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NEULAND: un juego la que le estoy echando el ojo
Del listado de juegos que mis GB me recomiendan, sobresale uno que pronto será re-editado por Z-man: Neuland. Link: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/12681
La efusión con la cual algunos lo describen ha picaneado mi interés y probablemente será mi próxima adquisición (abril 2008 sería la fecha de la reedición).
Tiene
un parecido a Industria, Agrícola, Phoenicia: hay que edificar, obtener
productos, construir. Quien coloca sus limitados escudos de armas en
más construcciones, gana.
Sin embargo, esto que suena bastante común, está hecho de tal manera que se traduce en un juego muy cerebral.
Lo que dicen mis Geekbuddies:
Analysis for Neuland Average Rating: 7.94
| User | Rating | Own/Want/Trade | Comment |
|---|---|---|---|
| 9 | Own: No Want: No Trade: No Wishlist: No | You read the rules and there seems nothing there. You sit down to play and it all seems a bit of a mess, and then all of a sudden you have this OMYGOD! moment and you realise that you are sitting with a masterpiece. A truly awesome game of plotting, placement, blocking and timing. What took the reprint so long to arrive? Bring on the next game. | |
| 9 | Own: Yes Want: No Trade: No Wishlist: No | Excellently brain melty. The decision tree is unusually bushy unusually quickly, and with four players this can make the game feel very tactical. However familiarity with the game and the dependency relationships does a lot to swing the balance back the other way. I suspect that three players may ultimately be the sweet spot with two players also being very good. This is not to say that the four player isn't very good, just that it may be better for more experienced players and thus not be the best introductory player count. There's also minor concern with four players that the VP allocations may be so lumpy as to make the end game less interesting. Update: Wonderful with three, suffers lockup problems with four without expert players, two players can degrade without care. | |
| 8 | Own: Yes Want: No Trade: No Wishlist: No | This
is a pretty crazy perfect information game. You have to juggle action
after action, turn after turn; keeping everything in motion without
wasting turns and without idling -- because if you stall, or you get
half of what you need too quickly everything falls apart and your
workers walk off the job. The whole thing feels like you are spinning
plates. You have to keep nudging all of your pieces around in order to
keep them afloat and in progress. Brilliant, but it really is a crazy work intensive puzzler. Perhaps this will be too much work for some, but I quite enjoy it. Those that enjoy efficiency and deliberation, but don't want to spend hours on Roads and Boats will get a kick out of this; it crams R&B into a 120-150 min game. Because this is a perfect information game, it can "suffer" from someone giving up and clogging the game up for others, resulting in somthing of a kingmaker situation. I don't see this as a problem, but it should be made aware that this is possible, and frankly just not a whole lot of fun for anyone. Overall though, quite a meaty mistress. She ain't a beaut, but she gets the job done. |
|
| 8 | Own: Yes Want: No Trade: No Wishlist: No | One of my favourite games of this year. Somewhat long and cutthroat and best played with three. | |
| 8 | Own: No Want: No Trade: No Wishlist: No | A deep-thinking, formulaic game with solving linear building progressions. Be opportunistic with turn order mgt. and not overbuild as certain tiles are limited in supply. The turn sequence mechanic is fascinating to me... | |
| 7.5 | Own: No Want: No Trade: No Wishlist: No | Kinda hurts the brain a bit. It's a race to build technologies but it really requires analysis because to earn the technology their are a ton of steps to take and players can try to lock you out of some of those opportunities which could potentially be extremely costly. Quite the puzzle. I enjoyed playing but this is one of those once or twice a year games. Must say the turn-order / action point mechanism was the second best mechanic of the year right behind the brilliant rondelle in Antike. | |
| 7 | Own: No Want: No Trade: No Wishlist: No | No comments | |
| 7 | Own: No Want: No Trade: No Wishlist: No | Rather abstract game but with interesting mechanics (action points spending related with turn order). The game rewards planning and blocking facilities for your next turn. The artwork is not exciting; rather its opposite but functional enough. I prefer this game as a two player game (more duel less down time as you have to consider many factors; prone to A/P). |
Parece que no tiene el mismo sentido de otros juegos que usan el sistema de puntos de acción (que no me atraen mucho): la cantidad de acciones a realizar sirve para determinar el orden de juego.
El jugador puede hacer varias cosas en su turno: producir x bien, construir, producir de nuevo otro tipo de bien, construir (varias acciones, no puntos de acción o puntos de movimiento). Si ejecuta menos acciones, probablemente le tocará un nuevo turno antes que el resto (al igual que en TEBAS).
Un turno de ejemplo, que aparece al final de las reglas, aclara el sentido:
Para la primera edición había este ejemplo: Si el jugador verde realiza 4 cosas, queda detrás del rojo, y le toca de nuevo.
Ahora el marcador de tiempo alcanza al jugador mas retrasado.
