First Impressions of The Kniziathon

Mid Con, the UK gaming convention I wrote about last week, held a special event on the last day focusing on game designer Reiner Knizia. This was an awesome opportunity for me to try out this designer’s games since, other than Age of War (see my review here), I had not had chance before.

Knizia is famous in the board gaming world not only as one of the most prolific designers, but also as one of the most mathematically focussed. That is not to say his board games are about maths, more that you can almost see the equations ticking away beneath the game you are playing. He is infamous for being particularly light on theme, and given my predilection for mocking themes in games, I was very curious to see how well they held up! In this article I’ll be giving my first impressions of the games I got to play during the Kniziathon on that rainy Sunday in Derby!

 

 

Carcassonne: The Castle

 

I had no idea that Knizia had designed a Carcassonne game, nor did I have any idea there was a 2-player only Carcassonne variant. But both are true! And this was the first game I got to try out at the Kniziathon.

Think of Carcassonne: The Castle as normal Carcassone, but confined within castle walls, which brilliantly doubles up as the score track. You can build outwards from any of the specially marked parts of these walls. Interestingly, and despite the confined nature of the game, there is actually a lot more freedom over where you place your tiles as, with the exception of roads, any terrain type can be built adjacent to any other. However, a region held by one of your meeples is only considered complete once there is no possibility of extending it further, that is, once completely surrounded by other types of terrain. This makes tiles easy to place, but surprisingly difficult to place well.

 

 

Vanilla Carcassonne is already great two-player, but specifically designing for this player count offers up some unique opportunities that just wouldn’t be possible with more. For one, scattered around the walls are bonus-scoring tiles, which you’ll pick up if your score counter lands precisely on that space. This is very hard to do! But adds a fascinating second layer to gathering points. I certainly didn’t master landing on them in my first game, but I can imagine the rewards that are possible with practice! Secondly, the player that builds the largest region of houses controls the keep (obviously the king of Carcassonne is democratically elected… or something?), which scores bonus points for the biggest region of empty space left at the end of the game (classic Knizia theme shining through there! I guess the space is where the keep is?). So it’s head to head to win that title, but the loser can do their best to cut up the empty space into smaller regions. It’s all very nice!

I really enjoyed Carcassone: The Castle. It would be a great game to pick up for my girlfriend and I (she’s a fan of normal Carcassonne) so I was very sad to see how hard it is to get hold of. Fingers crossed it gets an updated edition soon!

 

 

Tigris & Euphrates

 

This was a game I was extremely keen to play. When I heard the “Kniziathon” would be on, this was the one game I was hoping to have a chance to play! It is widely regarded as Reiner Knizia’s best game. Does it deserve the hype!?

Well I did not get off to the best start with this one! Launching an early war when I should have held my ground (she was totally infringing my space man!), then not realising I needed a specific coloured worker to harvest the rewards for joining two of the starting temples. This in particular felt like a niggely rule to trip up innocent new players who don’t pay quite as good attention to the rules explanation as we thought…

 

 

Nevertheless, the game certainly improved as it went along and now that I feel comfortable with the rules and have a better idea of the strategies I would be very keen for another go! Tigris & Euphrates revolves around the growth of civilisations across a desert plain bounded by a river. Players are trying to gather points in 4 different categories, thematically named… er red, green, blue and black? Points can be gained by placing tiles into cities also featuring their matching leader pieces, by controlling the large plastic temples, again with the corresponding colour of leader, and by winning wars when two civilisations meet.

In a stroke of genius, your final score is the number of points you have in your weakest colour, forcing you to constantly adapt and balance your play as the game progresses. It also allows players to target areas they think their opponents are strong in, since they are less likely to fight for those regions. Yes the game is totally abstract, but it is a really fascinating puzzle! I look forward to getting in another play of this soon!

Taj Mahal

 

The glorious Taj Mahal and other palaces of Northern India provide a theme as loose as the colourful robes the various important advisors are wearing. This is an auction game, in which players must both secure commodities and build amazing palaces throughout the 12 provinces surrounding Ankora.

