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Main Catalogue | Board Games & Card Games | Rio Grande Games | Hermagor

Hermagor

Price: £24.99

Board Game, 2-6 Players, Ages 12+ by Mind the Move/Rio Grande In this city, one can buy and exchange almost everything. This made Hermagor famous and merchants can from far and wide to buy and sell all kinds of goods at the market. Some even undertook perilous adventures to acquire especially rare items. They criss-crossed this wealthy region, creating new paths and roads, adding markets to towns, but always with the aim to become wealthy! +++++++++++++++++++++ Counter Magazine Review +++++++++++++++++++++ 2-5 players, 90-120 minutes designed by Emanuele Ornella reviewed by Brian Robson Having been impressed by Emanuele Ornella\'s last two Essen offerings, Oltremare and Il Principe, I was looking forward with some anticipation to playing his latest creation at Essen. Some initial impressions of the game reported before Essen compared Hermagor to Thurn und Taxis, which left me a tad concerned it would end up as a bit of a lightweight. Thankfully this is not the case. The board shows a map with the mythical city of Hermagor in the centre and a road network radiating out in all directions. The roads link to various villages and the cost of travelling each route is displayed on the road. Each village has a demand icon showing what type of goods are in demand at that location. Routes between groups of villages are circuitous and enclose production areas which contain one or more goods icons. The board also contains the market and the price table showing the values of the various goods, production buildings and the Nobility row. The aim of the game is basically to make money. Players buy goods, sell them at a profit by travelling around the villages on the board while attempting to surround more lucrative areas and gain some influence in their production. The wealthiest player at the end of the game will be the winner. Each player starts with a trader on Hermagor city, four buyers (bidding tokens), a number of building discs and trade stations plus 20 cash. The game is played over 4 or 5 rounds, depending upon the number of players, with action chits showing how many trading actions each player may take in a given round. Each round is split into 3 phases: * bidding in the market * market resolution * travel/trade Bidding in the Market The market consists of a 4x5 grid of squares, used to hold the goods tiles, with passageways running between these squares. Spaces on the passageways are numbered according to the cost of placing a buyer when bidding, with a single space between each pair of tiles and at the corners where passageways intersect. A corner space diagonally adjacent to 4 tiles secures a bid on all 4 tiles and is relatively expensive; a space orthogonally adjacent to 2 tiles secures a bid on both tiles and is a little cheaper. Bids can also be placed on the tiles themselves. The goods tiles display 8 types of goods - including swords, amulets, relics and dragons\' eggs. Some tiles display a single good, some display two different goods while some special tiles give actions such as receive money, cheap travel etc. Tiles displaying a single good give the winning player the option to increase the value of that good in the price table. Each round 3, 4 or 5 rows of tiles (depending upon the number of players) are placed on the market squares by drawing them randomly from a bag. The bidding process is simplicity itself. In player order, each player places one of their buyers either on an empty passageway space or tile and pays the displayed cost, which varies from 2 cash to place a bid directly on a tile up to 5 cash for one of the more lucrative corner spots. Although the bidding process may be simple, the buyer placement decisions are not, particularly as the game progresses. More on that later. Market Resolution Once all buyers have been placed players gain income for the `passage buzz\' generated by their buyers. (I guess that `passage buzz\' is similar to Essen buzz, except that the latter costs you lots of money.) The more buyers a player has in each row or column in a market passageway the greater the income produced - so corner positions score twice. The outcome of the bidding is then resolved with the player who has most buyers surrounding a goods tile winning that tile. Ties are broken in favour of the player with a buyer on the tile, then by the most orthogonally adjacent buyers. In the event of a tie no-one wins and the tile stays put. Players place the tiles they\'ve won in front of them and can sell the goods they\'ve acquired in the next phase of the game. At this stage a new start player is selected. Each goods tile is numbered and the player holding the lowest numbered tile selects the new start player. Travel / Trade In the travel phase each player carries out a number of actions, depending upon the action chit revealed at the beginning of the round. There are three options, move and sell, just move or just sell, but the first is the norm as you should be aiming to collect the right set of goods at auction to avoid being forced into using the latter two. On a move and sell action a player moves their trader to a village which wants one of the goods he has won at auction, pays the travel cost for the road(s) used then earns money for selling the good at its current price. The player builds a trade station in the village, which will generate income of 1 cash when any other players sell a good in that village and reminds the player that they cannot sell - or stop - there again for the remainder of the game. As mentioned earlier, groups of villages surround production areas denoted by one or more goods icons of the same type as those available on the goods tiles. Once a player has completely surrounded a production area, by building a trade station in each of the villages, they