First Look at GùGōng

In the Forbidden City of olden China a well placed gift can grease the wheels of bureaucracy, and a lack thereof ensures your paperwork ends up floating merrily down the Yongding River. But the Emperor, concerned that this gift giving might be corrupting his most noble officials has placed an outright ban on such behaviour. And thus arose the central mechanic of GùGōng: gift exchanges! With an emphasis on the giving, and less on the receiving.

Each player has a hand of cards ranging in value from fruit (1) to golden statue (9) through potted plant (5) and chamber pot (6). Each action requires gifting one of these cards to the official in charge of a particular action space on the board, receiving the card that is there for the next round, in exchange. If your gift was better then great! You take the action, everyone is happy. If not then you’ll need to pay some extra cost, either in servants who are frighteningly limited (I keep grinding them up to make jade…) or future actions.

The gift exchange mechanic is a delightfully novel system and works very nicely. There were multiple points in the game where I was fighting to decide between grabbing what I wanted to do now, and taking a lower priority action because it would allow me to grab a spot with a lower value gift. That’s exactly what I was hoping for! Add in the fact that the cards you take will be your hand next round and that certain cards are worth points and extra resources each round and you’ve got a really interesting puzzle.

However, it does seem like the system runs the risk of railroading you into only taking one particular action on a turn if you’ve not managed your hand well. It didn’t feel that way to me but then I won, so clearly I was feeling ok about things! A potentially more disappointing problem was the last few actions feeling like there wasn’t really anything I wanted to do with them. My “big plan” had already come together and there are so few ways of getting points that I felt at a bit of a loss.

The lack of points is, however, one of its selling points too, it feels very unusual in the world of Euro games. My winning score was less than 50 (we were all first time players) You also have the Emperor’s court track, that every player must reach the top of or automatically lose. Which is a fascinating thing to have in the game! I enjoyed the change in experience that having points be a rare resource brought, although whether that was novelty or simply how we played, I can’t be sure.

Overall a very positive first impression, with a few niggles to keep an eye on in future plays. Also, the Kickstarter edition is lovely.