Friday Filler: Village Rails

Osprey Games is primarily known for its wargames rules, such as Frostgrave: Fantasy Wargames in the Frozen City, but it also publishes board and card games and roleplaying games too. The latter includes Gran Meccanismo: Clockpunk Roleplaying in da Vinci’s Florence, Jackals – Bronze Age Fantasy Roleplaying, and Heirs to Heresy: The fall of the Knights Templar, whilst the former includes titles such as Undaunted Normandy, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, and Village Rails: A Game of Locomotives and Local Motives. The latter is rail-themed board game designed for two to four players aged up fourteen and over, and designed to be played in less than an hour. It has a delightfully cosy feel to it, being set in the English countryside during the Age of Steam during the thirties, forties, and fifties. Play is simple with each player only having to make a few choices and the game ends once everyone has taken twelve turns after which each player’s tableau or rail network is scored and the player with the highest score wins.

Village Rails: A Game of Locomotives and Local Motives consists of eighty Railway Cards, thirty-eight Terminus Cards, four Reference Cards and four Scoring Dials, Border Pieces, and almost fifty coins. The Border Pieces and coins are done in thick cardboard, as are the Scoring Dials, which do require some assembly. The Border Pieces are marked with the start of seven railway lines and are used to create an ‘L-shape’ into which the Railway Cards are placed as a three-by-five twelve-card grid. The Railway Cards are double-sided. On one side is Track, which depicts two single tracks running across terrain such as fields, pasture, forest, lakes, and villages. The Track side are also marked various symbols, including Barns, Farms, Halts, and Sidings. When they appear on a completed line, these will all score a player points, except for Sidings which are scored at the end of the game. On the other side of the Railway Cards are Trips, which score a player if their conditions are met. For example, ‘2 per type of feature on the line.’, ‘No Bulls on the line: 4 points’, and ‘Only straight tracks on the line: 6 points’. Terminus Cards earn a player money when played, the amount depending on the indicated features on the cards, for example, the number of tractors on the line, number of different terrain features on the line, and so on. The greater the number of features on the line, the more money a Terminus Card will earn.

At the start of the game, each player receives an ‘L-shape’ border and £5 in coins. Once the Railway Cards are shuffled, cards are drawn to form two markets—the Track Market and the Trip Market. These are two lines of cards from which a player can select a single Track card and a single Trip card respectively on his turn. The first card in each market is always free to take, but the cards further along the line and closer to the deck must be purchased, with cards closer to the deck being more expensive. This money is placed on the cards further away from the deck and if a player subsequently selects one of the cards with money on it, he receives both card and money. Each player receives three Terminus Cards which he keeps secret until played. On a turn, a player can conduct two actions. The first is to build tracks, which the player must do, the second is to plan a trip, which is optional, but can be done before or after building tracks. Planning a trip always costs money and the Trip card selected is placed next to the player’s L-shape border at the start of a line. Each line can have two Trip cards like this. When selected a Track card is placed into a player’s tableau, either next to a border or another Track card. If as a result of a Track card being placed, a railway line runs from the player’s ‘L-shape’ border to the edge of his tableau, it is considered completed and can be scored. Points are scored for the features on the line, for the bonus provided by the adjacent Trip card, and money if a Terminus card has been played. The Reference Cards help scoring easy for each player.

In Village Rails, each player is working to complete his own tableau and the game does not involve any direct interaction with each other. The interaction comes indirectly through the game’s two markets—the Track Market and the Trip Market. Here each player will be watching them for the best cards to become available, hopefully free in the case of the Track Market and cheap in the case of the Trip Market, and before another player takes them. Another reason to take a card is that it has money on it. Money will enable a player to purchase a better Track or Trip card than before another player can, or simply just buy a Trip card, and the right Trip card will score more points. What this means is that the players have to spend their money with care and take the opportunity of their Terminus cards to earn more. A player will always have three Terminus cards, so fortunately, there is always the opportunity for him to earn money when completing a line.

