An overdue follow-up
Martin Wallace
Dr. Grordbort's Onward to Venus – Mythotopia -A Study in Emerald
Since several years games by Martin Wallace are favorite games among our friends and are put on the table again and again. Just to name few exemplary titles – Railroad Tycoon The Board Game, Brass, or London – when those games are out on the table on our evenings in Spiele Kreis Wien there are definitely enough people who instantly want to play.
The more recently published games from Treefrog Games were unfortunately of very, very fluctuating quality: Take „A Few Acres of Snow“, for instance, a wonderful deck building game in historical setting was very often played with pleasure at the beginning – despite being a bit drawn-out – but since an unfailing strategy for winning the game became known, the interest in the game has deflated rapidly. Unfortunately, Martin has not published more games with a historical background.
Then – 2013 in Essen – „A Study in Emerald“ was published and I very well remember the answer of the designer to my question on what the topic of this game is about? He told me, that he could not really tell me, I should simply try it out. An unusual answer, but I was curious enough to by several copies of the game – for friends, too – and then it took me more than 6 months to tackle the game. What can I tell you? After a few months we finally had – more or less – mastered the rules and up to today we play the game regularly, there is no other game that I have played more often in my life (maybe even more often than “Mensch ärgere Dich nicht” in my childhood). But more on that later.
In 2014 I acquired „Mythotopia“ and „Onward to Venus“, Mythotopia because it picked up the game mechanics of “Snow” and Onward to Venus because of its breathtakingly beautiful design.
In this review I only talk about the last three games I just mentioned: All are so-called deck building games – albeit, Venus, if you take a very close look, is not such a game, as the cards are discarded after using them and are not taken up in hand again.
„Onward to Venus“ is based on „Dr. Grordbort“ by Greg Broadmore and is set in the late 19th century and using the supposition that mankind has already mastered space travel and has settled the solar system. For initiated games: A Steam Punk Scenario.
Up to five players fight for control over the planets and moons in our Solar System – the nations of England, France, Germany, Russia and the United States of America. At the start of the game you lay out planets and moons instead of a game board –
round discs in a specified arrangement. Then you randomly distribute tiles on those discs. Those tiles show symbols for buildings (mines and factories), bonuses („Big Game“ = Victory Points, „Windfall“ = Money, and „draw 2 cards), or events (crises and tension). Each player receives a colored military set of cardboard markers: Space Ships, infantry and Tanks as well as four starting cards. At the start you can draw two more cards from a face-down draw pile of more than 100 cards. Those cards are “one use only”, you can have a maximum of 9 cards in hand, which usually yield “Combat Points”, but also other advantages, for instance additional movement. Finally, there are money tiles to buy units; factories and mines yield income, but money does not yield victory points.
The graphics of the cards in Steam Punk design are a feast for your eyes, as is the design of rules and tiles. But what would a space game be without Aliens? Don’t worry, Alien tiles will enter the game in certain situations.
„Onward to Venus“ is played in three rounds; one round ends when the last dice is taken off the so-called pass card.
Possible actions are: 1) Movement (all units of all players start on Earth); 2) claim a tile on a moon or planet; 3) acquisition of 1-2 military units; 4) Card actions and 5) pass your turn, that is, take one dice from the pass card and draw a card. The last die taken from the card ends the round; whoever takes it, is starting player of the next round.
Movement allows a space ship to move across two planets or moons, maybe further with some cards, the space ship can carry infantry, but no tanks, which must be built in factories on the respective planets.
Claiming of tiles: To claim a tile you must land a military unit on the planet (movement always ends in orbit around the target). Mines, crises and Tension must be conquered in combat after landing; only landed units count towards determining combat strength. The attacker rolls three combat dice; the die with the medial result is ignored and the difference of the remaining two dice raises the defense value of the attacked tile (for instance, a mine). The attacker must achieve this value or surpass it in order to win; infantry and space ship each provide value 1, tanks 2, and this strength value can be raised further by cards. When the defense value is not achieved or the attacker deems the “price” to be too high, he can resign and the action is forfeit. Each die features one side showing a skull of value 0! For each skull rolled the attacker loses one unit at the end of the attack.
Mines and factories of other players can only be attacked at a location with a Tension marker; in this case the defender can add the combat value of his units in orbit to his defense value.
„Crises“ markers are attacked in the same way, they do yield victory points. In theory, they can do devastating damage, depending on the location (for instance, attacks by Aliens), but this rarely happens as those markers are usually attacked very quickly because of their victory points yield.
