OUR REVIEW
CONQUEST BY MOVING
KHAN
PLACE AND COVER YURTS
- I want to play something new today.
- Well, there are several new games for you.
- Something where I can settle and conquer regions?
- OK, I have an idea? Anything else?
- A little bit nasty but no nasty that you do not talk to me for the rest of the week!
- That can be arranged. Any other requirements?
- Well, if you ask … we are three at the moment, but it should work as well for two as it does for four players!
- You can’t imagine how well you have summarized Khan. I will put it on the table instantly and we can start.
Everybody has heard about the Mongolian Empire or Genghis Khan. Our game is taking place exactly there, in Genghis Khans realm which ranged from Eastern Europe to the pacific. We are Mongolian Khans which invade the regions, drive off the local rulers and take the land for ourselves. Taking over or conquering is our special characteristics, we do not need to build armies, we are the armies.
The board shows the land regions we are supposed to conquer, featuring sic different landscapes. The board also features 8 local rulers, on each of the landscape squares there is one pawn. In the course of the game players try to place their personal yurts on the board and then overbuild those yurts with conquest tiles. Not the yurts, but only the conquest tiles will yield victory points at the end of the game.
- Wait a minute. Genghis Khan is ok, Mongolia is okay, but what is a yurt?
- A yurt is a circular tent, which are the housing facilities of the Mongolian people.
A conquest tile can only be placed if it can be completely placed on yurts. The tile can only be placed by a player who has the sole or a shared majority in yurts underneath such a conquest tile. The yurts of the 8 original, local rulers are not taken into account to determine majorities, they are considered to be neutral.
Juraj: It’s cute to allow a conquest tile only to be placed over your own yurt and many others --- but the only thing is, you must see to it that those other yurts are neutral ones. So no shared majorities come into play and I get to score all the points myself. J
This is exactly the way it is done: The player who holds the majority of yurts underneath the conquest tile is considered to be the owner of the tile and scores the victory points at the end of the game. If several players are tied in the majority the victory points are divided and if necessary rounded down.
- Well, now I know what’s happening, but you could start to explain how we do it.
- That’s what I was just going to do.
On the board we already have the local rulers and next to their images there are five spaces for yurts. These yurts are placed there and are used for counting down to the final phase of the game. There are additional neutral yurts at the bottom of the board. Now players can, depending on the number of players, place between one and three of their own yurts on the board. Thereby the must stick to the rule, that there cannot be two yurts in the same landscape. In the later course of the game cards are used for every kind of action. These cards have three different characteristics and can therefore be used for more than one purpose. Each card shows a type of landscape, a ruler and a direction.
Monika: The direction is indicated on a compass rose and is somewhat unclear, lots of players had problems getting used to this feature.
Each player is dealt four such cards and also special cards. The 40 yurts in his personal color are at hand.
The essential feature of the game are the irregular, kind of serrated, pieces, which remind me of Blokus tiles. The smaller ones are in play several times, the larger ones are available only once. All of those tiles or pieces have a number, which denotes the number of victory points this tile will earn you. Some of the tiles are of a different color – a stone path instead of boards; these are bridges which must be built across the river on the board.
A player’s turn consists of 3 phases.
In the first phase you draw a card from the face-down pile. You show the card to all other players and move the ruler depicted on the card, in the direction indicated on the card. On the square the ruler has just vacated a neutral yurt is placed. This yurt comes from the ones next to the ruler’s portrait on the board. You can only decide if the ruler moves 1, 2 or 3 squares. The ruler can move across occupied squares, but can end his move on an empty square only. If such a square is not available in the direction indicated, the next one in clockwise direction is taken.
In the second phase you have two actions. You can even do the same action twice and can choose from:
1. Invade a region. You play a card from your hand and place a yurt on a square in the corresponding landscape.
2. Chase off a ruler. You play a card from your hand and move any ruler in the direction indicated on the card, over a distance of 1-3 squares. In this case the yurt is taken from the bottom of the board. You cannot speed up the game this way.
3. Conquer. You take a conquest tile and place it over yurts on the board. It is important that all squares beneath the conquest tile – with the exception of river squares – are occupied by yurts and that you have the majority in these yurts. So that you know who has the majority beneath a conquest tile all players who are part of the majority place one of their yurts on top of the tile. The victory points are scored at the end of the game and split in case of shared majorities.
If you believe that you cannot do anything useful with the cards in hand, you can use both actions of this phase for one blind invasion into a region without having to consider the type of landscape.
In the third phase you can use one of your special cards. These special cards can allow you a third action in your turn, or protect your own or neutral yurts from conquest for a round or can reserve tiles for the duration of a round.
Monika: The special cards should not be saved to the end of the game, where they will be of no use at all. And there is also the well-thought out mechanism that the same yurts cannot be protected by several players.
Your turn ends with drawing cards to make up your hand to four cards again. Now it is the next player’s turn and he plays his three phases, and so on and so on.
When a ruler cannot move at all on the board – all squares in his neighborhood that he can reach are already taken or if he has placed his last yurt, he is taken off the board. The final phase of the game is started instantly when the 5th ruler is taken off. In this final phase players only play phase 2 of their turn and may still use the action conquest. Play goes one until nobody can do a conquest action anymore.
Then victory points are scored. These are awarded for each conquest tile you own and you can earn a bonus for the biggest connected area. Counting victory points is a terrible job and the game lacks a track for victory points. What makes it even worse is that not only people with motor function problems have problems when placing yurts as well when counting and taking them away.
Zdena: When playing with two players, you can start as if playing two solo games, but finally you will have to enter confrontations. If was fun, regardless whether confrontations started at the beginning or came into play later.
Juraj: There were moments when I thought the cards were not coming properly. But then I grasped that I have so many possibilities for my turn that this does not matter at all.
Peter: When playing with four you cannot predict at all what other players might do. You can see how they could hurt you, or what would be best for them but the question remains. Will the do it? Can they do it?
Monika: The best games were those with two and three players. In the game with four you cannot do strategic moves properly. Your own strategy simply turns into tactics answering the moves of other players.
Monika Dilliverová
Players: 2-4
Age: 10+
Time: 60+
Designer: Christwart Conrad
Artist: David Cochard
Price: ca. 35 Euros
Publisher: Huch & Friends 2010
Web: www.huchandfriends.de
Genre: Placement game with cards
Users: With friends
Version: de
Rules: de en fr nl
In-game text: no
Comments:
Very attractive components * Topic nicely implemented * very little strategy possible in a game of four * handling, especially for scoring, rather difficult
Compares to:
Placement games for area majorities
Other editions:
White Goblin Games
My rating: 5
Monika Dillingerová:
A beautiful game if you play with two or three, with four I considered that it had too little planning; despite the topic the atmosphere of the game remains rather abstract
Chance (pink): 2
Tactic (turquoise): 3
Strategy (blue): 0
Creativity (dark blue): 0
Knowledge (yellow): 0
Memory (orange): 0
Communication (red): 0
Interaction (brown): 3
Dexterity (green): 0
Action (dark green): 0