My copy of Torres arrived today - all the way from Greece, it came, in exchange for Popular Front - and Andrew was good enough to pop around and give it a trial run.
The game is fairly abstract but the tacked-on theme involves building castles for the king - the bigger your castle, and the higher your knight placed in it, the more points you get in the three scoring rounds, when the size-obsessed King comes to visit. There's four turns in each round (in the two player version) where you build castles, place knights, and get to ignore the basic rules via the implementation of 'action' cards.
Andrew tried to ignore the pumpkin...
On an aesthetic level it's quite pretty if you ignore the castles, which are the colour of a 1970's bathroom suite and overtly plastic. On a strategic one it's quite a thinker; though both Andrew and I ended up with nothing to do with our action points on a given turn - that may be a slight downside to the 2-player version or possibly we haven't fully comprehended the rules yet.
But aside from that it was relatively straightforward in the rules department but with depth to the possibilities - always a good ratio, I feel. And in terms of the mechanic it's very different to anything we have on GNN; certainly anything I can recall. Tikal lets you build (or 'discover') upwards, but not with this amount of flux and manipulation. You start with a nearly-flat board and as the game progresses it builds upwards as players construct their own castles and pop around to each others to claim credit for them as well.
We ended the game intrigued by it and enthused about playing with more people. I claimed a narrow victory (251 to 241) having played the first sneaky move on round two and shot ahead - though Andrew outscored me over the next two rounds, I just held on.
Definitely one to get to the table for 3 or 4 players in the near future.
I enjoyed it. There was a degree of forward planning, too, as you tried to work out what you could do to help you build next go, but wouldn't help your opponent at the same time. I can imagine it being better with three, though.
ReplyDeleteThis game has been around for quite a while now and I was always intrigued by it. It was nearly a purchase several times in the early days but other games like, Tikal, Euphrat, El Grande always came ahead in my wish lists!
ReplyDeleteI would like to try it out...
Intrigued by Torres. We should play Torres, Troyes and Trollhalla on the same night, while listening to Trololo over and over again!
ReplyDeleteHere's what the Primordial Group think of it (link courtesy of Joe):
ReplyDeletehttp://www.primordialgroup.com/Games/Comments.aspx?gameid=88