Money Review

So, the game that causes the most awkward conversations has to be Reiner Knizia's Money.  (Conversations like, "Hey, can I borrow Money?" or "I'd really like you to include Money in the trade.")

Anyway; other than being an awkward conversation starter, Money is also an interesting little auction game.  To start the game, each player starts with a handful of cards that represent money in both different currencies and denominations.  Every turn there are two piles of money, each with four different "bills" (cards).  Players now take cards from their hand and perform a silent auction.  Revealing at the same time, players get to select a pile of money and exchange their bid for if (starting with whoever bid the most).  Interestingly, instead of only purchasing the piles of money in the middle of the table, you can also buy other player's bids (still by exchanging your bid with theirs).  At this point, you might be wondering what the point is in this futile exercise.  Well, the reason that this isn't an exercise in futility is the scoring.  At the end of the game (when the deck runs out), each player scores points based on what they have collected (not necessarily how much).  Each set of all three 20's or 30's of the same currency are worth 100 points.  Additionally, each currency type in which a player has between 100 and 200 "dollars" is worth the total value minus 100.  Next, any currency in which a player has at least 200 "dollars" is worth its full face value.  Finally, there are Chinese 10's - these are always worth 10 points.  Whoever has the most points wins the game!

A typical pile of cash!

So, my first pro for Money is that I think that there are a few different ways that you can try to maximize your points.  Either you can try to make as much money as you want, and assume that some of it will match (or just make as much as possible early and then make things match), or you can immediately go for matching values.  So, if your goal is to make as much money as possible, then in the early auctions you may bid very low - hoping that everyone else will bid high, and you will profit.  (Since you have last pick, you will probably be collecting another player's bid.)  However, if too many people do this, then you might wind up only "earning" $10, while other players that bid slightly higher are the ones to actually make a decent profit.  So, not only are there different overarching strategies, but you are really forced to adapt your strategy to how your opponents are playing.

The next pro that I have for Money is that "it takes money to make money."  Which means that in any given round you have to bid something.  Which also means that you are probably not going to (immediately) recover whatever you are bidding.  That's often not a problem; but, if you have done a really good job of collecting only cards that are relevant to the currencies that you're collecting, then it might be a huge problem.  If might force you to go ahead and abandon one of the currencies that you were just starting to collect - at least for a time.  (Which, in turn, might make another player very happy, if they had been wondering where the rest of that currency was!)

My final pro for Money is that I really like that you don't simply win by making the most money.  If that were the case, then I think that the game would be fun to play once or twice, but would have its novelty disappear quickly.  Instead, you really must specialize (and adapt your bids to what you are specializing in).  Early in the game, it might be beneficial to simply collect whatever pile has the highest face value.  However, at the end of the game, a single bill might be worth 230 points!  (This could happen if you have $190 in a currency, and you have two of the three 30's in that currency.  The final 30 would be worth 100 points for completing your set of 30's, an additional 100 points for putting you above $200 in that currency, and also worth its face value!)  So, the biggest bills in the game aren't necessarily the "best" ones.

A typical hand in Money - including a "bluff" card

The main con that I have for Money is that it is very math intensive.  You are constantly calculating and re-calculating things in the game - your score, your bid, which pile is "better" for you, how much an opponent might make off of certain things, etc.  None of these calculations are difficult.  They are all basic addition.  However, when you start making a lot of these calculations, some people will get turned off to the game pretty quickly (and others might start taking a long time to make decisions).

The second con that I have for Money is that the tie-breaker in the silent auctions can be frustrating.  When two players bid the exact same amount of money, the tie breaker goes to the player that bid using the lowest serial number on a "bill".  This generally corresponds to whoever bid using the lower bills (20's have lower serial numbers than 60's), but can wind up just arbitrarily picking someone.  Whereas I realize that there has to be something to break these ties, it can be very frustrating if you lose out on a choice pile of cash simply because your bill's serial number wasn't low enough.

Overall, I give Money a 9.0/10.  Honestly, I only tried the game because they were briefly giving away the iPhone version.  However, I'm quite glad that I did!  I think that Money is a fabulous little auction game that fits nicely into most any collection.