It is an intriguing game. There are two main ways to score points, by collecting sets of commodities (primarily through winning the main “elephant” auction, but also by building palaces in specific locations), and by building chains of adjacent palaces across the map by winning one or more of the advisors. Maximising any particular element of this game can see you rake in big points, as each previous element will score every time a new element is added to that set. Unfortunately, this means the game relies on players to block each other’s ability to pull off big sets, rather than offering a catch up mechanic. Losing a big auction can put you painfully far behind in both points and resources.

 

 

The 12 rounds/auctions also feel quite disconnected. Even though what you and other players have gained on previous rounds will influence your actions, it still has the feel of 12 mini-games loosely tied together. However, each of those auctions is very interesting due to the different elements you are bidding for. Each card will feature 2 symbols, either elephants or one of the advisors, and whoever has a majority in those symbols, at the time they drop out of the auction, will win that element! Therefore, you need to match an earlier play if you want to not lose that item. Restricting you further, once you have chosen a colour of card to play, you must stick with that colour of card throughout the auction. Building up sets of these cards in the earlier rounds is important to give you strong hands in the late game.

So Taj Mahal is, once again, an interesting puzzle. But that disconnect between its rounds that I felt means I don’t yet rate it as highly as Tigris. In our game, it became quite clear who would come in what position from around the mid-game, which is a real shame. Even though Tigris doesn’t have any clear catch-up mechanics either, the hidden victory point system means I never knew how far behind I was until the very end of the game! I will definitely play Taj Mahal again, but I won’t add it to my “must buy” list just yet!

 

 

Keltis: Der Weg der Steine Mitbringspiel

 

The final game of the Kniziathon (for me) was the push-your-luck filler game Keltis: Der German Something German-spiel. This is effectively the travel version of Knizia’s Spiel des Jahres winning game Keltis. But since I’ve not played that either, I’m viewing this game as a complete outsider!

You are faced with a pile of cardboard pebbles, from which you randomly chose one to flip over on your turn. This will reveal a colour and number, and perhaps some other symbols. Based on these properties you decide whether to leave it in the pool for someone else, or add it to one of the stacks of pebbles you are building in front of you. Thing is, these stacks must contain the same coloured pebbles, and the numbers can only either increase or decrease from the first pebble you put in place. The other symbols can be extra ways of getting bonus points, or offering you a second turn. And it’s alright I guess?

 

 

The genius part of the game is in the scoring. The more you have in a run of a single colour, the more points you get, as you might expect, but until you have at least 3 stones in a set you’ll be scoring negative points! If you haven’t started a colour you aren’t punished, so you must always ask whether it is worth the risk to start on another colour. You might not finish it! But choosing not to take a stone is frustrating, not only are you gaining nothing on your turn, you are also leaving a stone for other players to pick up without risk. There are also gem stones on some of the pebbles, and across all your sets you must have picked up some number of these or you’ll definitely score negative points!

The scoring system is interesting, but it felt like the game was much too random. At least for my tastes. The scores came out fairly close in the end, I believe, and there was a range of different pebble collections built, so the luck factor is clearly not outrageously strong, but sometimes perception is more important than outcome.

 

 

Final Comments

 

So there you go! I would say Reiner’s done a good job! The thin themes generally allowed them to fade into the background and let me to focus entirely on the gameplay and mechanisms. This does make them feel more cerebral than they might have with a stronger theme, but in their favour the games are able to avoid that cognitive dissonance that occurs when a thematic board game produces a theme-breaking scenario. A stronger theme would have made the games more enjoyable, yet I was pleased to be able to enjoy them despite that. However, I can certainly see why his games might not be for everyone.

I have barely scratched the surface of Knizia’s backlog, but I shall enjoy exploring more of his designs in the future. I have just recently picked up an original copy of Modern Art, featuring some very psychedelic artworks that I look forward to giving a spin just as soon as I’ve got hold of some English rules (I appear to have ended up with the German edition!), and I will be looking out for any chance to play his other games too!