Placement of the Track cards also takes care and players tend to place their first Track cards at the outer corners of their L-shape and work inwards to fill in all twelve spaces in their tableaus. This is because those placed at the corners can often be completed first, scoring a player some points and potentially earning him money. It also initially gives a wider choice as to what cards a player can draw and play, but as more and more Track cards are placed, the choices begin to tighten as a player tries to balance trying to find the right Track card to add to a tableau and purchase the Trip card which will score him the most points. Throughout, a player will always be considering how he can maximise the number of points he can score and how much money he can earn. Play continues until every player has placed his twelfth Track card and the final scoring is done for the Sidings.

Physically, Village Railways is delightfully and sturdily presented. The first thing that you notice upon lifting up the rules booklet from the box is one single piece of design to the components—and not to the components of the game, but the packaging of the components that the players pull out to assemble the Scoring Dials and the Border Tiles. There is a notch in the corner where a finger can be inserted and the thick sheets of card pulled out. This only has to be done the once, but it just makes things that little bit easier. Otherwise, all of the game’s components are sturdy, appropriately cosy in theme, and easy to use, although the symbols on the Track Cards are not always easy to spot, especially on the Track Cards with a darker theme, such as the forests. The rule book itself is clearly presented and includes a good example of a single turn, and the artwork has a lovely period feel, especially the locomotive illustrations on the Trip cards.

If there is an issue with Village Railways, it is that it pitches itself as a railway game set in the English countryside where the locals are happy to allow tracks to be built by the players or railway companies, but make specific demands of them. Which sounds like the players are laying tracks, but where they go will often be dictated by intervening or vociferous busybodies or persons of note, but it is not that. It is instead, more of a puzzle game in which each player attempts to fill a grid with tracks and maximise their points. Essentially, Village Rails combines drafting from a marketplace, tile placement, and route planning and building with the almost puzzle-like element of placing Track cards and connecting railway lines in a way which every player hopes will optimise his railway network and his score. Not as light a game as it first seems, Village Rails: A Game of Locomotives and Local Motivess is simple to learn and quick to play, but it is more challenging and thoughtful than the average filler game.

Carcosa in Carcassonne

Originally published in 2000 by Hans im Glück in German and by Rio Grande Games in English, Carcassonne is one of the early, great Euro-style board games. Currently published by Z-Man Games, it won the Spiel des Jahres in 2001 and has since gone on to become a classic and is rightly regarded as a gateway game to the hobby. Based on the town in south-west France, it sees the players attempt to build the town of Carcassonne using the game’s tiles as they see fit, constructing cities, completing roads, surrounding monasteries, and occupying farms tile by tile, and then claiming them with their knights, thieves, monks, and farmers. Since its initial release, there have been both multiple expansions for the game and multiple versions of the game, but what if Carcassonne were to fall prey to a malign meme, an insidious influence, a yammering yellow? What if there were men and women desperate enough and ready to drive themselves mad in service of a greater goal, to make the ancient Roman city not ‘Carcaso’, but Carcosa?

This is almost the setup for Carcosa – A Lovecraftian board game of Cults and Madness published by One Free Elephant. It does not actually see the Yellow Sign subvert the town of Carcassonne, but it does take the same tile-laying, area control mechanics of Carcassonne the game and build on them to see rival cults—or players—race to bring the Tattered King to Earth, commanding cultists to control ley lines, conduct rituals, explore the districts of Carcosa itself as they replace our reality, and even sacrifice them to the dark waters of Lake Hali for the pleasure of the King. 

Designed for two to four players, aged fourteen and over, Carcosa can be played in about hour, sometimes less. It consists of eight-four Carcosa tiles, four Hastur tiles, a Cult Mat, four sets of ten ‘Cultists’, four sets of Ritual Stones, four Chapter House cards, four Forbidden Lore cards, and the rulebook. The four Hastur tiles are the game’s starting tiles and show parts of a District in Lake Hali. The eight-four Carcosa tiles show several types of features in Carcosa. These are Districts, Ritual Sites, Confluxes, Ley Lines, and Lake Hali. When placed each tile must be placed adjacent to an existing tile and the sides of the tiles must match. Notably, each of the Carcosa tiles is double-sided and has ‘Stable’ and ‘Unstable’ sides. When a player draws a tile, he examines it and places it so that its ‘Unstable’ side is face up. Only when a feature is completed—Districts built, Ley Lines linked, Ritual Sites surrounded, and sections of Lake Hali enclosed—will it stabilise so that the feature’s tiles can be turned over and its controlling player can harness its power.

