OUR REVIEW

Onwards to new and distant shores

Archipelago

Discover, settle and cultivate islands

“If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people together to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea” (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)

A famous sentence of a famous man! Centuries before many more felt committed to this motto – men like Columbus, Cook, Magellan, Vasco da Game and many more, especially of Portuguese origin, were leading figures in discovery and exploration. Most of that was done in the 15^th and 16^th century. But even today there are undiscovered archipelagos and we are convened to find those white spots on the map – as depicted in this game.

I have I have whetted your appetite enough, so let’s start!

Foremost, there are the components. In a compact box in the square Kosmos format we find a remarkable and well-thought-out Inlay with 1indentions and an extractable part, which is, deliberately practical, taking care of tiles and cubes during the game. When you have removed the components from the sheets, we can place the remains beneath the inlay and thus create a surface flush with the border of the box and thus facilitate access to the components. Besides a set of ten citizen (Carcassonne Meeples) in five colors, four ships, one marker and five action discs there is a screen for each player. On this screen you find the building costs, tax income and six phases of a round, for your information. Furthermore, there are three card sets of 10 cards each, more on them later, a development track with player order and four boards – the domestic market, the export market, the stability board for the colony and the surplus worker worker market.

The coins of the money are called Florins, a currency that is still in use today, in Aruba. In this game the name is surely referring to the gold coin in use in medieval times. Furthermore, you find double-printed market, port, town and temple tokens and also explorer tokens which are used later also as jokers for resources.

Of importance are also 25 double-sided archipelago tiles and one action wheel. On the tiles you find landscape, huts and various resources spots. The resources already mentioned are represented by six kinds of cubes in different colors: Fish (blue), wood (brown=, stone (white), iron (black), exotic fruit (green) and beef (meant to be red, but in rules and board the color is orange). Why the publisher did not manage to acquire red cubes will always remain a mystery to me. 12 trend cards and 48 evolution cards, with crisis prevention on the front side, which are at the back side divided into 24 character and 24 progress cards, complete this plethora of components.

Having that sorted out we now can busy ourselves with preparing the game:

At the start of the game each player is given 2 citizens, 1 ship and 3 action discs. When eight archipelagos are discovered you can use four action discs per round and after eight more archipelagos it will be five discs per round. The first order of play is randomly chosen, in the following rounds you bid with florins for you place in the order of play. You hide a number of coins in your hand; the player with the highest bid determines the order of play, which is negotiable and negotiations can be supported with bribes. All florins used for bidding, even those of the losers of the bid are returned to the bank. In case of a tie the current order of play continues. The three card sets mentioned earlier determine the duration of the game which can last from 30 minutes to four hours. When you have agreed on the time you draw one card face down, the rest is removed from the game. And this is an interesting point in the game, because each of the cards lists a different end-of-game condition. When this condition is met, the game ends instantly. In contrast to for instance Die Paläste von Carrara, where the game end is obvious and known to all you know only your own end-of-game possibility in Archipelago. This, of course, provides some surprise effects. And in addition to the unknown end-of-game there is a special, secret version of victory points on each card, which is applied to all other players, too, at the end of the game. And then you display one of 12 trend cards which list a number of victory points applicable to all for acquiring a certain number of buildings or a certain resource, but only the first three in a ranking score. And finally, we place five evolution cards randomly next to the evolution track.

The board „Domestic Market“ is provisioned with one resource cube for each resource. Each resource can be traded in different numbers per variety. Four rows for each variety show this, to the left of each row the current price is marked. Buying and selling prices are determined by the number of cubes currently on the market. Supply and Demand determine revenues and profits.

On the board „Colony stability“ a white meeple marks the current number of citizens placed on the islands, a black meeple marks the potential for rebellion (on 0 at the start of the game). This potential rises when, for instance, there are too many workers on the market (that is, on the dole= or when there are too many products of one kind or in times of crises when a crisis is not handled efficiently. This takes us to the cue word of “Crisis” – in each round you must resolve a crises, which means the top evolution cards which shows which products are in demand on the domestic market as well as the export market. These commodities should be provided by all players together as – in case of not meeting the demand – the potential for rebellion rises by the number of missing commodities. When the rebellion marker passes the citizen marker on the track rebellion occurs and the game is lost for all players, with one exception: There is a card “Leader of the rebellion” that – should it be in play - accords its owner the sole victory in case of such a rebellion. This latent threat of rebellion normally forces players to cooperate, in addition to their personal goal for the game.

This finally takes us to the real course of the game. In the middle of the table we place a hexagonal ocean tile to which each player adds one archipelago tile. At first you can choose from three tiles, the remaining two are shuffled back into the stack. From now on only the top tile of the stack enters the game. After placing this tile you place your ship and 2 citizen on this new archipelago. When the tile shows room for two or more resources, one resource is placed on the domestic market and another one behind your screen. When there is only one resources spot only the domestic market gets a resource, you are left out. At the same time you are given an explorer token. When the archipelago shows huts the number of surplus workers rises on the board by this number.

