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Don’t Picture the worst!

FRESCO
Restoration by moody painters

„Get out of bed, you good-for-nothing sleepyhead! The market isn’t open all day long!” – “Yes, Master (yaaaaaaawn). I’m awake …” You should be well rested when you transfer yourself for one and a half hours into the renaissance in the guise of a fresco painter to help restore the ceiling fresco in the cathedral.

But before we can start and 2 to 4 opponents can prove their abilities in Fresko, we have to place a few things on the double-sided board (one side is meant for the four-player game, the other one for three players). A big wooden painter figure for each player is placed for a night’s rest into the hostelry, another one into the theatre.

The theatre mirrors the actual mood in your painting studio – malcontent, nagging assistance work badly and less effective, which results in disadvantages – just as in real life. The third and last painter ends up where after 80 minutes the decision will be made who has impressed the bishop most: On the victory point bar, which surrounds the board in the best Kramer tradition. At start however, painters assembly pointlessly, that is without points, at the starting position.

The small town depicted on the board is dominated by the big ceiling fresco in the cathedral that at the start is covers by 25 square tiles. These show colour pots which denote the combination that you must discard to take the tile and score the victory points stated on it. When the tile is taken off the board, a part of the fresco becomes visible in all its glory. That’s nice to look at and makes the complete fresco visibly step by step during the game – an aesthetical feature that perfectly mirrors topic as well as aim of the game.

The colours necessary for the restoration of the fresco are available from the market. The four stalls of the market on the top edge of the board offer each round a randomly drawn selection of colours. The workshop holds the colour supply in the shape of coloured wooden cubes and the atelier, where you can paint portraits and thus earn a little extra money to butter your bread, complete the layout of the town. All this has been pictured nicely, pretty and functional by Oliver Schlemmer, very fitting for a game with a topic of painting where your eyes come into play, too.

Good morning!

The early bird catches the worm, so to say, and that is the case in Fresco, too! At the start of each round we must fix the time to rise for our own assistants in the hostelry. The player with fewest victory points starts and places his painter onto the corresponding spot. This sets the player sequence for the following round. If you rise early, you move early, have free selection on the market but pay more than the sleepyhead who pays one coin for the meager colour pot that is left on the market. But not only sequence of play and price are determined by the time to get up, but – logically – also the mood of the assistants. If you had to rise at 5 a.m. for weeks, you probably are rather mis-motivated as time advances. The consequences: The mood gets bad and in the worst case one of the assistants leaves and does not work for you anymore. On the other hand, when the mood is extremely good, you maybe acquire an additional assistant, which gives you an additional action in the round. And with that we have arrived at the game play itself! Good planning is already half of what is necessary to win.

As a team leader we must plan the optimum use for our – usually mediocre tempered – five wooden assistants behind our screen. In this we are assisted bei a board that shows the location of the big board and where we place our assistants. Each location may be visited in each round by a maximum of three assistants. So five locations and five assistants demand good planning to be at the right place at the right time! Then the screen is removed and the locations are dealt with in the order given by the rules. This also is started by the player who has risen the earliest – an advantage that can be easily planned, if you want to use it. Directly after getting up go walk yawning to market to buy colours or – to be bit nasty early in the morning – to close a market stall. This is free and thus available also when you are short of money and can put quite a spoke in the wheels of the other players who have speculated with certain colours.

In the cathedral each assistant can restore a tile that scores him the victory points noted on the tile, and, laid out face up, earns the restorer one additional coin at the start of each round. If you happen to manage to restore a tile that carries the white bishop or is adjacent to the tile carrying the bishop you score a bonus of three or two points, respectively.

If you are not satisfied with the income from successfully restored fresco parts you have the chance to cash three additional coins for each assistant in the studio before you enter the workshop. There the acquired colours can be mixed. Ant his is urgent and necessary, because the really valuable fresco tiles demand green or purple cubes and those can only be acquired by the right mixture of primary colours.

Giddy up! Raise your spirit!

Time for relaxation is scarce in all that bustle and so it is a good idea to grant yourself or, even better, grant your assistants a visit to the theatre. This improves the temper by two notches and if the mood has topped the scale even yields an additional assistant – so that you can send out six assistants in the next round, which in turn raises the spirit of the player directing them.

By the way, the spirit at the table was absolutely positive an all of the test games. Despite the complexity, that is definitely involved, functions and flow of the game are logical, realistic and easy to understand, so that very few questions remain. This is also thanks to the well-structured and nicely illustrated rules that manages to explain the game completely on only 8 pages-

All is well that ends well?!

Well, when there are only 6 or fewer tiles left in the cathedral, the last rounds begins. Players can in this round work twice at the fresco to have a final go at improving their score. Finally, remaining coins are changed into victory points and if you after that have most of the victory points, you win.

That ‘s been that. Or not. Because contrary to the common practice of publishing expansions a few months later for good money, the publisher has packed three additional modules into the box, which make the game more tactical but at the same time less clear and more of a thinking game. Surely ideal for heavy gamers, to families I would recommend the basic game, which has its qualities without and be even because of lacking further colour mixes, Bishop’s demand tiles or portrait cards with special abilities.

The designers Marco Ruskowski and Marcel Süßelbeck did not use really new elements for their first game, but have interlocked well-known mechanisms that neatly and well balanced that Fresko in total is more than the sum of its components.

Two are missing one

Oh, by the way, Fresco can be played by two. In theory, at last. In practice you once again meet a neutral imaginary player, here at least called Leonardo, who is moved alternately by both players in addition to their own move. That mechanism feels very artificial and only assists in printing “2-4 players” on the box. In game play the 2-player version definitely loses in comparison to the 3- and 4-player game.

Conclusion

The are few games that appeal to casual gamers as well as to heavy gamers. The much applauded Finca is one of them and Fresco now joins the ranks. The lack of almost all chance interests tacticians and strategists, the beautiful components and the easy-to-understand rules in the face of a complex games entice even a games-interested family to play. And should it get boring, eventually, there are always the three expansions. Another three are in the making, so the publisher says. But those come comme il faut as separate expansion in their own box.

Stefan Olschewski

Spieler         : 2-4

Alter            : ages 10 and up

Dauer           : approx. 60 min

Autor           : Marco Ruskowski, Marcel Süßelbeck

Grafik          : Oliver Schlemmer

Vertrieb A.   : Piatnik

Preis            : approx. 35,00 Euro

Verlag          : Queen Games 2010

www.queengames.com

Genre                    : Strategic optimization game

Zielgruppe             : With friends

Mechanismen         : collect and mix colours, exchange them for victory points

Kommentar:

Winner of DSP 2010

Good design

The high quality components invite to play

Perfectly constructed and balanced mechanisms

Lots of depth for simple rules

Good both for families and experts

Vergleichbar:

Cuba, Im Schutze der Burg oder Stone Age, other games with worker placement and changing of components into victory points

Atmosphäre: 6

Stefan Olschewski

A well-made optimization game, well balanced with lots of cunning ideas and a nice “flow”.

Zufall                            1

Taktik                  3

Strategie__                  2

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Interaktion                   2

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