The Cult Mat is divided into two sections. The outer section is the Occult Power track which is used to track each player’s progress towards the Summoning Ritual which will bring the King in Yellow to Earth. The inner section is the Ritual Chamber with spaces for the Carcosa tiles to be placed ‘Stable’ side face down. The middle of the Ritual Chamber is marked with the Yellow Sign. This is where potential Cultist recruits can be found and ultimately, the Summoning Ritual is held to bring the King in Yellow to Earth.

Each player’s ten Cultists consists of a Prophet, who sits on the Ritual Mat and controls access to the undrawn Carcosa tiles; an Oracle who keeps track of a cult’s score and progress towards the Summoning Ritual; and eight Cultists. Three of these wait on the Ritual Mat, ready to be recruited and two wait in the Cult’s Chapterhouse, one in the Asylum and one in the Recovery Room. This leaves a player and his cult with just three Cultists at start of play.

Each player has access to a set of six Ritual Stones, each numbered from two to seven. By completing Ley Lines, a player can imbue these with power, the longer the Ley Line, the higher the number of the Ritual Stone which can be imbued. On subsequent turns, a player can use a Ritual Stone to gain an advantage. For example, ‘We Are Legion’ allows a player to add a Cultist to an uncontrolled feature, whilst ‘Shape the Beyond’ lets him take a Carcosa tile from the stack currently controlled by his Prophet and save it to be played later. Notably, possession of a higher numbered Ritual Stone means that it can be used as a lesser numbered Ritual Stone. Each player has a Forbidden Lore card which details the powers of all six Ritual Stones.

Lastly, each cult has a Chapterhouse with two rooms, an Asylum and a Recovery Room. When a Cultist completes a feature, he is sent to his Chapterhouse’s Asylum. On subsequent turns, he will move to the Recovery Room before becoming ready to play again. This strengthens the resource management aspect of the game, since completing features will temporarily limit the number of Cultists he has from one turn to the next.

A player’s turn consists of five steps—Recover Sanity, Tile Selection, Tile Placement/Replacement, Cultist Placement, and Tile Resolution. In the Recover Sanity step, Cultists are moved from the Asylum to the Recovery Room and from the Recovery Room to a player’s supply, enabling Cultists who completed features in earlier turns and were sent insane, to gain their semblance of sanity—after all, no sane man wants to summon the Yellow King. In Tile Selection, a player takes a tile from a stack which does not have a Prophet belonging to any player on it and then places his Prophet on that stack. This blocks access to that stack until after the current player’s next turn and adds a resource denial aspect to the game as the players block and unblock access to the stacks. Having drawn a tile, a player examines its Stable side to determine where to place it in the Tile Placement/Replacement and adds it to the tiles in play with the Unstable side face up. Notably, he can use this tile to replace an existing Unstable tile—as long as the sides match with the tiles it is being placed alongside. Replaced tiles are not lost, but added to the bottom of a stack to be drawn later. In the Cultist Placement step, the player can add a Cultist to the feature he has added or extended—on the Ley Lines, Districts, Ritual Sites, or in Lake Hali—as long as there is not a Cultist already on it.

In the Tile Resolution step, if a feature is completed, all of its tiles are flipped over from their Unstable to Stable sides. The Cultists who completed the feature go insane and are sent to the player’s Asylum. Power is then drawn to various effects, depending upon the type of completed feature. Districts score points and advance a player towards starting the Summoning Ritual. Some Districts contain ‘theatres’ which allow a player to recruit additional Cultists. Ritual Sites are completed when surrounded by eight other tiles. This scores a player more points, but if the Ritual Site is home to a feaster—something that only the placing player will know—it devours the Cultist on the Ritual Site and any Cultists in the surrounding waters of Lake Hali. Although this scores points for all players whose Cultists are devoured, these Cultists are sent to the Cult Mat and cannot rejoin the game unless recruited via a District with a Theatre. Although this scores points for everyone involved, it can be used as a means of denying Cultists to a rival player. A player can sacrifice a Cultist to Lake Hali to score points, though this will reduce the number of Cultists he has to hand. By completing a Ley Line, a player will imbue a Ritual Stone, unless it is connected to an ‘Empowered Conflux’, in which case, he will imbue a Ritual Stone and score points.

