Tuesday 24 January 2012

Italy, the 16th Century

Plagues of battle-hardened Italians jostle for power in a land made of several city-states that sometimes ally themselves, and sometimes fight. It's a dirty, dirty war, full of intrigue, death and well-dressed smart-alecks.

London, the 21st Century. The complex time described above has been neatly packaged up in a teeny cardboard box and labelled Condittiere, after the manipulative bastards who led the mercenary armies. Having read the rules and found their brevity to my liking, I invited Andrew over to play last night.


The game is fairly simple. As players you're representing the Condittieres and trying to occupy a certain number of regions on a map of Italy to win - with two players it's 6 regions, or 4 adjacent ones. And to do so you simply line up the mercenary troops (valued 1-6 in the main, but there are some much-valued 10's as well) from your ten-card hand and try and outscore your opponent. Having done so, you place a marker in the region to say it's yours, and having been occupied, that region may not be contested again.

But wait. What sounds like a rather ambitiously themed Top Trumps game is made more subtle with the 'special cards'; of which there are many. The Bishop gets rid of the highest-level mercenary on display, the Scarecrow allows you to nab a card back into your hand (either having bluffed someone out of play or to save it for another day if you foresee defeat). The Surrender card allows you to end a battle immediately - and somewhat perversely, win it, if you have the strongest troops on show. Those crazy Italians, eh!

There is also Winter and Spring cards that can weaken or strengthen troops, the Drummer doubles the power of any mercenaries, the Courtesans who add a bit of power to your army but more importantly, if you have the most of them, allow you to choose the next battleground, and finally the Heroine, who scores ten and is kind of unstoppable, unaffected as she is by any of the other special cards.

There's also a 'Favour of the Pope' counter that protects an unoccupied region from battle (which you move by playing a Bishop) to add a little extra smattering of strategy.

We were intrigued. Aesthetically there's a weird imbalance between the Renaissance-art of the cards and the slightly ugly board. Mechanically we liked the speed of it, and the fact it can play up to six. But for two players it felt a little bit luck-heavy - sure, you can be as canny as you like early on, but if you're fighting over a region that will win somebody the game, it can basically come down to who has the best hand - which was how it felt as Andrew won the first game and I the second. I think though, with 3 or 4 players this downside would be negated, as there'd be more than one person trying to stop an imminent victor.

We also played Citadels, which I won by being a sneaky mo'fo.

Sam 36
Andrew 22




2 comments:

  1. I was thinking more Top Trumps meets Stratego!

    Might not add it to my two player list after that review :)

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  2. We may play it with more tonight; I reckon it'll be better.

    ReplyDelete