Short takes: Master of Rules, Akropolis, Next Station Paris

Here are short reviews of some games I played at Essen 2024.

Master of Rules

This is a 2007 game from Susumu Kawasaki (Traders of Osaka, R-Eco) which I had not heard of before. At first I thought the game was called 5, because of the box cover. I couldn’t find it on BGG to record my play. It took me a long time to realise what the correct name was. I do love the cover art, but I can’t say I agree with the decision to not have the actual game title be prominent.

The game is for 3 to 5, but is best with 5. In your hand you always have 4 player cards and 3 rule cards. Player cards have a number and a suit. Rule cards specify a condition you must fulfill to score a point. Every round everyone will play one player card and one rule card. You take turns doing this, playing just one card first. It can be either a player card or a rule card. Once everyone has played a card, you do another cycle and now you must play the other card type. Once everyone has two cards played you check whether you fulfill your own rule card. If you do you keep it as 1 point.

Whether you fulfill a rule card condition depends on the player cards played by others. For example there is one rule card which says the sum of all cards is at most 23. Another rule says your card must be the highest one in the suit which is most played that round. One rule says you win as long as the fellow on your right wins. So you want to help your neighbour win.

You already need to commit one card in the first half of a round so it can be challenging to create a winning situation. The earlier in turn order, the harder it is, because you have less information. You must watch the cards played by others because you are not only trying to fulfill your own condition, you also want to prevent your opponents from fulfilling theirs.

This is a clever little game. I absolutely love the art in the latest edition.

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Akropolis

This is one of the currently popular games, so when I saw a free table at Essen I grabbed the opportunity to give it a try.

This is a city building game. You use tiles to build your city. Each tile has three hexes. A hex can have one of five colours, or it can be a quarry. You take turns claiming tiles from a central row. The first tile is always free but if you want to take another you need to spend stones.

Hexes in your city score points in different ways. For a hex to score points, the condition of its colour must be satisfied. For example a red hex (fort) must be on a border. A yellow hex must be isolated from other colours. Only one biggest group of blue hexes score. How many points you score per hex depends on your coloured stars. So you need to collect hexes and fulfil their conditions, and you also need to collect stars.

One interesting thing is you can stack the tiles. When you cover a quarry, you gain a stone. That’s the only way to earn stones, and stones can be very helpful. Another important part of stacking is a coloured hex at a higher level counts as the same number of hexes as its level. This is a very good deal.

The game is generally peaceful. You can hate draft what your opponents want, but you probably want to spend more energy building up your own city.

I didn’t buy the game. It’s pleasant and I do like the stacking mechanism, which reminds me of Taluva. It is mostly just-another-euro for me.

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Next Station Paris

Next Station is a popular game series with awards and nominations. I classify it as roll-and-write. There are no dice, but you flip cards from a deck and do what the card says.

Everyone gets the same sheet on which you will draw your underground train lines. Everyone gets a different colour pencil, so you will be developing different lines. Over four rounds you will develop four train lines, swapping pencils between rounds. All train lines of a specific colour start at a specific spot. When you flip a card, the card tells you how you can expand your train line. Normally you will draw one straight line from one node on either end of the current line to another node with a specific icon. You keep flipping cards and drawing lines until five yellow cards are revealed. You won’t know how long exactly a round will go. You will know the card distribution and you can plan around that somewhat.

When a round ends, you score the line just completed. The map is divided into regions and there is one or more nodes in each region. A big part of your score comes from the number of regions your line spans multiplied by the number of nodes you have in one region where you have the most nodes. What this means is you want to connect many regions by reaching far, but you also want to plan for one region in which you make many short connections linking many nodes.

There are other ways of scoring, e.g. nodes where different coloured lines meet, and connecting to landmark nodes. The core gameplay is about planning your line such that no matter which icon comes up next you have a good move. Sometimes you can choose to forgo a turn because you are planning for something more important. Sometimes if you are not careful or unlucky you don’t have a valid move using the revealed icon. That would be a wasted turn.

This is a solo game played together with friends. You compare how well you do, but you don't interfere with one another. The game is challenging and you can be strategic about it. Luck can still doom your play. It's a game about managing luck as best you can.