Play continues until one of two conditions are met. If two stacks are depleted on the Cult Mat, the game ends, players score for any incomplete features they control, and the player with the most points takes control of Carcosa and wins the game. This is the less interesting of the two conditions. The more interesting condition occurs when a player’s Oracle reaches the end of the scoring track on the Cult Mat and so can begin the Summoning Ritual. This requires him to complete three more features and send their corresponding and now insane Cultists to the Cult Mat (instead of the cult’s Chapterhouse). The first player to do so, brings the Yellow King to Earth and wins the game.

Carcosa quite literally brings several new twists to Carcassonne and its style of play. Cultists being sent insane by completing features and their need to recover imposes a strong resource management aspect, whilst the ability to complete a Ritual Site and sacrifice Cultists of any player enforces this—though they do extra points for these sacrifices. So a player needs to be very careful not to overcommit his Cultists lest he exhaust the numbers he has to place. The ability to block access to the tile stacks gives another tactical aspect to play. The Unstable/Stable aspect of tile placement adds a sense of mystery and hidden play to the game, but being able to replace an Unstable tile can be very powerful, especially if it changes the effect of a tile, such as connecting a Ley Line to an ‘Empowered Conflux’ or changing a Ritual Site to one with a Feaster—or vice versa. That said, while the Stable/Unstable tile mechanic is clever, it can be fiddly when it comes to flipping them over, so players do need to be careful. Above all, the Summoning Ritual as the end game condition makes the game a race, one that any player can still catch up to if he is behind as well as slowing a player down who is attempting the Summoning Ritual. In addition, the Ritual Stones can give a player an advantage just when he needs it. All of those does mean that there is much more to learning to play Carcosa than Carcassonne and that the game’s full details will really come out after a few plays.

Physically, Carcosa is a nicely presented game. Everything is in full colour, the tiles are beautiful pieces of artwork, dark and moody, even ominous, each presented on thick card. The Cultists are wood—as they should be for a Carcassonne-style game—but pleasing cut to represent berobbed cult members. The rulebook does look a bit plain though and although it does explain the rules well enough, it is not the easiest set of rules to read or indeed use as a reference guide to the rules. The Cult Mat, though sturdy, feels a bit cramped in play. (Note that this review is of a pre-production copy, so the ultimate design will vary, most notably the rulebook will be presented in full colour and redesigned.)

Thematically, Carcosa is a delight. Its artwork and the Cultist meeples—this is a Carcassonne-style game, so each player’s Cultists are always meeples—bring an ominous sense of dread and doom to the game play, yet without overpowering it. There no great Mythos creature or entity lumbering into view, but always a sense of building towards something insidious and despairing. At its core, the game play remains simple, but Carcosa does add several degrees of complexity to Carcassonne’s mechanics, moving the game well away from being a gateway game as does the theme, which is more adult and darker in tone. Another reason it is not a gateway game, is that the complexity means a greater range of tactical options, perhaps slightly too many for casual play. That also means though, that the players have more opportunity to be tactical—not just in terms of their tiles and where to place them, but also which tile stack to block, when to play a Ritual Stone, when to sacrifice everyone’s Cultists, and so on. 

Of course it could be argued that Carcosa is an overly complex version of Carcassone, but then the players are trying to perform a Summoning Ritual and what ritual is ever easy? Yet the complexity is born of a design combination that is clever and in places novel, bringing both mechanical depth and thematic depth to a design classic. Ultimately though, the cleverest aspect of One Free Elephant bringing Carcosa to Carcassone is not noting the connection, which was there for all to see, but making the connection in terms of theme and game—such that you have to wonder why no one made the connection before.

—oOo—

Carcosa – A Lovecraftian board game of Cults and Madness is currently being funded via a Kickstarter campaign.

Erect Your Own Palace

Alhambra is a game that regularly ends up on our table, especially if my daughter is visiting. The 2003 winner of the “Spiel des Jahres,” Germany’s top gaming award, and based on the designer’s previous Stimmt So, it is a tile-laying game with resource management aspects and a simple theme. In Granada, 1278, each player directs a team of European and Arabic craftsmen to build the finest and largest version of the Alhambra, Spain’s most beautiful palace. Naturally, each artisan wants to be paid in his native currency.

