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Main Catalogue | BOARD GAMES & CARD GAMES | Rio Grande Games | Augsburg 1520

Augsburg 1520

Price: £24.99

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Please note: This item is NOT normally available in our Bricks & Mortar shop. If you would like to collect a copy from the shop please contact us in advance.

Board Game, 2-5 Players, Ages 12+ by Rio Grande Games Published in Germany by Alea: The game is about Jakob Fugger, who was probably the wealthiest man of his time. \'Jakob the Rich\', as he was named in his time, owned so much money that he loaned money to a host of counts and kings. Often, they were not able to repay him in cash so they awarded him special privileges, such as trade rights and offices. Players assume the role of the merchants from Augsburg and try to get what they can - by means of auctions - from the nobility, thus increasing their wealth and particularly their social status. ++++++++++++++++++++ Counter Magazine review ++++++++++++++++++++ Alea 2-5 players, 25-75 minutes designed by Karsten Hartwig reviewed by Stuart Dagger Despite the pressure put on Stefan Brück by the men in suits, whose natural main concern is for the shareholders rather than gamers and so who care less about how good a game is than how many copies it sells, Alea continues to operate in what I regard as the Hans im Glück section of the market. And hooray for that. The company\'s other release this Spring - Um Ru(h)m und Ehre - gives the impression of being aimed at a wider market and has not been too well received by hard core gamers, but this one, which is number 3 in the medium-sized box series that began last year with Louis XIV and Palazzo, is definitely for us. It is also well up to standard and for my money is up there with Thurn und Taxis vying for this year\'s ``pick of Nuremberg\'\' title. Like the Hans im Glück game, Augsburg looks to 16th century Germany for its inspiration, this time to the great merchant and financier Jakob Fugger, a man whose loans to kings, emperors and popes brought him great influence as well as wealth. It was his money that secured the election of Charles V as Holy Roman Emperor. The idea of the game is that you lend money to various royals and then write off the loans in return for the sort of prestige and financial opportunities that rulers can dispense - titles, land and money-generating offices. The ultimate goal is prestige, with the rest just being a means to an end. A small central board has a scoring track running round the edge and five portraits in the middle. These are the rulers to whom you will be lending money. In addition each player has their own personal board on which you will track your current standing in three key areas. The other key component is a set of cards. Ten of these are to do with the rewards that the rulers can dispense and the rest represent the amounts of money that you have lent them. The game is played over a set number of rounds. At the start of each round you receive money, prestige points and cards. How much and how many of each will depend on how well you are doing. These are the three key areas referred to in the previous paragraph, and as I hinted there when I used the word ``standing\'\' rather than ``progress\'\', your markers can go down as well as up. One minute you have the maximum income that goes with the Venice trade concession that has been granted to you by the Emperor, and the next you don\'t because he has taken it away and given it to someone else. The money and prestige points you get are yours to keep, but the cards are not. These, remember, are IOUs and they are for varying amounts. If you want to add any of them to the cards already in your hand, you must buy them. In essence you are lending the stated amount to the ruler whose portrait is shown on the card. Those you don\'t want are discarded. The main part of the round consists of a visit to each of the rulers. Once at a court, you can try for the ruler\'s favour by offering to cancel the IOUs that you hold in his or her name. The process for deciding whose offer they accept has been described as an auction, but it\'s really more like a betting round in a game of poker. For example, I could open proceedings with an offer of two cards. You, sitting to my left, can either pass, match my offer or raise. Note that at this point we are dealing in terms of number of cards, not how much they are for. This continues round and round until everyone left in has bid the same number. At that point there is a showdown and the numbers on the cards become relevant. What makes this much more interesting than just another simple auction is that finishing condition. It means that I cannot raise my own bid. So when deciding what to bid I have to consider whether I\'m likely to win the showdown should my rivals ``check\'\' rather than raise. The winner of the bidding discards the bid cards (tears up the IOUs); everyone else gets to keep theirs and those who have made it through to the showdown are eligible for a small but useful sum of money for having revealed their holding. The prize for the winner is to take one of the face-up reward cards. The card offers them the opportunity to advance in two areas and it is a matter of choosing from the three shown. For example, suppose I selected the card which shows one area for money and two for prestige and that I am currently on the third rung of the four rung ladder in each section. By selecting the money area, I could either take 300 gulden or I could move up to the fourth rung of the money ladder and thereby increase my annual income from 1200 to 1600. If someone is already on that fourth rung, they will be knocked down to my old spot. At first sight the second of these looks much the better option, but I need to bear in mind that before we reach the income stage someone else might rise to knock me back in turn. So I need to look at the reward cards that are still on offer and figure the odds. With my first action in the prestige area I could either step up to the fourth rung (12 prestige points per turn instead of 8) or, if I don\'t already have one, I could apply for a coat of arms, which will bring in between 1 and 4 points per turn and can\'t be taken away from me (4 if I\'m the first to gain such a grant; less if I\'m not). If I ignored the money area and selected prestige twice, other options become available, such as first advancing to rung 4 and then gaining a grant of nobility (2 to 5 prestige points per turn). I\'ve gone into more detail here than I normally like, but I wanted to make the point that when winning an auction doesn\'t just produce another badge for your lapel, it gives you strategic and tactical opportunities that affect other players. The third area of advancement involved on your board concerns two things. The first is the number of cards you are dealt at the start of a round and whether or not you are given any bonus ones cost free. The second concerns donations to the church. Then, as now, prestige came with being a high profile philanthropist and this has been built into the game in a way that forces you to be a giver. There are two road blocks on the prestige track, one at 25 points and one at 45, and prestige points gained while you are stuck at either are lost. You can\'t pass the first barrier until you have contributed money towards the building of a church and can\'t pass the second until you have done the same for the cathedral. To make such a donation you need to select the appropriate area of a reward card and give rather than take. That is painful in itself, but the amounts involved make it more so. There is also an evil twist in that the first person to make a donation to a particular building pays more than the second, who pays more than the third, and so on. So if you want the advantage of being the first through a barrier, you have to pay a significant premium. Augsburg is not a difficult game either to learn or to teach, but the thinking and the planning ahead that you need to do puts it firmly in the ``gamers\' game\'\' category, a fact reflected in its age rating of ``12+\'\'. This puts it alongside the likes of Caylus, Goa and Puerto Rico. Good company to be in, especially if you can manage it for interest of play as well, which in my view Augsburg can. That is not quite to claim that it is on a par with Puerto Rico, since it doesn\'t have the strategic depth or variety of that game, the emphasis being more on tactics and efficient use of resources, but it wouldn\'t look out of place in the same collection. As I said at the start, for me Nuremburg 2006 produced two standouts and this is one of them.

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Main Catalogue | BOARD GAMES & CARD GAMES | Rio Grande Games | Augsburg 1520

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