our review

monuments Set up in preparation

Tumult Royal

last in place will be last in place

Ben, I am your father! Many decades ago, long before the Millennium, I did already win Game of the Year in Germany several times. And together we might now maybe be able to rule the entire board game galaxy. But you need not be afraid, we will not make over Catan into a Star Wars clone (which, by the way, Trekkies out there would never condone), but create something entirely new – may the clemency of the people be with us!

This might be a possible dialogue in the House of Teuber in the age of the Third Trilogy. And, in fact, father Klaus Teuber’s life work so far is not only impressive due to its abundance, but also due to the many award-winning titles in this abundance – among them four times the award “Spiel des Jahres” for “Drunter & Drüber”, “Barbarossa und die Rätselmeister”, “Adel verpflichtet” and of course – the one game that outshines all others – “Die Siedler von Catan”. Given all this, it would be very understandable, if the next generation would prefer to do any other job but creating and developing games. Not so Benjamin Teuber! Admittedly, he does not enter the board game stage totally on his own, but with the support and assistance of his already famous father, but, remember, each Padawan needs the instructions by a master to be able to become a master himself in the future.

 „Tumult Royal“ belongs into the group of hectic „grab and collect games“ and might be compared, for instance, with „Mondo“ or “Ubongo“, both games that are usually rather fun to play: All players simultaneously grab tiles from the common stock, on the one hand to be able to do something with them immediately and, on the other hand, to be able to grab and use additional tiles until the timer has run out. A disadvantage of those games is, that many players do not cotton on to the stress times when assembling tiles and, therefore, gameplay usually is not balanced, particularly due to the fact that the necessary motor skills and a sufficiently quick grasp on changing situations are not equal in all players. „Tumult Royal“, however, is played somewhat differently: First you also collect rather hectically, but the subsequent building is done in a quiet phase so that nobody can fall victim to hurried errors. And to make sure that faster and more dexterous players do not have too much of advantage they are penalized with the loss of collected tiles. So all players should carefully consider - before the joint raid on the tiles starts – how greedy they want to be when collecting to make sure that the individual building plans can be successfully implemented, as a tile that has been taken is at the same time secure and non-returnable into stock!

The topic is rather atmospheric, we embody arrogant and at the same time eccentric and cranky noblemen who want to bless the whole country with their statues. The materials necessary for those statues are represented by commodity tiles who show, on their front side, either one, two or three units of bread, marble or tools, with marble looking like sugar cubes, more or less. Those commodities are simple pinched from the people, which is – in gameplay terms – represented by the simultaneous grabbing of tiles from common stock, while the sand runs down relentlessly in the timer. After a few rounds you will find out that the time factor is less of a problem than supposed at the beginning and that there will be enough time to collect suitable tiles after all. The dilemma is more in the decision if a tile that you picked up is suitable or not. To simply collect as much as you can will only help in a very limited way; when you take too much away from the people they get back at you repeatedly with the name giving tumults. For this purpose you randomly determine a value between Two and Five on a spinner; this number of commodities of each kind the people would like to see remaining in stock at the end of the general collecting phase. However, as a certain number of tiles is randomly removed from stock at the start of the joint raid, we cannot know but only suppose and hope for the number of tiles of each variety that might be available from the face-down common start at the start of the collecting phase.

When the modest wishes of the people are met after the running down of the final grain of sand, all players may keep the tiles they collected and use them in the consecutive building phase. But if there is a smaller number of items left in one, two or all three of the varieties of commodities, the tumult – for each commodity variety - hits the player who wanted to get away with most items of that commodity (NOT with most tiles of this commodity); he must give back all tiles but one of this commodity and the one he can keep must be the one showing the fewest items of the commodity among his tiles of the commodity Furthermore, he is penalized with the loss of three of his supporters; those supporters represent a kind of currency in the game.

So, tactically, you have fundamentally those three options to choose from: Either be modest and moderate in collecting, which here, however, is less of a virtue that a restriction for the following building phase. Or you can grab more and at the same time try to be at least less greedy than your fellow players. Which in turn is not as easy as it sounds as all players set down the tiles they collect face-down. Or to strive to collect one tile of each of the commodity varieties with each showing three items, because even if you should turn out to be the greediest with that tile you will not be penalized too much as you are entitled to keep one tile in any case. However, even this sounds a lot more peasant’s cunning that it turns out to be in real game play, as everybody tries to collect those coveted three-item tiles and – alas - you do not know if those tiles are even available from stock in the current round. Thus it might be more of a nobleman’s cunning to secure for yourself several tiles that only give you one or two items, in the hope that the people will let you get away with it in the current round?

