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REVIEW
Glen More II
Rekindled Love
Some games in the shelf you never want to give up as they are just too unique in their material, history, or mechanic. Or they are connected to beautiful mem- ories. For me, Matthias Cramer’s Glen More is such a game. To expand your clan’s territory through the gathering of landscape tiles from a rondel already intrigued me with the alea version (sb 4/2010). But because it came out in the middle size alea series, the material was unfortunately so tiny that I always wished for a new edition. Now Glen More II with the subtitle “Chronicles” is released. It was a long wait, but it was worth it.
Before the purchase, I had some doubts. Is this big of a box really needed? Is the idea really worth
70 Euro? And why, if I enjoyed Glen More so much, did it so rarely hit the table in the last few years? After giving the game a try at the convention in Essen, all doubts were wiped away. I had to have it! A good decision.
What remained is the foundational idea with the round track, from which the last player picks a landscape tile each round. If the choice leaves his pawn still behind all other players, he gets to go again. However, clan territories that are too large due to dawdling are punished during end game scoring. The tiles are placed into the private landscapes that players build in front of them. One might specialize in cattle breeding, another might produce whiskey. The starting tiles have in common that a river runs through them that will not branch out during the game.
Every time a stack of landscape tiles is depleted when laying them out onto the
round track, scoring takes place. The number of, for example, whis- key casks or landmark cards is tallied and compared with the player of the smallest amount
of these items – the bigger
the difference, the more vic-
tory points are awarded.
Since some tiles have
building costs, the market
offers a welcome opportu-
nity for selling available goods for silver or purchasing some. At the end, money can be traded in for victory points.
I Rushing ahead and waiting One of the attractive things about Glen More is that you can move far ahead on the round track if you want to fetch an important tile. Afterwards, however, it means you will wait to take a turn until the others pass you. Everyone stares at the tiles on offer on the track, hoping they won’t disappear to other clan territories before it’s their turn again. Everything moves pretty fast, despite the game’s complexity, even if choosing the right placement of a new tile into one’s land-
scape can take some time.
The flexible construction of the private
landscapes is another big plus of Glen
More. Building is allowed only next to a Scotsman, which is why one should focus on growth early on.
The function of the added tile is acti- vated when placed, along with all orthogonally and diagonally con- nected tiles, in any order. That can take time. If you produce sheep and cows, and in the same turn trade them in for victory points, then you have created a beautiful victory point machine. Fur- ther increase effectiveness with
the help of tiles that allow the movement of your Scotsmen so they can be positioned for future turns and building tasks.
It is part of Cramer’s nerve-racking basic princi- ple that usually, right after your move, you know that the Scot-meeple should have been put here instead of there, or the tile would have better been placed elsewhere. One of the chal- lenges of Glen More is to play so that there are no regrets. I remember, however, that soon
I knew the tiles of the orig- inal by heart, and in which
of the three stacks they hid, so often I ended up waiting for a specific tile to appear. Today I believe that Glen
More, despite all its vari-
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