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

Mykerinos

Price: £23.99

Board Game, 2-4 Players by Ystari Games 1899. For more than a century, the European public has been fascinated by Egyptology, and the discoveries of Denon, Champollion, Petrie and others. Seeking adventure and glory, teams of archaeologists search the sands of Egypt for hidden treasures. The players embody archaeologists working for patrons. They excavate the land of Egypt to find precious artifacts, which will adorn the most prestigious rooms of the Museum. ++++++++++++++++++++ Counter Magazine review ++++++++++++++++++++ 2-4 players, 30-60 minutes designed by Nicolas Oury reviewed by Stuart Dagger It started with an Ys. When Cyril Demaegd showed up at Essen in 2004, it looked to be another case of a gamer who had designed a game he was proud of, decided to publish it himself, sunk enough money into the project to ensure it looked the business and brought the result to Essen. A French equivalent of Richard Breese or the Lamont brothers. There are a number of such people every year and their presence is one of the things that makes Essen worth attending. Some of them succeed and find themselves the centre of attention; others don\'t and have a long four days as they gaze at a pile of boxes that doesn\'t seem to be getting any smaller. Fortunately for Cyril, he was one of the former. A year later he was back with a second edition of Ys and with a new game, but this time there was a difference: the new game was by someone else, which suggested that the plans for Ystari might be rather grander than simply a high class ``own label\'\'. This third game would seem to confirm that. Three games, three different designers, and this time they mixed it with the big boys by launching in the Spring rather than waiting until Essen. Mykerinos is a less substantial game than either Ys or Caylus, but there is still enough here to make it worth your attention. The theme is Egyptian archaeology, but don\'t go reading too much into that. If you want a game that conveys something of the feel of that activity, try Jenseits von Theben; Mykerinos is another instance of a strategy game with graphics. Play takes place in two places: a museum which is about to mount an exhibition of Egyptian artefacts and Egypt, where you are going to discover them. In both it is a matter of placing blocks. Those you place in Egypt will win you cards; those you place in the museum will determine how many points each card is worth to you at the end. The game has four ``seasons\'\' and at the start of each a number of tiles are laid out. Each tile is a rectangle subdivided into 6 squares. Some of the squares are blank; others contain a drawing of a pyramid. At the centre of each tile is a patch of colour to indicate which of the five patrons behind the exhibition is associated with that particular parcel of land. At the start of each of the first three seasons, two rows of four tiles are put together to form a bigger rectangle. In season 4 it will be three rows. For reward purposes the tiles are regarded as being in pairs, with each pair consisting of two adjacent tiles. Such pairs are known as ``areas\'\'. So each row is split into two areas. The other thing that happens at the start of the season is that you are given a certain number of the blocks of your colour. These form your ``personal stock\'\' and are the ones you will have the opportunity to use this season. You will also have cubes left behind in the ``general stock\'\'. These may or may not come into play. In each of your turns you do one of four things: 1. Start a new excavation. To do this you simply place one of the cubes onto a free square on one of the tiles. A square is free if it contains neither a cube nor a pyramid. 2. Extend one of your existing excavation. This time you get to place two cubes. They again go onto free squares, with the first being adjacent to one of your existing cubes and the second being adjacent to the first. ``Adjacent\'\' includes ``adjacent on the next tile\'\'. 3. Pass. Once you do this, you can place no further cubes this season. You are obviously forced to do it when you run out of cubes, but might want to do it before then, because you have run out of useful things to do and prefer to carry your remaining cubes over into the next season, or because you wish to gain the edge in tiebreak situations. 4. Appeal to a patron. This only happens from season two onwards. By then the likelihood is that you will have won some cards. Each shows the picture of one of the patrons. Each patron has a special power, such as starting a new excavation with two cubes rather than one, extending with three rather than two, placing a cube on a pyramid square and so on. When you appeal to a patron, you get to use this power. Each of your cards can be used once per season. As you can see from options one and two, what is going to happen in the course of the season is that you will build up a number of colonies of adjacent blocks. The object, which won\'t come as a surprise to you, is to be in first or second place in as many areas as possible. It probably hadn\'t occurred to you before, but archaeology is another game of majorities. At the end of the season, rewards are given out for each area and what is on offer is a card for each of the patrons associated with these two parcels of land. The player with most blocks in the area gets first pick, followed by the one in second place. Ties are broken in favour of the first player who passed this season. Either of the players in first or second place can pass up the chance to take one of the offered cards and instead ``book a room in the museum\'\'. In the final scoring, the base value of each card that you win is only 1, but by booking the right room in the museum you can increase this to 2, 3 or even 5. The ``5-rooms\'\' can only be accessed through the lower valued ones, and so there is a separate mini-game of manoeuvre going on over in the museum, which you must take part in if you are to have a chance of winning overall. If either of the two ``winners\'\' in an area passes up the chance to take a card, the one released goes to the player in third place, and if both are spurned, they go to the third and the fourth. So a minor presence in an area can still be worthwhile. At the end of the fourth season you score the points for each card you have won and to this total is added a bonus for each complete set of five different cards. The theme of Mykerinos doesn\'t make much sense and the game\'s mechanisms don\'t relate all that well to such little sense as it does make, but despite that the game is good. The main interest comes from the block placements in Egypt. The idea of having the area all one for the purposes of determining which squares are adjacent, but subdividing it for reward purposes is a clever one and works well, as does having the pyramids as blockers. Making the rewards for each area known in advance and of different values for different players was also a smart move. The museum sub-game is more straightforward but still presents difficulties of timing because of the special powers that the cards offer. You must get your share of the high scoring locations, but passing up on a card that would give you a useful advantage next season makes the decisions on what to do when quite tricky. Finally, there is the extra little wrinkle of the bonus points for sets. This is not a new idea, but including it here keeps the game together and stops it turning into a situation where everyone is collecting different things. The mechanisms might not mesh that well with the theme, but they do mesh very well with each other. Ystari\'s score is now ``played three, won three\'\'. Their fourth game is scheduled for Essen. I won\'t be the only person looking forward to it.

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

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