This turbulent, thrilling and challenging collection and tumult phase of the game can be viewed as the very well-working core element of the game. The rest of the current round, unfortunately, is more or less only used to convert the collected tiles into victory points or to administrate them and – seen from the gameplay point of view – come across rather more as a “necessary evil” than a real entertaining pleasure: The tiles that you collected are in the next phase rather time-consuming converted into statues that are then placed on the board; a certain amount of interaction, however, is happening as you can try to restrict the options for expansions for your fellow players.

If it happens that you cannot even place at least one single statue, you receive a consolation price, admittedly a (very) small one, in the guise of two free supporters; as an exception from the exception the rules says that this consolation is not given if you were involved in one of the three possible previous tumults. This, to me, seems to be a multiple inelegant regulation as regards the game’s target group game: On the one hand you must remember who did trigger a tumult or was victim to it, on the other hand this only intensifies the frustration element that is creeping in: I don’t get anything and because I don’t get anything I again do not get anything at all!

Rather inelegant or somewhat too complicated, too, is the basic income as regards to the supporters of a player: You always receive a number of supporters when you overpay the construction of a statue with commodities. For a statue on a meadow square you need one item of bread and one item of marble; if you use two tiles with two items of bread and three items of marble you receive, in addition to the statue, three supporters, that is, the difference between cost and price paid. So far so good and understandable. But, however, I am not allowed to hand in an „unnecessary“ number of surplus tiles to receive additional supporters. So I also do not receive supporters for tiles which I could not use to set up statues, I must return those unused tiles into common stock, which makes sense as regards to atmosphere and topic - it’s your own fault, you should not have been senselessly and uselessly greedy- but as regards to gameplay this enhances the frustration element.

And what’s the use for those supporters anyway? In each round you are crowned King or Queen if you have most supporters. The new King is rewarded with carrot and stick, so to say, he is allowed to set up one or two statues for free, but then loses five supporters instantly so that a change in power is facilitated for the next game round. A bit of pity is to be found among the people for the royals left behind, those may be graciously more greedy in the next round than the more fortunate fellow players: When the most greedy nobleman for each commodity is determined the player(s) in last place may reduce the number of commodities by one item, so that they are less likely to be hit by tumults despite being greedy and the rebellious buck is passed to another player.

Amongst others, this mechanism can help the royal chase to catch up with others; but if you are too far behind in your score this will be difficult all the same, due to the fact that each round - with the same seven permanently repeated phases– starts essentially with the status that was achieved before. To make sure that too big a distance between the players in first and last place does not end up in long-term frustration, a game can be over earlier than the maximum ten rounds, when the difference between the victory points (the number of set-up statues, respectively) of the players currently in first and last place exceeds a certain value determined by the statues last placed on the track – in a way a new version for a kingmaker effect.

The components are designed wittily and gender-balanced and also support the flow of the gameplay, for instance with summaries, very well. Yet the box comes without an inlay, so that a noble chaos can evolve – a fact that surprises in a product from Kosmos, a company more known for packing lots of air into a game due to unnecessarily generous box inlays.

The flow of each round is, as mentioned, separated into a hectic and cute collecting phase and a quiet construction and administration phase. Due to the not-too-long duration of the game the repetitive play does not cause irritation, but the somewhat long-winded construction and administration phase dominates in the flair of the game to the disadvantage of the more felicitous collecting phase. The option for a premature end of the game has been resolved very cleverly.

With „Schmuggler“ Father and Son Teuber have already presented their second joint creation. If they continue with this speed, the two of them will probably finalize their FIRST TRILOGY in this year. Furthermore, “Schmuggler” – read and be astonished – contains “intelligent” putty; probably with this proof is about to be established that – if not intelligent life after all – there might be at least any form of intelligence in a galaxy far, far away.

Harald Schatzl

Players: 2-4

Age: 10+

Time: 40+

Designer: Benjamin and Klaus Teuber

Artist: Franz und Imelda Vohwinkel

Price: ca. 30 Euro

Publisher: Kosmos 2015

Web: www.kosmos.de

Genre: Collect, construct

Users: For families

Version: de

Rules: cz de en

In-game text: yes

Comments:

Cute, witty topic and design

Frustration elements are inherent

Not recommended for two players

No box inlay

Compares to:

Ubongo, Mondo

Other editions:

Kosmos (en), Dino (cz)

My rating: 5

Harald Schatzl:

Tumult Royal is a fun collecting and construction game for families and casual players, offering an amusing topic and an excellent mix of chance and tactics.

Chance (pink): 2

Tactic (turquoise): 1

Strategy (blue): 0

Creativity (dark blue): 0

Knowledge (yellow): 0

Memory (orange): 1

Communication (red): 0

Interaction (brown): 2

Dexterity (green): 0

Action (dark green): 0