Kickstart Your Week! Popes and Cities
Avignon: A Clash of Popes
It is the 14th Century. For nearly 70 years the French crown has had a dominant influence on the papacy, the Pope residing in Avignon, now in southeastern France. Pope Gregory IX had returned to Rome but now Gregory is dead, and beneath the black smoke of his mourning a schism has broken out between the supporters of his successor in Rome and those of the court in Avignon. The world cannot have two popes, he who sways the members of the church to his side will be recognised as the true Pope, and there the home of the papacy will be enshrined. Will it be Rome or Avignon? You decide.
Avignon is a two player micro game exploring this little known (to me at least) slice of European history. One will take a seat in Avignon, the other in Rome, and between them will be the members of the medieval church whose support will determine the legitimacy of your claims, from the cardinals and nobles, to knights and even the lowly peasants. All have their own contribution to make. This game is wonderfully elegant: the cards sit in the middle row at the start of the game, and players take it in turns to pull characters towards themselves. If a character passes the final row (as set by the column of map cards along the edge of the play area) then that character has come across to your side and you are one step closer to your goal.
Of course, that’s not all, as each character card can also be petitioned, triggering a special ability, typically allowing you to move multiple other cards. Characters who look to be siding with your opponent, or who are no longer useful to you, can also be excommunicated (or discarded in gaming parlance). Winning the Noble as an ally is a mixed blessing as she changes the victory criteria: now, should your opponent ever gain a Knight you’ll lose, while if you can get the Peasants on your side you’ll win. It presents a really interesting twist.
I really, really like the look of Avignon. A wonderfully simple game with an intriguing set of possible interactions and that does an impressive amount with its 16 cards! This is another of Button Shy’s Wallet games that we’ve mentioned before on the blog (here and here), and this is a really exciting addition to their line up. International backers might want to watch the shipping costs, but if you’re in the US this game is a steal.
The Clash of Popes ends January 16th.
CitiesUp
I’m going to make a sweeping generalisation here and say that most city building games (I’m looking at you Town Centre, Small City, Suburbia and any number of other similar themes) don’t actually have you building a city… at least not together. Rather everyone focuses on building their own separate borough and the squabble over resources combined with trying to be the most efficient/effective player is from where the competition is derived. CitiesUP (I don’t know why there isn’t a space either) is different: at long last you really will be building a city together!
A deck of building cards gives players a wide variety of buildings to purchase with their hard earned millions, but more importantly they also give them one of the big chunky wooden blocks they can place in the city to represent that building. This is where things get interesting, because by placing buildings in the patterns specified by the building cards, you have the opportunity to earn bonus tax dollars from those buildings. Of course, you may want to do what you can to prevent your opponent pulling off such moves at the same time, which goes a long way to explaining real world city planning too!
Each building you construct has demands though (selfish tax payers! Honestly) you’ll need to supply them with water and electricity and managing this while growing your city is an important part of the game. Particularly as buildings can grow upwards! This will earn you more tax and pay out bigger bonuses, but they’ll need correspondingly more supplies.
A good city building game has you enjoy watching your city grow, but CitiesUP lets it grow up away from the board as well as sprawling outwards. This is a interesting looking game with some nice twists to the standard city building systems that make it definitely worth checking out.
TimesUP on January 21st.
Other Great Games
StrataSphere 2.0 – A 2 player puzzle game featuring a big see-through construction of walls and sliders in which the aim is to release the spheres (or balls) that you place in the top at the start of the game. However, you want to make sure it is your balls that escape and not your opponent’s! The publisher’s stated aim is to get the game into schools and at higher pledge levels you may donate copies to your local school, a neat idea. Ends Jan 20th.
Chemical Spill – Oh no! Someone has spilled a pile of chemical elements you’re your hand, draft them round and try and tidy up this mess! Each card features a single element, and collecting the right combination allows you to create a completed chemical structure. It’s a nice educational game! There’s also an interesting push-your-luck element with larger molecules being worth more points, but naturally also being harder to create. Ends Jan 19th.
Wolfed – As my mother used to say, you shouldn’t wolf down your food. Especially when that food is you friends. Wolfed is a new edition of the game Werewolf, featuring a plethora of roles as usual, and drop dead gorgeous art. I’m not sure we need a new version of Werewolf, but 750+ people have certainly decided they want one! And who’s to argue with that? Ends Jan 19th.
Image credit belongs to board game geek users JohnduBois, specbeargames, chaddyboy_2000, goudiej, and the relevant Kickstarter projects.
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