En un reporte de sesión, JC Lawrence (uno de mis GB preferidos), expuso:
Four player game: Dave, Chad, Christopher, JCL (me).
Having just gotten in Neuland from SpieleGuild we were excited to
get it onto the table. It had missed the table the week before in
favour of another Essen release: Reef Encounter. I was particularly
interested in Neuland given the many descriptions as being
Roads&Boats-Lite.
Rules explanation took the better part of 20 minutes. Neuland's
rules aren't particularly complex -- it is actually a rather simple
game rules-wise -- but like many heavy games, while the rules may be
simple, using them to play the game well seems anything but.
ObPeeve: There was minor difficulty in getting the recommended
starting board setup. The hex tiles in the game are in various
shades of green and gray and the illustrative picture in the rules
is monochrome and lacks a key to indicate, for instance, whether
the light gray tiles in the picture are supposed to be gray or
light green, or the mid-gray tiles should be gray or light green.
Some tile counting and comparison resolved the question (light
gray in the picture is light green in the game tiles).
And we were off! Chad won starting player and started off in the
east quickly building two mines and using only the minimum actions
for it. Christopher started in the south and built a quarry and
then a smelter. I went for the north west and built a charcoal
burner and a mine, along with getting production markers on them and
everywhere else I could afford ("get while the getting is good!").
Dave went for another mine and quarry. And then the first round was
over and the clever turn track mechanism was about to start...and we
suddenly realised that just like in Roads&Boats, nobody owns
anything in the game except their production markers (transports in
R&B). Buildings are free for anyone to use just so long as there
isn't a production marker on them. As such board position is very
fluid and transitional. Production markers are really just
temporary investment markers.
And the brain melting began and didn't stop.
Early turns were slow, long, and tentative, often running for 10
minutes or so per player. Many times we had players do long
sequences of actions and then say, "Ooops, no, that's not what I
want to do, undo!", roll back a whole bunch of actions or even their
entire turn so far and then try a different tack, which they'd then
rollback, try something else again etc before eventually settling on
a final move. While normally this sort of tentative and analysis
heavy (and discussion heavy) play style would be a huge problem, in
this case due to the weight of the game and our shared inexperience
it turned out to be a great feature in helping us learn how to play
effectively. We all watched, made observations, corrected each
other's moves, and learned together. By the time the late game
approached moves were faster and shorter, often done in a minute or
so. We still had some tentative exploration going on, but we'd all
started to be comfortable with the base patterns of the game, had
some ideas of where the really stupid things to do where and how to
avoid them, and thus a lot of the early floundering had fallen out.
Some comments from the game:
"This is a great game!"
"Boy, we really suck at this."
"We're in a massive clue vacuum here. None of us know what we're
doing: we're in a Ross Perot field. Can you hear the great big
sucking sound?"
"My brain hurts." "You still have a brain?"
"Oh my god, I don't have enough actions!" "You can't get there
from here."
"Hey, at least I don't suck at this as badly as you do...I think!"
"I'm going to play this so much differently next time."
"I want to play again."
"Where did you get this from? I want a copy."
"You bastards, you blocked off all the quarries!" "Uhh huh..."
"You know, iron is pretty worthless." "You mean, except for all
those victory points?" "Oh yeah..."
"Lie down!" (Christopher at the start of every turn)
"Oh crap." "Yup."
"I guess I can't do that." "Well I wish you hadn't done that."
"Trade?"
Our most common mistake was forgetting to pay the stone or wood
needed to build a building. This became known as a "Chad" and was
something we all kept a careful eye on when it wasn't our turn. Our
next most common mistake was forgetting to count an action for
production when the resources had to be shipped in expensively,
something that I narrowly escaped having named after me.
Me: "I make a silver bar here with this coal from there and that
silver ore from over there with a transport cost of three..."
Others: "Plus one action for the production."
Me: "Oh yeah...so that's four."
And, in the end, Chad won, placing all his victory point markers one
step ahead of the rest of us via some very nice control of the turn
track. Total play time was about 210 minutes, 190 minutes minus the
rules explanation -- which wasn't bad considering the weight of the
game and that it was the first game for all of us.
All of us wanted to play again, soon.
Observations:
This is not a light or simple game. It is also a perfect
information game. Expect your first game to be like ours: much
more of an explorative learning session than a game. There is a
long learning curve. While we're ready to be surprised, none of
us expect to even start feeling comfortable and effective with the
game until at least our third or fourth game.
Mik Svellov's English rules are quite good but require careful
reading several times over. Many critical details didn't reveal
their actual significance and relation to other parts of the game
until the N'th time over.
Good player aids that show the resource, VP and production graphs
would help a lot. There are two that come with the game (why 2 in
a 4 player game?), but they're in German and but we didn't find
them particularly useful due to the language barrier and poor
layout.
