: 1-4

Age: 12+

Time: 30-240+

Designer: Tim Puls

Artist: Klemens Franz

Price: ca. 70 EUR

Publisher: Lookout Spiele 2016

Web: www.lookout-spiele.de

Genre: Development

Users: For experts

Special: 1 player

Version: de

Rules: de en it

In-game text: yes

Comments:

A bit lengthy

Lots of components

Good solitaire variant

Variable playing time        

Compares to:

Caverna, Agricola

Other editions:

Mayfair Games (en), Cranio Creations (it)

My rating: 5

Carina Katinger:

When you have worked your way through mountains of components and mastered the set-up, you find a quickly understood, gut game of variable length, that also works well as a solitaire game.

Chance (pink): 1

Tactic (turquoise): 2

Strategy (blue): 3

Creativity (dark blue): 0

Knowledge (yellow): 0

Memory (orange): 0

Communication (red): 0

Interaction (brown): 1

Dexterity (green): 0

Action (dark green): 0