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Main Catalogue | BOARD GAMES & CARD GAMES | Rio Grande Games | St. Petersburg

St. Petersburg

Price: £27.99

Board game, 2-4 players, ages 10+, by Rio Grande Baroque palaces, wide boulevards, and elegant bridges: St Petersburg. On May 16, 1703, Czar Peter the Great lays the foundation for the first building. Quickly impressive buildings are erected that are ever more grand and beautiful. Such buildings bring the aristocracy glory and the players victory points. But you need traders to bring the rubles necessary for all this magnificence, otherwise, the buildings are empty and bare. But the competition never sleeps and may grab needed cards right from under your nose. St Petersburg: the card game of beautiful living on the Neva. ++++++++++++ Counter review ++++++++++++ 2-4 players, 45-60 minutes designed by Bernd Brunnhofer (*) reviewed by Stuart Dagger This is a difficult game to describe, and the problem lies not with the mechanics, which are simple enough, but in assigning it to a category and in conveying what it is actually about. Nominally, of course, it is about the building of St Petersburg, the city that Peter the Great created from nothing in the early 18th century. Victory over the Swedes had given him access to the Baltic and he used this to build a new capital city which would open up links with Western Europe. Given all that, you\'d expect a board showing a site plan and that you\'d be making decisions on what buildings to put where. And that isn\'t what you get, for all that happens in this game is that you buy cards. Another meaningless title then? No, not that either, because I\'m quite sure that this is a game where the theme did come first and the game wouldn\'t make sense if it wasn\'t about the building of, if not St. Petersburg, then something very like it. The cards are divided into four decks: artisans, buildings, administrators and upgrades and they are activated one at a time, thereby splitting each round into four phases. (The German rules have the administrators labelled as ``aristocrats\'\', but since the people shown have job descriptions running from scribes up to judges, this doesn\'t make a lot of sense. What these people are is ``white collar workers\'\'. They work for a living and the whole point of being an ``aristocrat\'\' is that you don\'t. My dog is an aristocrat.) There is a board, but it is a plain affair with just a scoring track, spaces for the four decks and for two rows each of 8 cards. The game begins with four wooden tokens being dished out to the players. These correspond to the four decks and they determine who goes first in each of a round\'s four phases. The tokens shift clockwise at the end of each round. In Round 1, Phase 1 twice as many artisan cards as there are players are dealt face-up on to the board. Players then take it in turns to do one of three things: buy a card take a card into hand (at no cost) play a card from hand (paying at this stage) pass This continues round and round until either there are no cards left on offer or until everyone has passed consecutively. When you buy a card, you place it face up in front of you. Cards taken into hand are ones that you intend to pay for and bring into play later, but you can\'t do too much of this as there is a hand limit of three. Artisan cards bring income and pay out at the end of each ``artisan phase\'\'. In a game where you spend your time buying things, income is obviously important and so, provided people are being sensible, what will happen in this initial phase is that each player will buy and play two cards. (If someone decides not to be sensible, I suggest giving them a smack round the ear and starting again, for they have not only lost the game for themselves but have almost certainly unbalanced it for everybody else.) In all subsequent phases the procedure is that you make the number of cards available back up to 8 by dealing new ones from the current deck and then going through the same player routine as in the first phase - buy, take into hand or pass, and keep going until no one can or wishes to take further action. In Phase 2 it is the building cards that come on stream; in Phase 3 the administrators; and in Phase 4 the upgrades. For the most part buildings bring in victory points while the administrators deliver a mix of money and VP. As with the artisans, they both pay out at the end of their respective phases. The upgrades are a little different. Each of them is a replacement which will increase the benefits from a card from one of the other decks. You pay the difference in price, discard the card being replaced and put the new one in its place. There are no payouts at the end of this phase. When cards are first dealt on to the board they are placed in the upper of the two rows, where they remain until either they are taken by a player or it is the end of the round. At the end of the round, any remaining cards in this top row are moved to the bottom one and any in the bottom row are discarded. The significance of a card being in the bottom row is that you get a discount on the price. You also get discounts when you buy a card that is a duplicate of one you already have. The game continues until one of the four decks is exhausted. The rest of the round is then played out and you add up. In addition to the VP that players have accumulated during the game, there is a small bonus for any cash you have left and a much larger one for the number of different administrators you have in your collection. The second of these follows the triangular scale (1-3-6-10-15- etc) and so is potentially very important to the final result. There are also penalties for any cards that remain in your hand, cards that you took that you