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Pillars of the Earth Price: £38.99 Board Game; 2-4 Players; Ages 12+ by Mayfair Games England at the beginning of the12th Century... Prior Phillip of Kingsbridge has a glorious vision. To build the largest, most beautiful cathedral in England. To accomplish the task, Phillip recruits the most renowned builders in the country. However, the fate of the Cathedral is constantly threatened by all manner of catastrophes and oppositions. The Pillars of the Earth is based on Ken Follett’s bestselling novel. Players join together to help build Kingsbridge Cathedral. Using your workmen and resources, you must wisely deploy assets to overcome unexpected difficulties and shortages to prove yourself the greatest builder of them all! Will your efforts be recognized when the Great Cathedral at Kingsbridge is complete? ++++++++++++++++++++ Counter Magaine Review ++++++++++++++++++++ 2-4 players, 90 minutes designed by Michael Rieneck reviewed by Ben Baldanza Ken Follet\'s 1989 love story and epic has become the backdrop for this new strategy game by Kosmos and ``Around the World in 80 Days\'\' designer Michael Rieneck. Bookworms who buy the game will be overwhelmed by the meatiness of the game play, and gamers who play it won\'t really care much about the 1,000 page masterpiece that continues to sell strongly today in both Europe and the US. The game shares its lineage with at least two others: the game is paced by the building of the central cathedral, much like Gerard Mulder\'s Charlemagne, later Krieg und Frieden, although in this game the construction is only to pace the game and look nice. Mechanically, the game reminds one of Richard Breese\'s Keydom, later Aladdin\'s Dragons, in that players place builders at various sites on the board that are then resolved in order. The large board is dark and shows 14 different locations, starting in the top right and rotating clockwise around and circling toward the center. Each of the locations has advantages for the players, and choosing where to participate and how to best use the spots is one of the keys to the game. Like Keydom, some spots allow only a single builder and once chosen these are unavailable for others, while others can take multiple builders. Players each have a set of workers to labor for raw materials, and three builders to deploy onto the board spaces to get that space\'s favors. The game uses four types of cards. These include 24 Craftsman Cards, four for each of the six game rounds. Two of these are available for purchasing and two are offered at a spot on the board. Each card shows which good, or goods, can be converted to victory points or gold by the player that employs them. Three of the four goods are earned on the game board in the forest, quarry, or gravel pit (wood, stone, and sand respectively) while the fourth good, metal, is earned on the board but is more limited in quantity and thus more valuable. Nine Building Cards show how many workers must be deployed to harvest the wood, stone, or sand from their respective spots. Players get these materials by taking one of these cards and sending the workers onto the board to procure their goods. Of the nine cards, only seven are available in each of the rounds. Two Advantage Cards are available per round and only if a builder is sent for them, but these are always helpful. The final card type is the Event Card, and one of these is drawn at the beginning of each round to help randomize things a bit. Half of these are good events and half are penalizing. Each round of the game is played in three phases. The first phase allows players to choose among two Craftsman cards and seven of the nine Building cards laid out to start the round. Taking Building cards means that the player must immediately send the required number of workers to the spot on the board where they will toil. If a player does not have enough workers to send, he cannot take the Building card. Choosing a Craftsman card requires gold, and in addition each player can employ only five craftsmen at any point. Each player begins with three, so if they employ a sixth at any point they must discard another. The choice of Building card determines what goods will be earned in the round, and the goods needed are directly related to the type of craftsmen you employ so that they can be effective at earning victory points. Any workers not sent to the fields in this phase are placed on the board in the Woolen Mill, and there they will earn income. Phase two is the most unique for the game and this deals with hiring and deploying the three builders per player. The bottom of the board shows a semi-circle with eight spaces numbered downwards from seven to zero. The builders from all the players are put in a bag, and the first is drawn out and placed on the ``seven\'\' spot. The owner of that builder can pay seven gold pieces to immediately place that builder onto any of the board spots, or pass and leave their builder on the seven spot. Either way, the next builder is drawn from the bag and placed on the six, and that player gets the same decision. After the first seven builders are drawn, placement of the builders onto the board is free. Of course, if owners of the first seven builders