The next two phases are left out in round 1 and we arrive at the core of the game, the action wheel with its 14 possibilities:

Let’s start with „Harvest“. There are six commodities and you place one of your action discs on the resource of your choice and one of your citizens on the corresponding spot on the archipelago. This ensures you one cube of the wished-for resource.

When you choose „Construction“ you can set up one of four buildings or construct a ship, provided you can pay the costs. What is the advantage of this? Well, ships allow you to transport citizens to other island. The market allows you 2 actions on the domestic market and the port the same on the export market. The town gives you control over the complete archipelago. Other players wanting to use resources there must ask your permission and maybe acquire the privilege by negotiation. On an archipelago with a temple there is no rebellion.

The action „Transaction” allows you to buy or sell a resource on the domestic or the export market“.

“Migration” allows you to transfer all your citizens or ships to the adjacent archipelago.

When you decide on „Exploration“ you must adhere to the following restrictions: You must take the top archipelago tile from the stack without knowing its back side. When you place the tile you must place it adjacent to two other tiles and of course continue the landscapes marked on those tiles. Furthermore, you must be able to transfer an active citizen or a ship of your color onto the new area. When you cannot do this the exploration has failed and the tile is discarded.

 „Taxes“ are limited to three players choosing this in each round and earn you florins per citizen, ship, town and temple. No wonder that this upsets the population and the potential for rebellion rises instantly.

 „Reproduction“ allows you to add a third citizen to two of your own citizen on an archipelago, which constitutes the maximum of residents of one color on an archipelago.

And, finally, you can by „recruiting“ hire workers and add them to one already in place.

 „Market“ und „Port“ are activated in this phase with florins, independently from action discs, but they also demand free, active citizens on the respective archipelago.

Now we have reached the final phase, the acquisition of evolution cards. Each player has two possibilities, either to buy a card and turn another one by 90 degrees in clockwise direction or to turn two of the five cards next to the evolution track. The cards show different costs in three of their four corners and get cheaper when turned. The forth corner shows a skull which means that the card is discarded after the third turning and is replaced with a new one from the stack. There is an exception here, too – cards with a red background need to be met instantly without an adaption period. Cards that you buy can only be used in the action phase of the next round. But first they need to be activated for the costs marked on the card. Some cards can also be used by other players when they pay 1 Florin to the owner of the card, and some of those cards earn you victory points at the end of the game.

For a conclusion I would like to summarize the phases of a round:

- Deactivation: All resources and evolution spots are emptied and action discs returned to their owners.

- Determination of order of play

- Adjustment and check of population effects

- Crisis – all citizens are laid down and only activated when the demand has been met. An eventual rest stays down as rebels and cannot be used for actions.

- Action wheel

- Buying or replacement of evolution cards and thus new crisis conditions

We have come to the end of the game. Now the victory point conditions for all come into play, as well as the trend cards and potential points from character and evolution cards.

I have diligently tried to live up to the plethora of possibilities there still remain some niceties and variants that I could not mention and which you can find in the extensive rules. No less than four nations were involved in those rules, France, Switzerland, Canada and Germany. The printing alone mimicking parchment sheets shows how painstakingly the producers tried to catch the spirit of the period and with what joy and love for details the game was created. Graphic and components leave nothing to be desired and the table of contents at the end of the rules allows you to clear up any questions immediately during the game.

Archipelago is a game that every expert player must try at least once and that should surely be listed on the next list of expert games. I can only urge you to try the game, and, by the way, a solo version is already available in French and I am impatiently waiting for the German translation.

Rudolf Ammer

Players: 2-4/5

Age: 14+

Time: variable

Designer: Christophe Boelinger

Art: Vincent Boulanger, Ismael Pommaz, Chris Quilliams

Price: ca. 60 Euro

Publisher: Ludically 2012

Web: www.ludically.com

Genre: Strategic worker placement

Users: For experts

Version: de

Rules: de en fr

In-game text: yes

Comments:

Semi-cooperative

Fantastic graphics and components

Good, extensive rules

Compares to:

Entdecker and other worker placement games

Other editions:

English and French editions

My rating: 7

Rudolf Ammer:

A graphically extraordinary game with a lot of interesting elements which in its diversity reminds one of Caylus or Puerto Rico.

Chance (pink): 1

Tactic (turquoise): 2

Strategy (blue): 3

Creativity (dark blue): 0

Knowledge (yellow): 0

Memory (orange): 0

Communication (red): 1

Interaction (brown): 1

Dexterity (green): 0

Action (dark green): 0