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Castello Methoni
Walls? Triangular spaces? That sounds familiar. Right – in 2006, Hans im Glück pub- lished Mauerbauer (aka Masons), by Leo Colovini. The author has maintained his topological concept, but has now turned it into something completely differ-
ent. On your turn, you play one or
two cards, each of which shows one
of six types of landscape. For each
card, you then place a wall on any
free border of a space of the cor- responding type. Finally, you put
one of your own houses (actually, cubes) on either of the two spaces
next to the wall and a house from
your left or your right neighbor on
the other side of the wall.
Once you place a wall and,
in doing so, completely enclose
a domain, you acquire it by
paying to the bank one ducat
per domain space and buying
other players’ houses on these
spaces from their owners – an
offer they cannot refuse. If the
domain contains one of the six
market spaces, you receive the
ducat lying there and hope for income from the market from the next turn on. If there are other domains abutting on the newly-acquired land, you may buy them from their owner(s) without their objec- tion by paying two ducats per space plus the price of all buildings there. If there are at least three houses of the same color in one area, they are upgraded to a villa; for future businesses, such a building will have a value of five ducats.
Once all the walls have been used up, the game ends and a final scoring takes place. Each of your own land spaces gives you three ducats; and the owners of the two largest domains earn extra points. Houses are worthless in the end, whereas you get one point for each ducat. Your secret Objective card (initially allotted to you) awards you one ducat for each of your spaces of the matching landscape type; but in practice, this hardly turns out to be crucial for the win.
Two aspects are particularly interesting in this game: First, which of my neighbors should I please with the placement of a house? This can lead to alliances, which might be frustrating in the beginning for the disregarded player, especially in the
three-player setting. But as long as there is no actual couple sitting at the table that always closes ranks against the rest of the world, what fortunately prevails is the intention of doing harm to the lead- ing player. And besides, it can sometimes happen that a preferred player is running
also, such a cash cow is much more lucra- tive at the beginning than it is towards the end of the game. Therefore, you shouldn’t fret if you have to surrender all your domains, since you might even win the game nevertheless because of your sales. Taking your opponents’ liquidity into account, the special appeal is to
out of cubes
so that he and his neighbors are forced to resort to others.
Secondly, acquiring territories, expand- ing, and then merging them is some- thing that has already been fun in other games, such as Acquire (1962), where players establish hotels and consolidate them with one another. Here, in Greece (Methoni is located in the southern of the Peloponnese), merging is also recom- mended in most cases. Provided you have the right cards, you can gain a pretty large domain by cleverly placing two walls. An annexation appears even more lucrative. Both players involved might benefit, since the annexed player gets twice as much for the spaces and profits from the value increase of the villas. But unfortunately, you might sometimes not have enough money for such a coup. Towards the end of the game, some players might realize too late that, after having paid for expen- sive villas, they get stuck with them, and that the increase in land value and a pos- sible bonus according to the size don’t compensate for the investment costs.
Domains with a marketplace naturally attract the competition all the more. Here
use the topology
in your own interest and to conceive its actual value.
However, all players should have understood the interrelation of the game’s elements; winning because other players unnecessarily presented good assists is not really satisfying. Basically, Castello Methoni is an abstract game. Its simple rules, paired with a good deal of depth of play, can lead to very different game courses; they work perfectly with any of the suggested numbers of play- ers, and they make for brisk playing fun. Obviously, no European company has warmed to the game so far. It would have found a worthy place at Winning Moves, where Clans, an award-winning game by the same author, was published back in 2002 – if this series in the square boxes
still existed.
Christwart Conrad/sbw
Castello Methoni (Mandoo Games) by Leo Colovini; for
3–5 players, about 8+ years; duration: about 40–60 minutes; price: about 45 €.
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