If Money sounds like a game that you would enjoy, you should definitely check out For Sale and Modern Art - as well as Ra.

For Sale Review

Sometimes, a "filler" game steals the show.  Recently, this happened to me with For Sale. (In case you're not familiar with the term, a "filler" game refers to a quick game that you play, generally, while waiting on other games to end or more friends to arrive.)

For Sale is the game of the double auction.  Every player starts with a pile of money.  You use this money to buy properties.  To do this, you flip over one property per player and start an auction.  Going around in a circle, each player must increase the bid or pass.  If they pass, they get the lowest valued property and get half of their previous bid back.  This continues until one player is left - they buy the highest valued property at their full bid price.  Once the entire deck of property is auctioned, you sell what you've bought.  Again, you will flip up one card per player, but this time it is from the deck of "checks."  All of the players will select one of their properties and sell it by revealing it at the same time (a silent auction).  The players then get a check corresponding to the relative value of their property - the highest valued property gets the highest check, etc.  Once all of the checks are gone (all the properties you bought will be too), whoever has the most money in checks (and starting money that they didn't spend) is the winner!

I love For Sale.  It is simple, engaging, strategic, easy to teach, and can be enjoyed by everyone.  Is that enough pros for you?  Really, all of those adjectives are precisely what I look for in a "filler" game - especially the easy to teach (and I also look for quick to play).  Yet, I have found For Sale to be engaging enough that I often want to play it more than I want to play the longer game that I actually meet up with people to play.  So, I guess the first official pro for For Sale is that it is fun.  Yes, this is a highly subjective pro - but to me, I really enjoy playing the game.

I even like the artwork!

My second pro for For Sale is that I love that you get half of your bid back when you pass.  Normal auctions aren't like that - you normally buy something or you don't.  However, in For Sale, you're going to get a property every time, and so it makes sense that you should have to pay something every time (except if you pass before ever bidding, then you get a (crappy) property for free - that may not make sense thematically, but it's ok).  Often you find yourself in a situation where you are actively trying to not win an auction; but you don't want to lose it either.  You often bid simply to not be last - and sometimes you bid a bit higher to try to force other people to pass!  You can really see that people have no intentions of winning the auction when they start jumping to the next round number.  (For example, if the bid is at $2k and they bid $4k.)  When you get half of your bid back, it rounds against you - so, if you pass later, bidding $3k or $4k costs you the same.  However, if you actually win the bid they cost a different amount.  So, people will bid like this in the hopes that they can pass later and get a better property than is currently the lowest.

My third pro for For Sale is that I love the double auction.  It forces you to balance how much value you place on any given property.  You have to ask yourself whether it's worth an extra $5k to get a property 2 points higher.  Will that new property actually earn you more than $5 over the other property in the next round?  It can if used at the perfect time, and it can cost your opponent a lot of money when he bids his highest property only to lose to yours!  My general strategy in valuing items (both property and checks) in this brilliant little game is to bid higher when there is a large discrepancy.  For example, if the properties available are worth 1, 4, 25, and 30, I will try to stay in the auction - I don't want the 1 or 4!  But I'll pass as soon as the 25 is the lowest.  Likewise, with checks, if the $2k, $4k, $13k and $15k are available, you really want to be in the larger group, so it's worth throwing one of your top properties.  Unless you know that you'll lose, in which case you throw a cruddy property and hope for the best on the next set of checks!

The property deck is on the left!  Weird, huh?

I can't really think of too many cons with For Sale.  The only one that comes to mind is that I think you might feel "played out" of For Sale fairly quickly.  It plays fast enough that you can play several games of it in an hour, which can quickly rack up the total number of times you have played it.  There's really not that much to the game, so I think you could probably grow tired of it.  I'm not there yet, I still really enjoy playing - so this is just speculation on my part.

Ok, I do have another con that is incredibly nit-picky.  The back of the cards (on my edition) for the properties looks like money - it is green with a fancy money-esque image.  The back of the cards that are checks have a picture of property on it!  What??  I always grab the opposite deck of which one I need.  Always.