all pass, the first free builder will get their choice of anywhere on the board. After all of the builders are drawn in this manner, any that were passed over are now placed for free, in order from seven to one. Each player gets just three builders to allocate, and thus the choice is critical. Decreasing the penalty to place early works very well, but having all three of your builders drawn early can be difficult even if you could afford your choice of events. The start player has the option, once per round, to return a builder to the bag. Phase three is fast and the decisions have mostly been made by this point. Beginning at the top right of the board, each of the fourteen spots is resolved in order. Understanding each spot is important and drives the choice of how to deploy the builders. The first space is the event, and here one of the event cards is read aloud and the action affects all players. Space two is the Bishop\'s seat; any builder sent here protects its owner from a negative event, or the player can be affected by the event and choose instead to take any good from the market. Metal is not sold in the market, and thus can\'t be taken by this action. Space three is the Woolen Mill, and any player who sent workers here in phase one earns income from their workers. Space four holds two Advantage cards, and each has a specific claim space for the builder and these players take the corresponding cards. The Advantage cards are always helpful, and some are particularly useful. Some help through the rest of the game (take one stone each round, for example), while some are used when earned (take 8 Gold). Space 5 has two locations for builders; the first person to place gets two victory points, the second gets one. This is the most direct way to earn victory points in the game but they come slowly. Spaces 6 through 8 are the forest, quarry, and gravel pit, and here players who sent workers in Phase One cash in the Building cards taken to get their goods. Space 9 is the King\'s Court. Here a die is rolled and all players will be taxed two to five gold. If they can\'t pay, they lose victory points at one to one. Anyone who placed a builder here, though, is immune from the tax payment. In addition, the first builder to place here gets a metal cube and this makes the spot particularly attractive. Space 10 holds two Craftsman Cards, each specifically chosen like the Advantage Cards. Craftsmen taken in this manner do not have to be paid for with gold, but the five Craftsmen limit still applies. Space 11 is the ``temporary workers\'\' market. A builder placed here earns the player two gray workers that can be used in the next round to get goods, and then they are returned. Space 12 is the market, and here players can buy goods for set prices, or can sell excess goods for fixed prices to raise money. Metal can be sold at the market but cannot be bought there. Space 13 is the Cathedral, and this is where the bulk of the victory points are earned. Here, each player activates their Craftsmen cards by turning in the required goods to convert into points. Each craftsman requires specific inputs and has a limit as to how many times they can produce per round. At this point, the physical cathedral is constructed by placing one of the six cathedral pieces into the center of the board. Space 14 determines the next start player, and if no one chooses this the start player moves clockwise. Being start player helps in several ways, so it is normal is a four-player game for this spot to be taken. The game requires good planning and clever use of the craftsmen, judicious deployment of builders, carefully assessing the value of taking an Advantage card, using the market, and balancing the income and metal generation opportunities. In some ways there are too many things to do; this creates the opportunity for different strategies but the randomness of the events and the builder draw can put a crimp in the plans. Money is used to buy craftsmen, pay taxes, buy in the market, and deal with events, but doesn\'t earn victory points on its own. It never seems to be a problem until you run short. Every placement of a builder has the opportunity cost of the places not chosen; making one bad mistake here can be very damaging. The result is a substantial game that, when played well by all, results in tight scores and lots of discussion afterwards (If I had just ...; when you did that ...; if I had only known ...). The game will be published shortly by Rio Grande, and there is enough German text on the cards to make this edition worth the wait. That said, it is not hard to play in its original version with a simple cheat sheet now available on Boardgamegeek. The game is also now on BSW, and English-language patches for it are already available. One of the two big-box Säulen games at Essen this year (the other being Goldsieber\'s Die Säulen von Venedig), this game is a likely big hit among serious gamers and finished high on the Fairplay ratings from the fair. I just wonder how many readers will buy it and be totally stymied when they open the box! More ...     WE ALSO RECOMMEND...   Pillars of the Earth: Medieval Challenge £29.99 Pillars of the Earth Expansion Set £19.99

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