took but have not yet paid for. This probably all sounds very simple and maybe even a little dull, but in fact it is neither of those and the reason for this is the cunning that has gone into the detail: the price of things, when your money arrives (which never seems to be quite at the right time) and how new cards are fed into the system. As with a lot of good games, St Petersburg makes things difficult by giving you neither the time nor the money to do all the things you would like to do and the result of that is lots of hard decisions. You want buildings because of the VP they give you throughout the game; you want administrators because of the income and the significant endgame bonus; and yet the prices are such that it is difficult to afford both, and even more difficult to get them into play soon enough to optimise their benefits. This has been a good six months for new games and in my view this is one of the best of them. However, to that recommendation I would also add a warning: it is some time since I came across a game where it was so easy to lose in the first round and to do so without making the sort of mistake that you should have seen before making it. When this happens the game can turn into a procession and our first two games did. Both times one player made a much better job of getting the money side right in the first round and a bit and just pulled away steadily thereafter. Since then we have been on our guard, have known what not to do and the games have been properly competitive. Because of this I am going to end with what is a departure for me and hand out some advice. I would normally shy away from doing this, because although I love playing games, I make no claim to be a master strategist; I make an exception this time, because it might well make a deal of difference to how well the game is received in your group. 1. It is obvious that you should buy as many artisan cards as you can in the first round. If everybody does this, you each get two. This will give you all a starting income of 6, which is nothing like enough. Consequently you also want to buy at least your share of the artisan cards that will become available in Phase 1 of Round 2. Bear that in mind throughout Round 1 and do not forget that, apart from the odd coin that you might pick up from an administrator card, you will not get any more income until the end of the first phase of round two, which is after the opportunity to buy new artisan cards is past. The money you have at the end of the first phase of round one has to fund, not just the rest of your round one purchases, but the next set of artisan cards as well. 2. Cheap cards are available in both decks, but you can\'t afford to buy both a good building card and a good administrator card in round one. Which to go for is a judgement call and will depend to some extent on what is available and where you sit in the two phase orders, but when deciding bear in mind that the administrator brings in money and that at this point in the game you need all you can get. You should also not forget that end of game bonus for different administrators. Because of the way cards come into the game it can be difficult to make up ground in this section once you have fallen behind. Even if you don\'t buy one of these cards, you should at least take one into hand. If you opt instead for a strategy based on buildings, don\'t be half-hearted about it and look to upgrade them as quickly as possible. Unpromoted buildings just bring in victory points; promoted ones bring in cash as well and that difference is enough to make the strategy competitive. 3. Think twice before going into the exchange card phase with a full hand of three cards, as there is very likely to be something here that you want to take into hand. Administrator upgrades should be taken when available, as they are a big help towards that endgame bonus. Delay actually playing such a card until you have a duplicate ``basic\'\' administrator to replace. 4. When faced with a marginal decision on whether or not to take a card into hand, stop to figure out how many new cards are going to appear at the start of the next phase and how this number relates to where you will be sitting in the phase order. 5. Do read the ``tips and tactical observations\'\' section of the rulebook. In most rulebooks such sections don\'t go beyond stating the blindingly obvious, but this one has worthwhile things to say. I have played the game several times with three players and once with two. Both numbers work fine and I believe that the 4-player version would be just as good. The one difference between the different player numbers I would note is that, because of the way the length of the game is tied to the exhaustion of one of the card decks, fewer players is likely to translate into larger holdings per player by the end of the game. A consequence of that is that the bonuses for numbers of administrators are likely to be bigger. You will need to bear that in mind when choosing your strategy. There is a ceiling on the bonuses and so the situation doesn\'t get out of control, but it is still something you need to watch. (*) The name on the box is ``Michael Tummelhofer\'\', but this is a pseudonym for Bernd Brunnhofer, who, as the boss of Hans im Glück, didn\'t want to put his own name there, even though he is the game\'s sole designer. The name chosen is an amalgam of elements from those of Michael Bruinsma (whose company 999 Games publishes Dutch editions of HiG games), Jay Tummelson (of Rio Grande Games, who do the English editions) and Bernd\'s own.

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Main Catalogue | BOARD GAMES & CARD GAMES | Rio Grande Games | St. Petersburg

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