Overall, I give For Sale a 9.0/10.  I try not to give 9 or higher unless I can see myself getting a group together just to play a game, and I can see this with For Sale.  I might have to play other games when I have this group together (life's hard, right?), but I enjoy For Sale enough that I would go meet people just to play it 5 times in a row!

For more thoughts on this game, you can check out Games With Two's For Sale Review, or I Slay the Dragon's review of For Sale. And, if you like quick, simple games, you might also want to check out Flash Duel, Poo: The Card Game, and Cookie Fu.

Zong Shi Review

An interesting "little" game that I've had the opportunity to play recently is Zong Shi.

In Zong Shi, you are attempting to impress townspeople with how amazing you are.  Generally, you do this by building amazing works, but you can also do it by sucking up to the elders, and running a sweet pawn shop.  Each round consists of players alternating placing their two workers - the Master and the Apprentice.  Basically, the Apprentice can do anything that the Master does aside from working on a project - but he gets less of a reward for doing each action.  The different actions include starting a project, going to the temple to draw "scrolls" (cards), going to the pawn shop to get "Exchange tiles", visiting the marketplace to collect resources, and visiting the town elders to get victory points.  However, if your Master is working on a project, then he will not be able to perform any other actions (so he will pass on his turn).  The game continues with players selecting these actions until one player has completed six projects.  Then, everyone gets one last turn, and the player with the most victory points wins.

The first pro that I have for Zong Shi is that I like the Master/Apprentice mechanic.  There may be other games which give you workers of different skill levels, but I do not remember any that I have played.  I think that it adds an interesting layer of strategy to figure out which of your workers you are going to place each round to try to maximize your Master.  The Apprentice can be useful when you only need to do something small - collect a single resource, visit a single elder, get a single exchange tile.  However, you are always better off sending your Master - or, more specifically, you would be better off if you could place two Masters instead of using an Apprentice.  But, your Master can only be in one place at a time; and that place will often be in your workshop working on one of his projects.  And thus, the player who is able to best utilize both his Master and his Apprentice will probably claim the victory.

Some of the Masters have been playing in paint

The next interesting thing about Zong Shi are the Exchange tiles.  Each work (and elder) requires a certain combination of resources.  For example, the Merchant Statue requires two Gold, one Jade, and one Ivory.  Exchange tiles allow you to substitute materials.  For example, if I had a Gold/Jade Exchange tile, and I wanted to build the Merchant Statue, I could substitute any of the Gold for Jade and vice versa.  So, if I wanted to, I could build the Merchant Statue for three Jade and one Ivory.  This element of the game is neat, and is also useful strategically, as having a lot of Exchange tiles will allow you to focus on getting materials, without having to worry as much about which materials you are collecting.  I'm not really sure how thematically it fits in.  (You get these at the "pawn shop" - is there a dealer that has an infinite supply of each of these, and you bribe him to let you trade?  If he has an infinite supply, why does he care about your bribe?)  But, either way, I like this element of the game.

The final pro that I will mention for Zong Shi is that there are multiple paths to victory.  In the last game that I played, I successfully completed six projects before anyone else had built four, and so I was the one that triggered the end of the game.  However, none of my projects were especially valuable.  Another player had visited all of the town elders, and most of the other players had more Exchange Tiles than I did.  At the end, the player who had visited the town elders and completed a Masterwork project (a big, expensive project) was the winner, even though he had only completed two projects.  So, "multiple paths to victory" may not be the best way of describing Zong Shi, but the player that best capitalizes on his opportunities should be the winner - and how those opportunities present themselves will not always look the same.  (One thing that I will note strategically - as someone who generally loses at this game, I highly recommend building Masterwork projects.  That is the only area of the game where you can repeatedly score eight victory points.)

The first player Buddha looks nice

However, though I enjoyed Zong Shi, there are a couple of cons that I should mention.  First, the Exchange tiles can wind up causing you to spend quite a bit of time calculating, especially if you only have a few of them.  They give you flexibility, but the flexibility causes some processing to occur in your brain.  So, you will spend a decent amount of time looking at what resources you have, what you can turn them into, and trying to match that up with the project you are wanting to begin.  You'll have to do this processing both when starting the project itself, and when planning to try to get the resources or Exchange tiles that you need.  This doesn't necessarily take a long time, but it can occasionally slow the game down.

