PLAYED FOR YOU

Al Rashid

Influence and favors at the Khalif'S COurt

As head of a family in the times of Harun al Rashid you look for influence from state offices, guild membership and expansion of your family, financed by trading resources without money involvement. The board shows seven regions of a contemporary world map and a city area with guilds' palaces and the Khalif's court. You start with one Sage, one Merchant and one Pasha and place them into regions for resources, offices, services or favors. In five rounds you place family members, that is, playing pieces for majorities in regions, in the so-called placement phase. Resources acquired by majorities in regions are used for payments and you cash bonuses from offices and services. Those bonuses can be once-only or permanent or become effective at the end of the game scoring.

In the resolution phase you choose regions for scoring, and you are allowed to choose even such regions where you are not present. This can be used to thoroughly interfere with plans of other players, as planned-for and then unused actions result in a Dishonor token. You also must overcome obstacles like pirates and bandits, which you fight with mercenaries.

Al Rashid is a very well working, multi-faceted worker placement game, in which amicable play will not get you very far; you must ruthlessly make use of any opportunity that presents itself. Al Rashid will give you a real satisfactory game when you have overcame the graphic design that can only be describes as "how to make access to the game really hard", Arabic-style lettering for English words and the magnifying glass that one would need to read the text on the tiles has not been included.

Players: 2-5

Age: 13+

Time: 150+

Designer: Pierluca Zizzi, Giorgio de Michele

Artist: Simone Gabrielli

Price: ca. 65 Euro

Publisher: Yemaia 2012

Web: www.yemaia.com

Genre: Worker placement

Users: For experts

Version: en

Rules: de en

In-game text: yes

Comments:

Excellent game play

Well-interlocking mechanisms

Difficult graphic design

Parts of the rules and text on tiles very hard to read

Compares to:

Worker placement games for influence, using scoring of regions

Other editions:

Currently none

Chance (pink): 0

Tactic (turquoise): 3

Strategy (blue): 0

Creativity (dark blue): 0

Knowledge (yellow): 0

Memory (orange): 0

Communication (red): 0

Interaction (brown): 3

Dexterity (green): 0

Action (dark green): 0