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shannon_aI played a first game of Cleopatra & The Society of Architects last night, as part of an Egyptian game theme (preceded by Ra and followed by Tutankhamen--before we ran out of Egyptian games available).
I'd heard quite a bit of so-soism about the game, and I'd pretty much discounted it all.
The complaints about it being "just a card game" are no more true than a similar complaint that could be made about Union Pacific. Get over it. A game's worth should be measured not by the importance of its cards, but by the content of its gameplay.
As far as I could tell most of the rest of the complaints had to do with the gaming being "too light", though that's exactly the weight that Days of Wonder was clearly aiming at.
Though I didn't agree with a lot of the early comments on the game, I also wasn't as impressed as I hope to be.
The pieces are great. A lot of people said they were overproduced, and after the game Josh, Brody, Matt, and I talked a little bit about whether they added actual value to the game, but I think they do. You can't discount the visceral enjoyment that this sort of thing can add to a gaming experience.
The game does have a lot going for it in the categories of interesting, enjoyable, and fun, and I definitely enjoyed my game.
The basic gameplay premise is somewhat familiar and well-tried. Each turn you have a choice between collecting resources (cards) and using those cards to build monuments which ultimately offer victory points. It's the same trade-off you find in the aforementioned Union Pacific, in Ticket to Ride, and in others. I think it's a great mechanic.
The game is also made more interesting by one other notable aspect: corruption. Some (better) resources and some special cards (and some other aspects of the game) give you corruption, and whoever has the most corruption at the end of the game loses, before victory is determined. You can find this same mechanism in High Society, Struggle of Empires, and elsewhere, and it's another mechanic that I generally classify as great.
I also really like the way the card drawing is done in Cleopatra. First of all, the game does something I've never seen: after you shuffle, you flip half of the cards upside down, then shuffle those two piles. As a result half of your cards are face-up and half are face-down. Whenever you draw cards you take one of three piles of cards, then each of the three piles gets one card.
There's already a trade-off between how many cards you're taking and what items you can see. However, there's also a pseudo-hand-limit of 10 (if you have more than that you take corruption), so that might also impact which pile you take. Those all provide interesting, but simple decision points.
There were, however, several aspects of the game that I didn't like. They might all improve through additional play, but after a first time through, I thought the gameplay of Cleopatra was largely average. My issues:
1.) The tradeoff of drawing v. playing actually didn't seem that important. There was a little bit of press-your-luck (will someone else build the items I want to if I wait?) but most of the time it seemed like you always collected cards until you had around 10, then you spent them. (There is a VP bonus to building multiple items in a turn which highly encourages this gameplay. After just one play, I think it's unnecessary, because the bonus you receive by spending just one action to build multiple things should have been enough in itself.)
2.) The various building formulas are not intuitive. There are six things you can build, and each has a different formula for how to build it, and each earns a different number of VPs. I feel like the building formulas should be intuitive, and that they might become so after multiple plays, but they definitely weren't after one. The victory point earnings clicked in my head a little quicker, but there were two that I kept confusing, because one earned 3 VPs plus bonus, and the other 4 plus bonuses.
3.) In some ways the gameplay felt very opaque to me. I won last night's game, but I have no idea what I might have done that made my gameplay more efficient than the others (except choosing to end the game on my turn). I knew one player (Matt) was out because he hadn't managed to capture a sanctuary and thus had too much corruption (in fact he had 5 more than the next player: 7 v. 2 v. 2 v. 0). But I really had no idea how each person had done victory point wise, or indeed what a good move was on any turn, other than building what you could.
So, after on play, I found much of Cleopatra's interest to come from the interesting & visceral components, not from the average though sometimes innovative gameplay, but I've got it scheduled for another try this evening. We'll see if it clicks more.
I'd heard quite a bit of so-soism about the game, and I'd pretty much discounted it all.
The complaints about it being "just a card game" are no more true than a similar complaint that could be made about Union Pacific. Get over it. A game's worth should be measured not by the importance of its cards, but by the content of its gameplay.
As far as I could tell most of the rest of the complaints had to do with the gaming being "too light", though that's exactly the weight that Days of Wonder was clearly aiming at.
Though I didn't agree with a lot of the early comments on the game, I also wasn't as impressed as I hope to be.
The pieces are great. A lot of people said they were overproduced, and after the game Josh, Brody, Matt, and I talked a little bit about whether they added actual value to the game, but I think they do. You can't discount the visceral enjoyment that this sort of thing can add to a gaming experience.
The game does have a lot going for it in the categories of interesting, enjoyable, and fun, and I definitely enjoyed my game.
The basic gameplay premise is somewhat familiar and well-tried. Each turn you have a choice between collecting resources (cards) and using those cards to build monuments which ultimately offer victory points. It's the same trade-off you find in the aforementioned Union Pacific, in Ticket to Ride, and in others. I think it's a great mechanic.
The game is also made more interesting by one other notable aspect: corruption. Some (better) resources and some special cards (and some other aspects of the game) give you corruption, and whoever has the most corruption at the end of the game loses, before victory is determined. You can find this same mechanism in High Society, Struggle of Empires, and elsewhere, and it's another mechanic that I generally classify as great.
I also really like the way the card drawing is done in Cleopatra. First of all, the game does something I've never seen: after you shuffle, you flip half of the cards upside down, then shuffle those two piles. As a result half of your cards are face-up and half are face-down. Whenever you draw cards you take one of three piles of cards, then each of the three piles gets one card.
There's already a trade-off between how many cards you're taking and what items you can see. However, there's also a pseudo-hand-limit of 10 (if you have more than that you take corruption), so that might also impact which pile you take. Those all provide interesting, but simple decision points.
There were, however, several aspects of the game that I didn't like. They might all improve through additional play, but after a first time through, I thought the gameplay of Cleopatra was largely average. My issues:
1.) The tradeoff of drawing v. playing actually didn't seem that important. There was a little bit of press-your-luck (will someone else build the items I want to if I wait?) but most of the time it seemed like you always collected cards until you had around 10, then you spent them. (There is a VP bonus to building multiple items in a turn which highly encourages this gameplay. After just one play, I think it's unnecessary, because the bonus you receive by spending just one action to build multiple things should have been enough in itself.)
2.) The various building formulas are not intuitive. There are six things you can build, and each has a different formula for how to build it, and each earns a different number of VPs. I feel like the building formulas should be intuitive, and that they might become so after multiple plays, but they definitely weren't after one. The victory point earnings clicked in my head a little quicker, but there were two that I kept confusing, because one earned 3 VPs plus bonus, and the other 4 plus bonuses.
3.) In some ways the gameplay felt very opaque to me. I won last night's game, but I have no idea what I might have done that made my gameplay more efficient than the others (except choosing to end the game on my turn). I knew one player (Matt) was out because he hadn't managed to capture a sanctuary and thus had too much corruption (in fact he had 5 more than the next player: 7 v. 2 v. 2 v. 0). But I really had no idea how each person had done victory point wise, or indeed what a good move was on any turn, other than building what you could.
So, after on play, I found much of Cleopatra's interest to come from the interesting & visceral components, not from the average though sometimes innovative gameplay, but I've got it scheduled for another try this evening. We'll see if it clicks more.