OUR REVIEW

Roads, HOuses, MArkets

Milestones

Between Trading house and Castle

Us players - always and again and again on the quest for something new! I also always try to explain to my wife how grateful she should be that I am only interested in new games instead of …. But that is another story.

So - when a company like Eggertspiele has made a big splash with Village as „Kennerspiel“, one is of course especially curious about what is going to be the follow-up, and the more so when the company is nearly foolproof on the subject of interesting games. This is supported by a duo of designers - Ralf zur Linde, designer of Finca among others, and Stefan Dorra, designer of Linie 1 and Marracash and many more - that has shown what it can do before! Let’s see, if their game Milestones will be one of the cornerstones in the range of 2012 games.

What is it all about? You build roads, houses or market places and thereby try to collect victory points with the help of bonus tiles and delivery of flour to the markets. What a surprise! This is not really dernier cri und if you are just starting to say “not again, please” you should wait a moment, set aside your prejudices and wait to be convinced that the two designers have come up with a few nice gags promising an entertaining game.

The board - empty at the start of the game - shows a score track and is covered by a grid of triangles. In the top left-hand corner you can find a lonely market place; this is the starting point for accessing the landscape with roads. The corners of the triangles are marked with numbers from 1 to 5 which are important for scoring points during the game. 15 bonus tiles are now distributed face-down on the marked spaces in the grid; their random distribution makes each game a bit different. Those tiles show different workers and I will get back to them later.

Each player is given his own action board which shows his possibilities of actions during his turn. To build roads, houses or markets or delivering commodities like stone, sand, wood, grain, and coins you can use specialized workers, each of those is responsible for one of those commodities. These workers are depicted in pairs on the worker tiles. Throughout the game there is always an open display of five such tiles, which is immediately replenished from the stack (there are 35 tiles all in all). At the start of the game this display is extended by a number of tiles in relation to the number of players, enabling each player to choose two tiles with a total of four workers for his starting equipment. Finally, you receive one coin per head, unfortunately per players‘ heads, not workers’ heads. The player to the right of the starting players starts the selection, which is continued clockwise to the starting player, who has the least choice, which is meant to balance the advantage of starting the game. Each worker is marked with a number, and you should try to arrange them in ascending order, because this is rewarded with an extra coin at the trading house.

Your action board:

The board shows eight areas. Four on top offer room for a maximum of eight workers, and four at the bottom feature different houses with different options:

The Trading House: It rewards, as already mentioned, an arrangement of workers in ascending order with a coin and offers the option to hire additional workers for 2 coins per tile. You also have unlimited trading opportunities, two coins for one commodity or two commodities for one coin.

The Board of Works: This is the place to use the commodities you collected and garner victory points. You use stone and sand to build a road, wood and stone to build a house and wood and sand to build a market. If you build a road, you place 2 pieces of track on the grid lines (á la Trans America) and earn the number on the corner point between the two track pieces that you just placed as victory points. This number is then covered by a milestone. It is evident that you can only continue a road at one of its ends; you can only branch off from an existing market. If you build a house, you place it into a triangle bordered by at least one road (somewhat logical!) and you score the visible numbers at the corners of this triangle. Therefore you will have to consider carefully where you accrue a high score. A market place can only be set up if you can place it at the end of a road or between track pieces with a still visible number and you score this number for building the market.

All building is unlimited, as long as you can provide the necessary commodities for each build. When a bonus tile sits in the triangle, where you have just covered a corner with a milestone or a market place or where you have placed a house, you take the tile and place it with a corresponding worker on your board. It earns you one additional victory point if you use this worker, but you cannot take such a bonus tile if you do not have a corresponding worker on your board. The first victory point is scored when picking up the tile.

The Mill: Here you can earn one coin and a flour bag tile for two grain cubes and place the flour bag on a free market place and score the points on 2 of the numbers still visible in the six corners around the market place; of course, you will choose the highest total.

The Castle: This is the spot where each player has to stop his journey around the board. Should you hold more than three commodities in total (including coins) you must discard the surplus, the selection is up to you; and even worse - you must give up one worker. There are cover tiles that you use to cover one worker on your board. Only if you are down to two workers will the Lord of the Castle show mercy and spare your worker.

The game:

In each round you can visit two spots on the board in your turn. Should you have more than one worker of a kind on your personal board, each of them that you pass in your move will give you one commodity. So it is good to have several lumberjacks or quarry men. But, unfortunately, you need different commodities for building. To balance this dilemma in the best way, to make use of the best possibilities for building for a high score, to watch out for what your opponents plan and maybe foil their plans, this is the allure of this game.

The end of the game is determined by a different score, depending on the number of players. When one player tops this limit, all others have one more turn. An alternative ending of the game happens when all worker tiles have been taken. In a final scoring you score the types of workers. A majority in one type earns you five victory points, workers carrying a bonus tile count for two workers. In case of a tie all players involved in the tie score 2 points.

The game components are functional and well-made. Maybe I would have liked the action boards to be a bit sturdier, but really, that is nitpicking now. In the rules, which are exemplary, I would suggest saying under 12) maybe “place additional tiles up to…” instead of “ place more tiles up to …”. And this suggestion has exhausted my critical remarks. A very positive and nice feature of the game is the visual information on the player boards and the main board, which shows every action, the costs for the actions and the possibilities linked to an action and thereby simplify the game considerably and guarantee a smooth flow of the game. I end my review with an absolute recommendation to buy, which is valid “With friends” as well as “For families”. In case of a 10-point scale I would give the game 8 points. If you take “Milestones” as an indicator for what is waiting for us at Essen, you can look forward to the milestones which we can expect to find there.

Rudolf Ammer

Players: 2-4

Age: 10+

Time: 45+

Designer: Stefan Dorra, Ralf zur Linde

Art: Klemens Franz, Hans-Georg Schneider

Price: ca. 35 Euro

Publisher: Pegasus /Eggert 2012

Web: www.pegasus.de

Genre: Worker Placement

Users: With friends

Version: multi

Rules: de en

In-game text: no

Comments:

Good rules

Attractive components

Nicely interlocking mechanisms

Also good for families with some gaming experience

Compares to:

Worker placement and resources management games

Other editions:

English bei Stronghold

My rating: 6

Statements:

My anticipation has been confirmed, Milestones is a mile stone among the new autumn releases of 2012, and the game plays smoothly and is easily accessed due to the marvelous graphics.

Chance (pink): 1

Tactic (turquoise): 3

Strategy (blue): 2

Creativity (dark blue): 0

Knowledge (yellow): 0

Memory (orange): 0

Communication (red): 0

Interaction (brown): 2

Dexterity (green): 0

Action (dark green): 0