At the end of the game you calculate the ranking of income – most, second-most and third-most income – for each planet and each moon. The respective victory points vary in relation to the location (Earth yields most). You also receive points from tiles you did acquire, for instance „Big Game“.
„Onward to Venus“ is a relatively simple game which takes one hour to 90 minutes to play, but is a game whose attraction diminishes after a few games, as it features a relatively high element of chance and offers little variation in its game flow. Due to its marvelous design it might be an attractive gift to a casual gamer.
Mythotopia is made of sterner stuff: The deck building mechanism has been taken from „Acres of Snow“, the map on the board shows a fictitious country with mountains, plains, lakes, oceans and islands. Each province shows a number in a circle which is the combat strength of the neutral region, and one of four different symbols, which are also depicted on the respective region cards in their top left-hand corner: Army, Food, Stone or Gold – the resource of the region. Some landscapes indicate their defense bonus for rough territory by featuring a dark shield. Mythotopia is intended for two to four players, each of whom has Village tiles of one color to mark his territories. Of course, there are additional tiles to upgrade an estate – Fortress, City, Citadel....
At the start of the game each player is randomly dealt Province cards – six cards in case of four players – which indicate where a player can set up his villages. Those cards are the starting cards of your own deck. You also get four starting cards in your color: Army – two army and one money symbol in the top left-hand corner; Market – one money, one food and one stone symbol; Ship – one ship and one food symbol; and, finally, Build – one stone symbol. The Build card also indicates the necessary costs for constructing a city, road or fortress. As usual, you can only use one kind of symbol or one of the actions on a card showing several symbols and/or actions.
Next to the board so-called victory point cards are laid out, three of them are – carrying a specified number of victory points – always in play, and there are also four more ones, out of ten randomly drawn ones. When a player meets the requirements stated on one of the cards, he make take one of the victory point tiles on the card. When one of those cards has been emptied, you cannot get victory points from there anymore! Besides this source for victory points, each province is worth three victory points. Each combat that has been fought changes, the point score of the players involved in this combat on the track at the edge of the board; if ownership of a province changes, the corresponding card is handed on, too. Contrary to this, victory point tiles from the seven victory point cards cannot be lost.
Another type of card – so-called “Fortschrittskarten”, 16 chosen randomly from a total of 29 cards – are laid out openly for buying; those cards yield advantage and some of them also carry symbols in the top left-hand corner. Of course, at the start of the game, the demand for these cards is high, as they can make your deck very much more efficient; and when they all have been taken, there is no replacement.
Each player begins the game with six small army tiles (Shield symbol) and two ships; to acquire/buy more of them is a separate action. New troops are placed in your personal stack, as are those that you take off the board, for instance after a war; to re-enter them in the board demands the playing of card that carry an army symbol.
At the start, each player draws five cards from his deck. In your turn you carry out two actions; for some of them you need to play cards, for instance for placing armies into your own regions; it is possible to do the same action twice, albeit not for all of the actions and there are certain action that you only can do as the first action in your turn. When all have passed, the round ends, card that were used are put on the personal discard piles and all draw five cards again from their personal draw pile (if this is empty, the discard pile is shuffled and becomes the new draw pile.)
There is an action option „End game“ which only can be chosen as a first action when four or more victory point cards have been emptied and one player is in the lead. At the end of the game all conflicts in progress need to be scored – in case of a tie in a region the defender in the conflict wins – and the victory points are adjusted accordingly and all players need to check again if their current score of victory points is correct. Should it happen, that the active player is not the winner, this action cannot be implemented and the game continues, that is, the scoring of the wars is reversed.
Mythotopia passes through different phases: At the start of the game everybody wants to get old of Fortschrittskarten, which always cost one gold (Do I have a province with Gold symbol? Or maybe even two?); on top of that each player needs more provinces (even in case of four players there are enough unclaimed ones at the start of the game). To have more cards with symbol in your deck you need to acquire enough new armies and ships – which in turn again demands gold.
Ships enable you to attack provinces across water and give each region adjacent to water one value of strength, both for conquest or defense. Unfortunately, water, too, has borders, therefore you need more ships. Only when free room gets scarce in our phantasy continent, the conflicts and wars begin – unless there are enthusiastic war gamers playing, who force you into defense action, despite there still being so much that could be achieved before we, too, aim for regions further away.
