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shannon_aI'll have to admit, Palazzo is not one of my favorite games. Though some of the other Alea games strike me as not being quite my speed, Palazzo often just strikes me as awkward.
I should probably summarize the game first. The object of the game is to build up palazzos made up of multiple floors of a building. You bid for those floors in auctions and/or purchase them. Each one is made of a specific material, has 1-3 windows or doors, and has a number from 1-5 (which must be placed in increasing order as you build). Final value of each palazzo is dependent on how many floors it contains, whether it's all made of one material, and how many doors and windows it has.
There's a lot that's clever in Palazzo.
The auction is built around a Knizia favorite: multiple currencies, here embodied by three different colors of cards. Much as with Taj Mahal, a previous Knizia Alea game, you choose a currency at the start of an auction and have to stay in that. Much like Taj Mahal there are also some "neutral" cards, here low-valued 2s and any triplet of cards (one per color in the same value).
It also feels like there's a lot of variety in only three options. Each turn you choose to reveal new palazzo tiles, distribute money, or rearrange some already built buildings. It's often a hard choice that makes you constantly feel like you're giving up competitive advantage to your opponents, no wonder what you do. I always love hard choices in a game.
My problems with Palazzo all have to do with the scoring. Because you've got orthagonal scoring for both the height of a building and its composition, I find the scoring very opaque, a topic I wrote about during my Kniziathon of 2007. Perhaps because of that I feel like Palazzo fits into the games-you-can't-think-about-too-much category (a possible topic for a future BGN column). If you play fast and from the gut, it's fun, but if you start getting bogged down in the calculations of your actual score ... it can lose all of its zing.
Oh, and Palazzo sure felt like it was out-of-place with what came before and after it in the medium box series--Louis XIV and Augsburg 1520, both heavier games.
L1: Ra. A+. (Plays: 15) [ Read my Review ]
L2: Chinatown. B-. (Plays: 1)
L3: Taj Mahal. A+. (Plays: 7)
L4: Princes of Florence. A. (Plays: 4+) [ Read my Review ]
L5: Adel Verpflichtet. B. (Plays: 2) [ Read my Review ]
L6: Traders of Genoa. A+. (Plays: 3+) [ Read my Review ]
S1: Wyatt Earp. B+ (Plays: 2)
S2: Royal Turf. A- (Plays: 6)
L7: Puerto Rico. A+ (Plays: 11) [ Read my Review ]
S3: Die Sieben Weisen C (Plays: 1)
S4: Edel, Stein & Reich B- (Plays: 1) [ Read my Basari Review ]
L8: Mammoth Hunters B+ (Plays: 5) [ Read my Review. ]
S5: San Juan A+ (Plays: 32) [ Read my Review; plus Glory to Rome review. ]
L9: Fifth Avenue C- (Plays: 3+)
M1: Louis XIV B+ (Plays: 7) [ Read my Review ]
M2: Palazzo B- (Plays: 6)
I should probably summarize the game first. The object of the game is to build up palazzos made up of multiple floors of a building. You bid for those floors in auctions and/or purchase them. Each one is made of a specific material, has 1-3 windows or doors, and has a number from 1-5 (which must be placed in increasing order as you build). Final value of each palazzo is dependent on how many floors it contains, whether it's all made of one material, and how many doors and windows it has.
There's a lot that's clever in Palazzo.
The auction is built around a Knizia favorite: multiple currencies, here embodied by three different colors of cards. Much as with Taj Mahal, a previous Knizia Alea game, you choose a currency at the start of an auction and have to stay in that. Much like Taj Mahal there are also some "neutral" cards, here low-valued 2s and any triplet of cards (one per color in the same value).
It also feels like there's a lot of variety in only three options. Each turn you choose to reveal new palazzo tiles, distribute money, or rearrange some already built buildings. It's often a hard choice that makes you constantly feel like you're giving up competitive advantage to your opponents, no wonder what you do. I always love hard choices in a game.
My problems with Palazzo all have to do with the scoring. Because you've got orthagonal scoring for both the height of a building and its composition, I find the scoring very opaque, a topic I wrote about during my Kniziathon of 2007. Perhaps because of that I feel like Palazzo fits into the games-you-can't-think-about-too-much category (a possible topic for a future BGN column). If you play fast and from the gut, it's fun, but if you start getting bogged down in the calculations of your actual score ... it can lose all of its zing.
Oh, and Palazzo sure felt like it was out-of-place with what came before and after it in the medium box series--Louis XIV and Augsburg 1520, both heavier games.
L1: Ra. A+. (Plays: 15) [ Read my Review ]
L2: Chinatown. B-. (Plays: 1)
L3: Taj Mahal. A+. (Plays: 7)
L4: Princes of Florence. A. (Plays: 4+) [ Read my Review ]
L5: Adel Verpflichtet. B. (Plays: 2) [ Read my Review ]
L6: Traders of Genoa. A+. (Plays: 3+) [ Read my Review ]
S1: Wyatt Earp. B+ (Plays: 2)
S2: Royal Turf. A- (Plays: 6)
L7: Puerto Rico. A+ (Plays: 11) [ Read my Review ]
S3: Die Sieben Weisen C (Plays: 1)
S4: Edel, Stein & Reich B- (Plays: 1) [ Read my Basari Review ]
L8: Mammoth Hunters B+ (Plays: 5) [ Read my Review. ]
S5: San Juan A+ (Plays: 32) [ Read my Review; plus Glory to Rome review. ]
L9: Fifth Avenue C- (Plays: 3+)
M1: Louis XIV B+ (Plays: 7) [ Read my Review ]
M2: Palazzo B- (Plays: 6)