Land is a limited resource and with the exception of mines,
there's a very small number of each building type. Transport
costs and control of free central land area end up featuring
significantly in the late mid-game and onward.
Play with players of similar skill/experience. Newbie players are
going to get mashed by more experienced players. There is a steep
learning curve and a large reward for getting further up the
curve.
The decision tree is unusually wide and very bushy. Unlike most
German games there aren't ~7 possible moves from which to select,
but hundreds followed by yet more hundreds, and pruning the
decision tree just isn't that obvious early on. This, combined
with an action point system could lead to serious AP problems if
your group is sensitive to them.
Neuland seems well suited to an online version.
At times the game seemed VERY tactical due to the board changing
so much between turns. My impression is that this was more of an
apparency than a fact, and was due to our inexperience. Adaptive
long term strategies (if that makes sense) seem the order of the
day.
The accelerating values of the VP buildings helps keep trailing
players in contention, especially if they control the turn
mechanism well. However this same feature can also make it hard
to tell who is ahead in the game: the guy with 6 VPs on the board,
or the guy with 1 VP who could produce another 8 VPs over the next
two turns if you don't stop him?
Control and manipulation of the turn mechanism is critical. Be
willing to waste action points this turn in order to get them back
and then some due to the turn track mechanism.
Try and keep at least two different production channels in
progress in each turn. As such the base pattern seems to be to
try and finish one channel one turn, and setup the another channel
for the next turn.
Otro reporte de sesión, de Michael Longdin, es en verdad una reseña:
Neuland is a construction / resource production game set up on a abstract map of hexes (settlers style) representing fields, forests and mountains. On this players build different "buildings" (farms, lumberjack huts, mines, gold mints, abbeys, theatres etc) all of which either produce a raw material or turn that raw material into another product. Thus the Hunting Lodge produces food which can be used to feed the lumberjack in his hut who produces timber which can be used to build more buildings or to fuel the charcoal burner, which produces coal which can be used to fuel the smelter.... etc etc). The production tree is quite complex with the goods at the top of the tree being worth VP's. The player who first claims goods worth 9/12/18 VP's (depending on the number of players) wins. As there are only 36 available in total this can be quite tight and tense at the end.
Each turn a player has a maximum of 10 actions used to build and produce goods. Buildings are common to all players. That is, if you build a quarry then anyone can use that quarry. The only restriction on this is that if a building already has a good on it then it cannot be used. Thus it is possible to prevent others from using buildings albeit this is only temporary as you must use any left over goods on your next turn otherwise they are destroyed. There is a very clever little turn order track which means that the fewer action points you use then the more turns you will get. Clever manipulation of this can allow you to use in excess of 10 points before anyone else gets to go - quite powerful.
Understanding the production tree is key to doing well at the game. You need to plan ahead both to make sure you have all the goods you need to produce that final product to get you vp's and to ensure that you get there before your opponents. There is nothing worse than having spent a significant number of actions producing a sword only to find that there is nothing left to use it on.
We set off in our own little corners of the
board but it soon became apparent that we were going to have to muscle
in on other players turf in order to get all the resources we need.
This meant that me and Grant were constantly ending our turns by
producing food in all the remaining farms and hunting lodges to prevent
anyone else from claiming them. This is fine but it is costly in terms
of action points if you want to avoid waste. Alan was much more
conservative in this manner and, as a result, ended up getting far
more, smaller, turns then us two. Gradually the VP's got ticked off and
the board became much more crowded which meant that we all had further
to travel to produce the required goods - this too is much more
expensive. Eventually there were two VP scoring products left and
whoever got the first one would win the game. This required paper and
with only two paper mills on the board I monopolised the output.
However, I also needed coal so Alan and Grant shut me out of the coal
producing buildings. Unfortunately for them this was much more
difficult to sustain and they couldn't keep it up for as long as I
could keep the paper hoarding up and in the end I was able to get the 2
vp's needed to win.
Michael - 12, Alan - 11, Grant - 10
I've
seen Neuland described as 'Roads and Boats lite'. The comparison to
R&B is obvious and well made as both games involve constructing
'buildings' which produce raw materials or turn those materials into
other products via a reasonably complicated 'production' tree. What it
isn't though is Roads & Boats lite. A light game this is not. If
anything it is more intense than Roads & Boats which has a longer,
more gradual ramp up of resources and where player interaction doesn't
occur for a while (if at all). In Neuland, you can get to the top of
the production chain fairly quickly and the limited space means that
you are always competing for resources with the other players. One of
the advantages of this is that the game plays much more quickly than
R&B. I probably prefer the earlier game with it's much less 'in
your face' style but the game length makes Neuland more likely to get
to the table. The sequence at the end was slightly worrisome and may
cause the game to lock up but the rest of the features make it well
worth playing - you need to be prepared to have your brains fried
though! Rating 8.
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/74152