may `build\' one of the production buildings shown in the area by placing a token on the appropriate row on the price table. This generates immediate income - greater the earlier you manage to place a production building - as well as additional income at the end of the game. The number of production buildings available at the start of the game is only two per good with an additional two appearing as the price increases. Depending upon how you want to use the tiles won in the auction, it\'s worth noting that you do not necessarily want to increase the price of a particular good depending upon other players\' positions. The areas surrounding Hermagor city do not contain production areas, but Hermagor symbols. Surrounding one of these allows a player to place a token on the Nobility row. This generates immediate income, which increases as the game progresses, but none at the end of the game. Some production areas also contain a Hermagor symbol as an optional selection. A move only action allows a player to move their trader to a village where they have no trade station for half the cost of travel. This can be a useful option if a player has to move a long way to sell or as a players\' last action in this phase, setting them up for the next round. A sell only action allows a player to sell a good in their current location. This can be useful after a move only action. As we discovered in our first game, it is a good idea to at least consider in advance where you are going to end your turn so as to maximise your trading options in the next round. This process is then repeated over the requisite number of rounds. Once the final round has finished game end scoring occurs: Value of production buildings: as the price of each of the goods increases, so the reward for building the relevant production building increases. Players gain cash for each row in which they have a production building, with higher income generated by higher valued goods. Having more than one token in a row does not give added benefit. Commercial presence in Dukedoms: the board is split into three ``dukedoms\'\' by three rivers which flow from Hermagor city. In an undoubted homage to Herr Knizia, players count the number of trade stations they have in each dukedom, take the smallest number and gain cash equal to a multiple (4x in a 5 player game, otherwise 3x) of that number. Principal Route: a main road runs across the centre of the board. The player(s) who have the most trade stations on this route gain 5 cash each; the player(s) with the fewest lose 5 cash each. At the end of the game the richest player wins with ties being broken by the player who scored first on the nobility row. It is well worth bearing each of the final scoring opportunities in mind as you plan your movement because it is possible to net 50 plus cash. In our last game the first three players were separated by only 8 cash and final scoring had a definite impact on the result. So what of the pre-Essen comparisons to Thurn und Taxis? Although the analogy is understandable due to the route building, the game is more reminiscent of the original Elfenroads, bidding for items that will help you maximise your subsequent movement and scoring opportunities while attempting to prevent your opponents doing likewise. Hermagor offers much more depth than T&T - a clever bidding process, pro-active route planning while all the time keeping an eye on maximising the game end scoring which means spreading your routes over the board. Indeed, the quicker bidding process may even give Hermagor the nod over its venerable White Wind predecessor. (Interestingly, Gery McLaughlin made this statement despite the fact he considers it somewhat heretical!) Mercifully the mythical setting has no impact on gameplay. The marketplace products of dragons\' eggs, amulets and relics could have just as easily been rice, oil and microwaves. The bidding system is particularly inventive and takes a different approach to this occasionally troublesome matter than the Evo system discussed by Derek Carver in Counter 33 and the Amun-Re system considered by Larry Levy in Counter 34. Players can effectively have several bites at the cherry if competition for products is fierce - as often happens towards the end of the game. The differing relative costs and strengths of bids all need to be taken into account and this is where the real decision making and interaction within the game lies - some of the choices can be pretty tough to make. An expensive bid on 4 items is weak in a tie break, while a cheap bid on a single item gives no return in `passage buzz\' income. Aggressive bidding on one or two particular resources can secure them, but may also backfire as later bidders cherry-pick the remainder of the market. It helps to have a couple of different routes planned for your next trading turn just in case you need to fall back to plan B. There have been some rumblings of players not enjoying games which have seem to have gone on interminably. And it is true that any enjoyment Hermagor brings can be killed by slow play, particularly in the last couple of rounds. While some time taken over the auction phase is understandable there is little excuse for slow play during the movement phase. A bit of gentle encouragement before the game starts would be helpful if anyone in your group suffers from this ailment! As you can no doubt tell, Hermagor has gone down very well with our group. Although subsequent playings have nudged the two hour mark the game has not appeared overlong and it has been competitive up to the final scoring. This is undoubtedly Emanuele Ornella\'s strongest game so far. If your group enjoys confrontational bidding and/or route planning then Hermagor is for you.

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Main Catalogue | Board Games & Card Games | Rio Grande Games | Hermagor

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