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EVERGREEN Via Magica
The Emperor’s New Clothes
Bingo always works in every situation. Its roots go back to the lottery games of the early 16th century. The last 50 years in particular have produced a wealth of thematic representations and variations of the game. All conceivable options have been unfailingly exploited, from Bible, Music and Poker to Würfel Bingo. But it was Paolo Mori who first succeeded in creating a pleasantly rounded game out of the core element of randomly drawn numbers, a game of interactive set collection with an added tactical component.
was nominated
for the critics’
award “Spiel des
Jahres” (game of the
year) in 2013 and
also reached 10th place at the “Deutscher Spiele Preis” award, selected pri-
marily due to the vote of frequent players.
All of these are valid reasons to repub- lish Augustus with a new theme, revised content and under a different title. While the core rules have remained the same, in Via Magica the ambitious senators of Ancient Rome have been replaced by sorcerer’s apprentices, who en route to
In Augustus (sb 3/2013), released in 2013 by the Swiss publishing house Hurrican, two to six players position
their legions on the objective cards in their display, aiming to control senators and provinces. Mobilization tokens deter- mine which legions come up; these are individually drawn from a bag by one player, but
be discarded and a new one taken from the display, preferably one that fits this player’s plans. Some cards trigger one-off effects, others permanent, while a third type only scores at the end of the game, albeit lavishly. Since there are bonus points for completing specific card com- binations early on, players should think carefully about the cards they choose and the order in which they try to com- plete them. The varying frequency of the tokens should also be taken into account, and they are only returned into the bag after a joker is drawn.
I Luck on par with
tactical skill
Although the wriggle room for deci-
sions is fairly limited and Fortuna has
a major say, this is by no means a triv- ial experience. In fact, luck and tacti- cal skill are well-balanced here, and nobody feels powerless. As all players are constantly involved in the action, there is only a reasonable amount of downtime during the selection of a new objective card. Lasting suspense is cre- ated by the continuous scoring of victory points, and also by a virtual race to score the various card combinations.
All of these features make for an attrac- tivemixinarelaxedfamilygame–eight- year-olds are able to
compete, while older
folk still feel enough of a challenge. This is coupled with a short playing time where a
smaller group usually plays for about thirty min- utes and even six play-
ers are done in forty-five. It is hardly surprising then that Augustus
count for everyone. However, it is up to each player to decide upon which objective card to
put the token.
As soon as a player has gathered all
the legions for one of their cards, it can
a “Minor Magician” diploma still have to pass one final crystallization exam. The fact that the well-wishing “Grand Magician” bears the name of Augustus is a subtle reference that goes unnoticed and certainly does not serve as a warning, which should have been clearly stated on the bottom of the box anyway. Instead, the rulebook
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