Designed for two to six players aged eight and up and published by Queen Games, Alhambra’s components are all high quality, just as you would expect for any good Euro game with everything in full colour and done on hard wearing cardboard. This includes each player’s Starter Tile – marked with the famous Lion Fountain, and his Tile Reserve board marked with the game’s scoring information and a space to hold tiles in reserve. The Building Tiles are marked with various gardens, manors, mezzanines, pavilions, royal chambers, and towers, plus a number indicating their cost. Some tiles have walls along one or more of their edges. The Money Deck is divided between four colour-coded currencies in various values: blue coloured Denars, green Dirhams, orange Ducats, and yellow Florins. The Building Market board is the game’s heart and is marked with four spaces to hold tiles, each adjacent to a symbol for one of the four currencies. Also included is a bag to hold the building tiles.

Game set up is slightly complex. The Building Market is seeded with four new Building Tiles and each player receives a handful of Money. Several Money Cards are laid out face up besides the Building Market with the remaining Money Deck being seeded with two Scoring Cards, one about a third of the way through the deck, the second two thirds of the way. Play then begins.

A player can do one of three things on a turn. He can take Money Cards from the face up cards to spend later. He can buy a Building Tile, paying with the correct Money Cards – both in terms of currency and value, indicated by the symbol on the Building Market. A purchased tile can be added to the player’s Alhambra, or placed on the Reserve Board. The third thing that a player can do on his turn is redesign his Alhambra using his tiles in reserve.

The “exact” price does not have to be paid when purchasing a Building Tile – a player can pay more and often will if it gains him a Building Tile that will make a fine addition to his Alhambra. If the “exact” amount is paid for the Building Tile, another turn is gained! This extra allows the player to buy another Building Tile, take more Money Cards, or rearrange the tiles in his Alhambra. If the player uses this extra turn to buy another Building Tile and pays the “exact” amount, then again, he receives another turn. He can only do this as long as he has the exact amounts each time and until the fourth Building Tile on the Market has been bought.

Tiles are placed to according to simple, but strict rules. They must align correctly, and adjoining sides must match, including those tiles with walls. An Alhambra’s design can be as sprawling or as compact as a player wants. In general, cheaper tiles are more difficult to add to an Alhambra, while Building Tiles types that are worth more during the scoring rounds, such as the towers and gardens are more expensive. Scoring takes place when each of the two Scoring Cards are drawn and then at a game’s end. Points are awarded for having the most of each building type, plus the longest wall. The player with the most points is the winner and thus has the finest Alhambra.

Alhambra offers simple tactics, but difficult decisions. Does a player buy and lay the Building Tiles needed to score, paying over their value in the process? Does he take Money Cards to have the exact amount needed to gain those oh so important extra actions, and for how long does he keep taking Money Cards when his rivals could be snapping up decent Building Tiles? Of course, buying up a Building Tile denies it to a rival player, but sometimes a Building Tile will remain on the Building Market as no one wants it. In this way, it also prevents other – hopefully better Building Tiles from being pulled from the bag and added to the Building Market.

Dominated by the strong random elements of Building Tile and Money Card drawing, Alhambra lacks any real interactive element, participants almost playing self-contained puzzle games and coming together only at the Building Market. Yet the wait between turns is never very long even if they can be frustrating as other players grab better Building Tiles and Money Cards before you can, though one of the several expansions for the game – The Vizier’s Favour – adds a means by which a player can interrupt play to take his turn out of order. One potential issue with the game is with number of players. With just two players the rules recommend that a third dummy player be added, but in our experience this added a degree of the cumbrous to play; while game play is a little slow with five players.

Alhambra is a good family game, but it is not quite the gateway game, the type of game that you would get out to introduce new players to the hobby. It sits somewhere slightly beyond such entry level games as Carcassonne and Ticket to Ride, mainly because it moves player interaction away from any kind of a board in the traditional sense.

Despite a lack an interactive element, Alhambra is still pleasing to play, in turns frustrating and gratifying as fortunes can change within a turn or two. The nicely spaced scoring rounds also allow players to catch up with their rivals. Beautifully and cleverly designed, Alhambra is a light and enjoyable game that is easy to learn and a pleasure to play.