The other con that I will mention is that some of the cards are simply better than others; and some strategies also seem especially strong.  For example, there is a card that allows your Apprentice to start on a project (instead of your Master).  That is amazing, as it frees your Master up to do all of the other actions for a few rounds (its like having two Masters).  Another card allows you to start on two projects at the same time!  That is also wonderful, because it is like giving your Master several extra turns - and can also help you end the game more quickly, if you are trying to do that.  These cards are drastically better than a random resource from the bag (which is what one of the other cards gives you).  Now, I'm not saying that any of the scrolls are useless - at the right time, any of them can be useful.  But some of them are (in my opinion) far better than others.  And, similarly, allowing one player to complete multiple "Blacksmith Tools" projects (this allows them to complete their projects one turn faster) also seems like it could allow an experienced player to have a significant advantage.  (Though, it does not guarantee victory, as I completed two of these and still lost, due to not using them to build Masterwork projects.)

Overall, I give Zong Shi an 8.5/10.  I enjoyed the game, and I think that it added some nice new elements to the "worker placement" genre.

If Zong Shi sounds interesting, then you might also check out Kingdom of Solomon, Le Havre, and Caylus.

I would like to thank Gryphon Games for providing me with a review copy of Zong Shi.

Wizard's Gambit Review

A little card game that I stumbled upon relatively inexpensively was Wizard's Gambit.

In Wizard's Gambit, each player takes on the role of a Wizard who is attempting to learn the most powerful spells (specifically 10 points worth of them). Throughout the game, there are 4 spells available in the "spellbook" (common pile in the middle). To learn/cast each spell, different elements must be played, such as "Dragon's Tooth", etc (depicted by symbols and colors). Each turn, the active wizard is allowed to play one "incantation" (action card) and must play one element (or show his hand revealing none available that match what the current spells in the spellbook require). Each time a Wizard completes a spell, he puts it on top of his personal spellbook, and its effects begin immediately (and replace any previous spell in his spellbook's effects). The game continues in this manner until one player has scored 10 points.

There's not really all that much to be said about this game, so this section may be a bit brief. The main pro was based around trying to time your card plays for their maximum potential. This normally involved incantations much more than element cards. With element cards, the goal was essentially to not place the next to last required element (because then the next player could complete the spell). However, with some of the incantations a player could wind up performing some interesting actions on his turn and score significant points by completing one (or potentially more) spells.

The next pro is related to the "Gambit" cards. These are the trump cards in the game, and you could use them for 3 purposes: to block other players from playing on a spell in the common spellbook, to block the effects of a spell on top of somebody's spellbook, or to cancel someone else's Gambit card.  They helped the game to have more interesting strategies because a player had to determine whether it was important to protect one of the common spells, keep the Gambit as defense, or block an annoying spell effect.  Unfortunately, the Gambit cards are removed from the game once they are used, so you will only see these cards the first time through the deck.

Now for the cons, starting with... the primary game mechanic turned into "who can wait the longest." The object of the game is to play the last element in each spell. Because of this, your turn is often no more than looking around and making sure that you don't play on certain spells - you don't want to set the person after you up to be able to collect a spell. The incantations and (previously collected) spells help with this, but the sentiment is definitely prevalent in the game.

The next con is that it was not easy to see which elements were remaining on any given spell. Because of this, players regularly were forced to repeatedly cross off the played elements in their heads to determine what was remaining. This caused the game to take longer than was necessary.

Finally, the game was not especially fun. I think that if it played faster, it would have been quite a bit better, but the pace of the game was a bit too slow for the complexity and level of enjoyment involved.

Overall, I give Wizard's Gambit a 6.5/10. It isn't a bad little card game, and it could be played with just about anybody (read "kid friendly" - as long as they can read), but it just doesn't hold my attention for long enough to play it very often.

If Wizard's Gambit sounds interesting, you might also check out Dixit, Gloom, and Glory to Rome.