OUR REVIEW

Feld in Venice

RIALTO

WHen Gondolas score points

A very welcome and frequent guest on our games tables is designer Stefan Feld as generally his name is a guarantee for original mechanisms and for high-level fun in games play. And this year he is making quite a lot of noise: Nearly at the same time Bora Bora was published by alea and Brügge by Hans im Glück, and for autumn Amerigo has been announced for publication by Queen Games. After Rome, Paris, Hamburg, Strasbourg and Bruges Stefan Feld now takes to Venice on his tour through European cities. Should any of you see their life’s work in collecting board games relating to Venice, you are not to be envied. You could fill quite a few cupboards with games only using a board depicting a city map of Venice. The borders of Venice’s city boroughs, defined by the canals, are suited exceedingly well for appearances in game mechanisms, especially in games on majorities.

Well, yet another game on majorities in Venice does not sound too exciting and original. But as a challenging and speculative feature you only find out during the game how many points you can score in each of the six boroughs if you are in the lead there. At the start of the game we find Venice quasi “naked” and everything is worth the same, that is, nothing. Therefore, in each borough you have room to build between two and four bridges, each of which can also be used as an embarkation point for one gondola. Each bridge raises the value of a borough by between three and six victory points, a gondola only by one point. In theory, the best possible score for a borough is 23 victory points, on average the score is 11 points for the player in the lead; the player in second place scores half of this, the third one a quarter, and so on.

Among other things, both the determination of the score yield as well as the placement of markers are governed by cards. At the start of a round several rows of cards, each holding six cards, are displayed openly, players choose one each. Then you draw two random cards and then choose from your hand of eight cards seven cards for the current round. The composition of your hand – rather different ones or several identical ones – determines the possible actions for the round: If I want to be involved in all six possible action in a round I need different cards; but it is better to earn a bonus which is scored by the player who plays most identical cards in a round. But of course, then you must neglect other actions in this rounds; joker cards as well as setting up and using certain kinds of buildings allow you a flexible way to play.

Actions are put into effect in a round always in the same order: First the Doge cards are implemented – each card allows you to advance on the „Doge track“ which resolves pretty much all questions of sequence of play and ties; if you are in front it is your turn earlier and you receive the bonus or the victory points at the end, too (we are familiar with a similar track already from “Im Jahr des Drachen”, “Macao” und “Die Burgen von Burgund”). So you prefer to be in one of the front positions on this track, but this will cost you quite a number of cards and actions during the course of the game. If you would rather keep out of the rivalry for the lead on this track and concentrate your efforts on other things you will have the same chances to win.

After the Doge cards you deal with the Gold cards and then with the Building = Brick cards. Brick cards are used to set up building tiles, which – besides one to four victory points per building – offer additional advantages; each use of those advantages costs a gold coin, though. Of course it is not very logical that you pay for a building so that the building becomes active. More of a flair would have been provided by persons who you would first hire with wine, maybe, and then later pay with gold. Probably the enormous similarity to Brügge, which would have been the result, did lead to the decision for this design element, which is one of the reasons that access to the game, at least the first one, is unnecessarily difficult.

The fourth action are the Bridge cards: Each of those cards yields one victory point (during the game) and as a second bonus you can build a bridge. This privilege gives you a special influence on the final scoring: For an attractive bridge you will choose a borough in which you hope to achieve the majority or already have got the majority, a not so good bridge will rather go into a borough dominated by other players.

Yet, on the other hand, there is the „threat“ of gondolas which would result in even a worse score that the worst bridge. Especially in the first two or three rounds it is not really clear yet in which boroughs you will be able to dominate so that the placement of bridges involves a lot of hope and doubts.

The respective bonus that comes with each of the six different cards is normally easily understood – if you play the most gold cards you receive one extra gold. But all the same a summary is mussing: the gondola cards on principle give you additional markers, but the gondola card bonus lets you place a marker on the board, which is an action that you usually implement with the sixth variety of cards/actions, the Councilman. A summary could have been easily achieved by supplementing the – in the current shape basically unnecessary player boards – with a rules summary or some informative graphic symbols.

Furthermore, the gondola bonus is the only possibility to achieve dominance in a borough that has already been dealt with by changing majorities that seemed safe, albeit for the cost that a gondola enhances the value of the borough by one victory point only. Or you are the first to place your marker into a borough which will be dealt with in the following rounds: Twice during the game there is reward of five points for the player who is first to be represented in three different boroughs. And those points are not to be sneered at as the final scores of all players tend to be very close.

And in other aspects, too, the design of the came countermands the promise given on the back of the box for an easily accessed board game. There are four different graphic representations of victory points and the victory point track has been given a rather confusing design. Usually you get over those „teething troubles“ rather quickly, after one or two trial games the latest. But a real obstacle for the smooth flow of the game can be the choice of cards at the start of each rounds; contrary to Strasbourg players are not busy with choosing cards simultaneously, but do their choosing one after the other. This can, especially in a game with four or five players, result in very aggravating down times, when the first player tries to analyze the up to six rows of cards. Furthermore, some buildings enable you to exceed the limit for your hand of cards. So the down time until all players have chosen their row can be enhanced by another period of waiting until all have drawn their additional cards and discarded the surplus ones. Most of this second phase happens simultaneously, but if you did not invest in the respective buildings you are again forced to idle and watch.

The given duration of the game of 60 minutes is rarely feasible due to those facts. And during a round, too, you cannot simple play the cards as they come; you need to consider if you use a joker or a certain building now or if it would be of better use later. This is no drawback for the flair of the game, but prolongs the duration again.

For a game of two players the rules state a version using a fictive third player: For him you randomly draw seven cards for each round which results in more competition for the respective card bonuses as well as for majorities in the boroughs. This variant plays very nicely, but demands a somewhat higher element of administration than the basic game.

Harald Schatzl

Players: 2-5

Age: 12+

Time: 90+

Designer: Stefan Feld

Artist: Andreas Resch, Hans-Georg Schneider

Price: ca. 30 Euro

Publisher: Pegasus Spiele 2013

Web: www.pegasus-spiele.de

Genre: Majorities

Users: With friends

Users: For experts

Version: multi

Rules: de en + es pl

In-game text: no

Comments:

The different ways to play are nicely balanced in the end

Unnecessary difficult access due to design

Few and rather down-to-earth components

Compares to:

Majority games with a Venice topic - San Marco, Doge, Venezia; Strasbourg

Other editions:

Tasty Minstrel Games, Ludanova, Rebel.pl (planned)

My rating: 5

Harald Schatzl:

 „Rialto“ is a felicitous revival of a genre already deemed to be dead, especially as the designer has very subtly combined several elements, known from earlier games, into a new game. The efforts as regards to rules is rather low, but casual players, all the same, will need a bit of assistance from experienced players for their first game.

Chance (pink): 1

Tactic (turquoise): 2

Strategy (blue): 1

Creativity (dark blue): 0

Knowledge (yellow): 0

Memory (orange): 1

Communication (red): 1

Interaction (brown): 2

Dexterity (green): 0

Action (dark green): 0