Coimbra Review

“What do you want?”

“I hear you’re a banker, and could perhaps help me earn a touch more investment?”

“Why on Earth would I do that?”

“Well, I have these 3 strong men you could have?”

Players: 2-4
Time: 60-90 mins (hmmm…)
Ages: 14+
Designer: Flaminia Brasini, Virginio Gigli
Artist: Chris Quilliams
Publisher: eggertspiele

Within the walls of Coimbra, Portugal’s old capital and university town, you are a nobody. But, you’re a nobody with 7 coins and 7 heavily armed men and that will be enough to earn you some friends. Coimbra is all about making friends, especially the right friends, and hoping they all get on so their powers combo together and launch you to ever greater heights of influence, power, and victory points.

A friend in need

There they all are, lined up in the friend market waiting for you to swoop in and rescue them. Some want money, some want the services of your burly men. Just like friends in the real world. And if you can afford them they’ll do great things for you. They’ll gain you influence in the correspondingly coloured track, they will have some power that either triggers immediately or every round in the appropriate phase. Or perhaps they’ll do nothing until game end when they’ll finally swing by to shower you with points like a guilty absent father.

So how much do they cost? Well, my friend, that is entirely up to you. See, Coimbra is actually a dice drafting game which I’m relatively certain is amongst the least thematic mechanics in board gaming. Unless someone needs to teach me something about middle ages Portugal? So we will have to step oh so briefly into mechanics chat.

Mechanics Chat

Welcome to Mechanics Chat. I am your host, Roland Shuffle. In Coimbra players draft dice and place them out, in their little plastic castle pieces to denote ownership, on to the different blocks of coimbra. The higher the value of the dice you place, the earlier you will get to pluck out a new friend from the row of cards beside that section. But you will pay one resource for each pip on that die. So you can play 5s and 6s to guarantee the cards you want, but you’ll be paying through the nose for them. It is incredibly satisfying to sneak in a solid purchase for a mere 1 coin solely thanks to good dice placement.

The whole dice system has this wonderful interplay that makes every option potentially great, but whose outcomes depend primarily on what the other players do. That 4 might be a sensible play, or you might have more eager people shoving in ahead with their 5s and 6s, a moment sure to elicit those delightful cries of frustration! It makes Coimbra far more interesting and interactive than other games of its style.

But the number and where to place it is only one facet of the decision tree facing you: the colour matters too. Half of Coimbra’s elaborate board is taken up by the 4 tracks your discs will be steadily climbing as the game goes on. Each of these provides a different type of income. More coins, more guards, some VPs or movement around the map of Portugal netting you yet more bonuses and opportunities. However, you only get to collect on a particular track if you have a die of that colour this round. No grey die, no new guards to spend hiring cards next round!

Again, this is a mixture of restriction and opportunity. You can be careful to collect a wide mix of income so you don’t fall short in any particular area, or perhaps you should focus hard on whatever colour would get you the most benefit? But what if their values are no good for the buy phase? What do you prioritise? This is the puzzle you fight through every turn as your opponents act and further mix up your opportunities.

But remember, each of those card shaped friends you make will be the ones driving you up the tracks. Thus you are driven to consider your income options, the particular character specific power of the card and the possible end game scoring potential associated with this games particular set of options, for every card you buy. It creates a perfect loop of options that may just end up driving you round the bend.

The Cost of Business

Coimbra ultimately gives you a mere 12 actions and yet thanks to the multitude of rewards available from the characters and your inevitable progression on the tracks you’ll rapidly advance to great things. Filling your coffers with coins, flying between monasteries on the map, firing off multiple, mutually supportive powers. The game is often in searching for and best utilising the combos available in the cards or in the scoring opportunities.

Coimbra is a very solid game and I’ve derived an awful lot of pleasure from playing it. Yet I feel hesitant to really rave about it. See, while it does so much right, it always asks that little bit more of you than it necessarily deserves. That extra 20 minutes/half hour of play time. The amount of table it sprawls across. The need to carefully explain each card power to new players, a set of cards that, even after 3 games, I still occasionally need to look up.

None of these things is necessarily bad! The variety in cards is a big part of the appeal. But I’m not convinced the combo potential in the game justifies the annoyance of the regular explanations. The game is thoroughly engaging so the length is not something you necessarily notice except maybe in terms of other games you can’t squeeze in on a Coimbra game night. And sure, it’s not a real problem that your average game table will feel a bit cramped. No one of these niggles would bother me but the combination of all 3 is enough to give me pause. Coimbra is very good, but it’s not quite as great as, say Great Western Trail, which could also be described as having these issues. But… why?

There’s something about those core decisions in Coimbra that don’t feel quite as tight, or rewarding, as they appear on the surface. You will get crippled in thought trying to decide exactly which die to take and place, which is great, but it’s a decision made difficult by the unpredictable nature of your friends rather than evaluating the choice between two strategic options for yourself. The initial dice draft is more about not over-committing resources than necessarily strategising over the cards and it is often just as effective to low ball and let others have first pick as it is to throw money at a problem. Which I think has left me with a sense that those decisions are not truly as weighty as they may feel in the moment. Yet this is the main decision you get to face during gameplay. If that is being undercut then we kind of have a problem here… don’t we?

I can’t say that it is. Only that I have this quiet sense of discomfort. The thing is, I do really enjoy this game! The randomising nature of the player interaction is as much a feature as a bug. I think I prefer such interaction to be something I can more easily plan for. The shear number of cards makes it hard to predict other players and so each choice of die has felt a bit too much like a gamble. And I’ll admit this effect has likely been made worse by playing with newer players rather than experienced ones. The very fact that I’m struggling so much to put this ‘problem’ into words suggests to me that it won’t be so much of a problem for most players.

If anything is going to bother you, it will be the couple of mild attack-style cards (they attack all other players though, so don’t take it personally) or the first game shock of just how much of the scoring is hidden at the end. But these issues are easy to get over once you know how to deal with their effects. As is the nature of the player interaction I have discussed above. Which is why I think I will still enjoy Coimbra if I play it again. I will be able to lose myself in the intended experience and not worry if I am, perhaps, pulling the wool over my own eyes somewhat. And why I think a lot of you will really enjoy this too!

Rating: A Friend Indeed

Our copy of Coimbra was provided for review by Asmodee UK. You can pick up a copy for £44.99 RRP from your local hobby store.