As in „Acres of Snow“ some action options demand several different cards for implementation, which makes everything even more difficult and puzzling. A very interesting mechanism can help: The so-called “Reserve Card”, that is held by every player, On this card the number of cards that needs to put into reserve (beginning with two) – this number increases with the number of cities you build; the city tile is taken off this reserve card and put on one of your own region, which reveals a higher number each time; this number indicates how many cards I can put into reserve. With this mechanism I can hoard cards to have more symbols available for an action, in addition to those depicted on the five hand cards. With the action “place cards into reserve” I can place one or more cards into reserve, but cards in reserve must be visible for all players.
Due to the varying victory point and Fortschritt cards as well as the randomly distributed region cards each game of Mythotopia runs a different course, as far as I know there is no dominating strategy for winning. The playing time of 90 minutes stated on the box is rarely achieved, usually the game takes a lot longer. The components are made up from card board tiles, cards and wooden game pieces as well as a somewhat gloomy game board. The rules are complete and leave no question unanswered.
Mythotopia is a challenging game for experiences frequent players, tactic dominates, the conflicts are demanding and there are a lot more sophisticated details in the game, which I did not mention here.
„A Study in Emerald“ is the title of an award-winning („Hugo Award“) short story by Neil Gaiman – to be found on the web – and of a very well-made game by Martin Wallace. Monsters originating from the writings of H.P. Lovecraft, characters from the world of Sherlock Holmes, Zombies and Vampires as well as real historic personalities (Freud, Bismarck and several anarchists) encounter each other in the second half of the 19th century, They fight in two groups – Loyalists and restorationists, that is, anarchists versus revolutionaries, for domination over the whole world.
The world they are fighting for is influences since more than 700 years by the “Old Ones” (Lovecraft), at least in the short story by Neil Gaiman. The Loyalists, true to their name, support the ones currently in power, and they use whatever tool is available to bring the „Old Ones“ into our world. The Restorationists, in turn, aim for a new world order, which results in a secret war.
The box of the game’s first edition is illustrated by a scene from the short story which provides the name: Blood of a murder victim in several shades of green looks like the work of an artist: „A Study in Emerald Green“. The title is also an allusion to „A Study in Scarlet“ by Arthur Conan Doyle, in which he characters of „Holmes“ and „Watson“ are introduced.
The very felicitous „Fin des Siecle“ design contributes strongly to the flair of the game, as does the addition of real historical characters.
The alluring basic idea of the game is that nobody knows who belongs to which of the both factions. At the start each player draws a card assigning him to either the loyalist or the restorationist faction, and those assignments should be kept secret. On the other hand, everybody wants to find out who he needs to fight or maybe support, because the winning conditions are very unusual:
You win, if you accrue most victory points – so far so good and standard – but if a member of this player’s faction happens to be in last place, the whole faction has lost and the leading player of the opposing faction wins.
Each player is an agent (called Monday – Friday, so up to five can play) and begins with a deck of 10 cards, a number of wooden cubes for influence and wooden discs to mark property. The board shows 12 cities (Washington, Cairo and European cities), each with a spot for cards, and connections for travelling between cities. The edge of the board carries a scoring track and “Limbo” – this is where the influence cubes are placed after being used and from where you can get them back by playing the necessary cards. A red and a green scoring track mark the advance of both factions, red is of course the color of the revolutionaries.
By placing influence cubes each player can take over cities, which earns him victory points and a card that improves the deck, can hire agents, which again brings cards for the deck with various actions, or acquire cards for free actions, monsters and various other advantages. Each player can place cubes everywhere; if you have a majority in a city at the start of your turn, this city is yours (agent, card), cards that you thereby acquire go to your own discard pile and later into your deck.
Card symbols show bombs, cubes and money; money is needed for traveling and for acquisition of influence cubes. Bombs are used to eliminate agents, „Royalists“ or to save „Royalists“. Cube symbols that you play bring you cities, more cards and give you back spent cubes from „Limbo“.
Victory points are acquired by controlling cities, by eliminating enemy agent and either eliminating or saving “Royalists” and from various cards.
Basically, „A Study in Emerald“ is a lovely chaotic game: Not only because of the uncertainty of „Friend or Foe“, but also due to the various action cards which which you can create havoc with your opponent – if only I were sure who is my opponent?! On top of this, each game has a very unique flow, depending on the cards that are in play: Zombies, for instance, are a source of joy for the conservatives, as they enable him to to quickly eliminate agents of the revolutionaries, which earns lots of victory points, but also can speed up the end of the game. “The Leopold Society”, on the other hand, deals quickly and finally with Zombies or Vampires. There is one card that allows spying on other players, another card allows you to instantly change your affiliation, cards can force players to check their mental health … After an assassination each player must do this by drawing a face-down tile which can read „Mad“ or „Sane“. Should A revolutionary draw “Mad” three times, the game ends; the conservatives are that mad and evil that nothing affects them.
