Page 38 - spielbox_0717_EN

LATECOMER Rhodes
Gold Gives to the Ugliest Rules Thing a Certain Charming Air ...
The sheer amount of novelties and the limited space on these pages can mean that repeatedly even significant games get overlooked, particularly if they only reveal their quality after some time. But this does not apply to Rhodes, which was already mentioned in a fair report in spielbox 6/2016. The delay here was caused by the publishers who had announced a thorough overhaul of the rules. It never came, though there was an urgent need for it.
to plan your stockpiling carefully so you do not get stuck with useless goods. To obtain space and money at the same time, you can sell stuff at the market, which again requires one of your few actions. Apart from wine, goat’s milk, olives and wheat from your own produc- tion, it is essential that you stock up on gold at a reasonable price, delivered by neutral ships. Luckily, these are immedi- ately replenished when the gold bar supply sinks below one.
I Unfortunately
others also benefit
The production of the four above-men-
tioned goods is controlled by the respec- tive spaces. If you sent one of your work- ers to do the job, then you can decide
which two goods are produced, to a max- imum of five. But unfortunately, the harvest is distrib- uted clockwise
among all players with the appropriate landscape tiles. As the producing player, make sure you gain at least one good more than your parasitic com- petitors, and in a pinch, be
happy with just one.
Starting a production only makes
sense if your farm has the corre- sponding landscape tiles; all of them let you stock up to three goods. Your aim should be, therefore, to get at least one more landscape as fast as possible, in addition to the one purchased with your starting cap- ital. Only then can you exploit the production volume to the fullest, and participate frequently in the production of the others. New landscapes are available in the town hall, and for a hefty sum, there are even some that generate some-
Without a good command of the Dutch language, it would be hard to say for certain what the original rules were like. But the German translation certainly raises a lot of questions, which are difficult to clar-
then you have to pay up for this privilege. Whereas from position four onwards, there is an increasing financial or func- tional benefit, sometimes both. What you cannot do is immediately choose again
several pages of FAQs on their website. Regretta- bly, they did not enclose a new set of rules in the second edition announced f
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l one of the three assign- ments in the harbor, as they grant you money as well as points to win the game. If your warehouse there
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SPIEL ’17 at Essen. Instead,
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, they focused on creating an expansion
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that was not even finished on time.
The game is all about worker place- ment, combined with action selection
a
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ar
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d from the incoming vessels. The further a ship has been pushed along the pier by later arrivals, the less you have to pay for
its goods. The money is either paid to the bank or to another player, depending upon who owns the ship. This also applies to your own ships, from which you can help yourself if you are wor-
ried that rare goods will otherwise go to some- one else’s warehouse.
If any player’s ship at the head of the delivery line reaches the end of the pier, then the remain-
ing cargo automatically unloaded and
into the respective warehouse, but capacities are lim- ited. As the assign- ments get progres- sively more sophis- ticated, you need
w
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be
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an
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ource management. Not
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nd
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re
es
so
exac
y revolutionary, but at least
ct
tl
ly
it t i
s spiced up with some inter- esting, neatly interlocking components. Workers are limited to two markers, which players place in sep-
is
ate turns into different
s to perform the relevant
ight away. The generally accessible areas called production, harbor, market, temple and town hall are designed so that not all participants get to do something there. Who can fulfill their plans, and where, is not determined
by financial power, but by early arrival. The turn order is initially random, but then pre-determined. In reverse turn order, everyone gets to decide upon which of the seven positions of the sequence board they position themselves for the next round. If you are interested in one of the two leading positions that ensure you can at least perform one of the actions particularly important to you,
ac
ct
will be
put
36
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