Our Reveiw
Ambulant Architects
Queen’s Architect
Collect Prestige to build the palace
As an architect you want to recommend yourself and your craftsmen to the queen to be allowed to build her new palace – the necessary appreciation for this is earned by constructing new buildings, doing repairs and working in the fields.
Already preparing the game wets your appetite – as a player you receive a Tavern board with a Moneychanger track and an Action Star; one of your markers is placed as the architect on the top building case of the star; there is a carriage for each player in the capitol and the board shows the appreciation track with nine randomly chosen appriciation tiles and the palace. At the start of this appreciation track and the start of the Moneychanger track we place our remaining two markers. The capital on the board is surrounded by villages, cities and monasteries, each with a spot reserved for a demand tile of corresponding size and building lots. Finally, we turn up six tiles from the starting craftsmen tiles stack and put them on the Black Board section of the game board, the tiles must all be placed with correct orientation.
There are six different craftsmen – Lumberjack, blacksmith, glazier, stonemason, bricklayer and tailor – and in each craft three different craftsmen of different values and looks. A craftsmen tile has six values for performance, a drop-out arrow, the symbol of the craft and an appreciation value for repairs and arrows for the direction of rotation. If you hire a craftsmen, you place him at the Action Star, his current performance determines how much money or appreciation you get. When a job is done, the tile is rotated by one position in direction of the arrow, When then the drop-out arrow is next to the hammer symbol on the Action Star, the craftsman works one last time and is then taken out of play.
Already at the start of the game we need to take a few decisions: The starting player chooses one of the starting craftsmen and places him with the highest position at one slot of the Action Star – highest position means number above the head of the portrait on the tile. Then he can rotate the craftsman in direction of the arrow and take one coin for each rotation by one position. When all players have chosen a craftsman and rotated him, a second such round is done in the opposite direction. After that, each player has two craftsmen at his Action Star and a few coins and we can begin to play.
The active player moves his architect on the Action Star by one, two or three positions in clockwise direction and then implements the corresponding action. Movement of the architect is mandatory, you can pass on implementing the action.
Action options on the star are:
Day laborer – Craftsmen used as day laborers earn coins, one coin for two craftsmen used, rounded up. Craftsmen with a Day Laborer symbol can then be rotated and give you two extra coins.
Hire – You can take a craftsman from the display on the Black Board on the board, pay the cost in coins and place tile with the corner, that was next to the hammer on the black board, into a slot of the Action Star. You can employ several craftsman of the same craft, but they must be different characters. Then the marker on the price track is lowered by one, the top craftsman is now cheaper by 1 or goes out of play, if the price was already at the lowest possible mark. Then all remaining craftsmen are moved up to close the gap and empty positions at the bottom are filled from the stack of craftsmen tiles.
Travel – You move your carriage and pay the price for the number of steps you move, you can enter or cross occupied positions.
Tavern – Craftsmen tokens at the entrance can be sent into the tavern by paying coins, before that you move, if applicable, craftsmen tokens in the dormitory into the entrance and craftsmen tokens in the saloon to the dormitory. When you send a craftsman from the entrance to the saloon you rotate all craftsmen of that craft by one position, but counter-clockwise!
Gain confidence / Redeem bonds – You can either gain confidence with the Moneychanger and move your marker one position up on his track or can, if you want to redeem bonds, redeem a number of bonds equal to the position of your current marker, each redeemed bond gives you two coins.
Build– You can construct a building or do repairs.
To construct a building you must have your carriage at the intended location, without a marker of your own and you must employ a craftsman from each of the crafts indicated by the demand tiles at the location. When those conditions are met, all craftsmen at your Action Star participate in the construction. You add all current performance values and deduct the cost for the best empty building lot at the location, where you then place your building marker. The resulting total is the amount of acquired appreciation, which can only be maximum 10 in a village, maximum 15 in a monastery and maximum 20 in a town, regardless of what the calculated total might be. Buildings in town give you a bonus. With the acquired appreciation you can advance on the appreciation track as many steps as you can pay for; appreciation insufficient for the next step gives you one bond per appreciation unit, you are also allowed to not pay for a step and get additional bonds. At the end of the building action each craftsman is rotated by one position.
Repairs can be done at any time, but only using a maximum of three craftsmen from different crafts and you score the appreciation stated by the number in the parchment symbol on the craftsman tile. You can again use the appreciation for advancing on the track or take bonds, but do not get eventual bonuses and craftsmen are rotated by one position.
With a mix as clever and remunerative as possible you work up your way on the the appreciation track to the palace slot, get your carriage to the capital and get the architect to a building position and make sure that the craftsmen provide a total performance of minimum 15 – when all this is accomplished you build at the palace. Craftsmen are not turned and all remaining players have another turn till the round ends. When, at the end of the round, you were the only one to build at the palace, you win the game; if several players did build you win if you earn more appreciation at building there.
Craft is the key word here, you get the impression of carefully crafted, interlocking mechanisms that all work very well, excellent craftsmanship by the game designer. The Action Star, the craftsmen, the clever and well-working Tavern mechanisms – which allows you, for little money, to get a high-performance craftsman back into action quicker than by rotating him through six positions – all this fits very well together and demands quite a lot of planning and calculation; take the question of bonds or confidence, construction or repairs. Unfortunately, this is somewhat spoiled by the random appearance of craftsmen; if the one that you badly need does not appear or is snatched away by another player one can be far behind in the race to the palace rather quickly, if you do not switch to the mix of repairs and hiring craftsmen.
Queen’s Architect is a good and beautiful game, also as regards to design and components, the rules are excellently done, and despite a few reservations about some mechanism details I can recommend the game to families with gaming experience and also to experienced players who can live with the chance element.
Dagmar de Cassan
Players: 2-4
Age: 10+
Time: 60+
Designer: Volker Schächtele
Artist: Dennis Lohausen
Price: ca. 38 Euro
Publisher: Queen Games 2015
Web: www.queen-games.de
Genre: Worker placement, race
Users: With friends
Version: de
Rules: de en
In-game text: no
Comments:
Very good components and design
Excellent rules
Mechanisms interact nicely
Chance-driven craftsmen availability can disturb the game flow
Compares to:
Concordia and others for Rondel, Worker Placement
Other editions:
Bilingual edition German/English, Queen Games
My rating: 5
Dagmar de Cassan:
Targeting families, the game, however, has some demands as regards to experience – partly in the handling of craftsmen at the Action Star, partly due to their chance-driven availability.
Chance (pink): 1
Tactic (turquoise): 3
Strategy (blue): 2
Creativity (dark blue): 0
Knowledge (yellow): 0
Memory (orange): 0
Communication (red): 0
Interaction (brown): 1
Dexterity (green): 0
Action (dark green): 0