There are actions that can give clues to the affiliation of a player, when implemented, but those actions are also a nice tool for bluffing, especially at the start of the game when there is not much harm done when directing an action at your own faction. Should I mention that there are also double agents …..
The duration of the game is very variable, we have played games lasting 20 minutes, but also some that took two hours. I am talking about the maximum possible fun in playing, all is possible, there are surprises amass, at one moment your strategy collapses like a house of cards, in the next one an even more perfidious opportunity arises.
The only condition for a game of „Emerald“ is the willingness to be not too serious about a game – then you can derive lots of amusement even if you are about to lose. Need I mention that we often have long discussions after a game about what would have happened if …, what else could we have done …
Did you ever play a game in which all can lose in theory (with the exception of cooperative games, that is)? In this game this is possible when three or four are playing.
This unorthodox game is a source of many surprises, playing for the sake of playing. Hands off the game for nitpickers and players who want to maximize their score. Thank you, thank you, thank you, Martin!
At Essen 2015 a second, revised edition of the game has been published. New graphics, a revised game board and new rules are aiming to make the game somewhat easier. The rules of the first edition have not been very complicated, but the new rules promise to be more straightforward, to make the game more accessible. Of course we will play the new edition, too, but hope very much that the fun of the game has not been diminished in any way.
“A Study in Emerald” is a game for people who want to be entertained will, provided they have a certain willingness to encounter unusual gameplay. The first edition is sold out, should you come across a copy, grab it! A game meriting the ranking of top game in its category.
Dr. Christoph Proksch, Ursula Vlk
Onward to Venus
Players: 2-5
Age: 13+
Time: 90+
Designer: Martin Wallace
Artist: Greg Broadmore, Peter Dennis, Warren Mahy, Hans Kleinenberg
Price: ca. 50 Euro
Publisher: Treefrog Games 2014
Web: www.treefroggames.com
Genre: Retro SciFi development
Users: For experts
Version: en
Rules: en
In-game text: yes
Comments:
Steampunk / Retro SciFi
Rather chance-driven
Marvelous graphics
Compares to:
Other steampunk games with territory acquisition
Other editions:
Currently none
My rating: 5
Christoph and Ursula:
A nicely designed retro SciFi game, with enticing design and a rather uniform flow combined with a high chance factor.
Chance (pink): 2
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
Mythotopia
Players: 2-4c
Age: 13+
Time: 90+
Designer: Martin Wallace
Artist: Sanjana Baijnath
Price: ca. 50 Euro
Publisher: Treefrog Games 2014
Web: www.treefroggames.com
Genre: Deck building, conflict, territory acquisition
Users: For experts
Version: multi
Rules: de en fr it
In-game text: yes
Comments:
Tactics is dominant
Lots of sophisticated details
Varying game play due to varying cards
Compares to:
A Few Acres of Snow, other deck building gamesu
Other editions:
Currently none
My rating: 6
Christoph and Ursula:
A challenging and variable game in which tactic dominates and which offers a plethora of sophisticated details together with a varied game play for each game due to randomly distributed region cards and other elements.
Chance (pink): 1
Tactic (turquoise): 3
Strategy (blue): 3
Creativity (dark blue): 0
Knowledge (yellow): 0
Memory (orange): 0
Communication (red): 0
Interaction (brown): 2
Dexterity (green): 0
Action (dark green): 0
A Study in Emerald
Players: 2-5
Age: 13
Time: variable
Designer: Martin Wallace
Artist: Anne Stokes
Price: ca. 50 Euro
Publisher: Treefrog Games 2013
Web: www.treefroggames.com
Genre: Deck building, hidden identities
Users: For experts
Version: en
Rules: en de + others in 2nd edition
In-game text: yes
Comments:
Unique mechanisms, especially winning conditions
Interesting combination of background stories with real historic characters
Very variable game flow
Absolute top game for experts
Compares to:
First game of this kind
Other editions:
2nd edition in English, German, French and other languages
My rating: 7
Christoph and Ursula:
If you are ready for unusual game play, unexpected surprises and being constantly on your toes, then you will love “A Study in Emerald”
Chance (pink): 1
Tactic (turquoise): 3
Strategy (blue): 3
Creativity (dark blue): 0
Knowledge (yellow): 0
Memory (orange): 0
Communication (red): 1
Interaction (brown): 3
Dexterity (green): 0
Action (dark green): 0