OUR REVIEW
There is many a castle in france
LA LOIRE
Trade and postal routes between Chambord and villandry
Is said that there are more than 400 castles which enchant visitors along the Loire and subsidiary valleys. The names of Chambord, Amboise, Chinon, Cheviny and Villandry - to name only a few of them - have brought back memories of an unforgettable holiday, of a trip that I can only recommend to everybody. So, when I discovered the game by “Mind the Move” in Essen, I decided instantly to buy the game, especially as designer Emanuele Ornella was familiar to me (from Oltre Mare, 2003). So there was nothing for me but to go to the booth and buy the proverbial pig in a poke. Well, as we have arrived at proverbs: Not all that glitters is gold! My reasons for that are coming up:
It starts with a rulebook of six pages that comes across like one of 340 pages; which not necessarily must be wrong, despite my being not in favor of games for which reading the rules takes longer than playing them. But here I must criticize that the main portion is printed so small that a magnifying glass would be useful.
The Board:
The board is put together from four parts that are assembled like a puzzle and are meant to depict the valley of the Loire from Nantes to Orleans and show 20 townships and castles. This plenitude means that the locations in relation to the size of the board are only 2 or 3 centimeters apart, which not only renders the board confusing but turns into a real problem when playing with the full complement of four players. On both sides of the rivers, to the north and south, a road connects the different locations. In the right-hand top corner you find a track holding seven tiles that can be removed from the board, I will get back to their meaning later.
The game play:
Each player is given a trader (playing piece) and a Messenger (Wooden Cube) as well as a ship (wooden disc) of his color. Furthermore, the game comprises horses (white discs) which influence the range of pieces. Apart from the fact that this configuration is rather commonplace and uncreative (ships have been represented much better in lots of games) the use of traders or messengers together with horses turns out to be very cumbersome and demands - due to the narrowness of the board - a lot of motor skills from players.
The Trader begins his game in Nantes and the Messenger in the opposite direction, in Orleans. The Trader can in his travels buy the commodities assigned to the respective villages (Beer, Grain, Wood and Cheese) which he then can sell in town. With the exception of wood the limit for all other goods is one unit! The tiles I previously mentioned regulate the buying price for commodities from 1 to 4 Denars due to changing arrangement of the tiles on occasion of a buy. After each buy the corresponding tile goes to the utmost right and raises the price to the maximum while the tile previously there moves to the left and results in a lower price for the commodity. When the Trader is in town he can acquire buildings (farm, monastery, and castle) for the villages or set up a palace in town. This helps him to acquire advantages for future buys. On top of this your own ship moves downstream on the Loire river which results in one three ways to accrue victory points.
Procedures are encumbered by the fact that there must be equilibrium on both sides of the river, meaning that you can only set up an additional building of any kind when such a building exists on the other side.
Another way to acquire advantages is to buy a character card. Those cards are available from the “Circus” that moves from location to location. Character cards change the respective commodity limits or extend your movement possibilities or reduce costs for buildings etc. Twenty of those possibilities are available, a detailed description of all available characters is clearly beyond the limits of this review. It is important to know, though, that the cards are coupled with victory points, thus providing the second means to acquire points and to win.
Let’s take a look now at the second character in the game, the Messenger. He is meant to represent the postal service that was set up in the Loire valley in the 15th century. While the Trader moves between locations to acquire low-priced commodities in order to sell them with a profit in Orleans or Nantes the Messenger moves in the other direction to acquire “messages” and to deliver them, Those messages have a value of 1 to 4, and you need an apprentice or assistant character card to deliver messages of higher value. On the one hand delivered messages create income, but more important on the other hand are victory points marked on them, representing the 3rd means to win the game.
Now we take a look at the components of the game, which in my opinion have been chosen rather randomly and without an eye on possibilities. There are better ways to represent horses and ships than using discs of different color. TO use a plain Pöppel for the Trader might just be tolerable, but to use a simple wooden cube for the messenger as well as for a message, only a bigger one, is, to say the least, rather rather unimaginative.
Well, I was not expecting horses similar to those from the classic „Jockey“ game, but the lure of a game partly is in its components, isn’t it? Just think of „Myrmes” and its cute ants! No comparison there! In my opinion the graphics of the game did leave the designer rather stranded. There are game boards that simple force you to try out the game, independent of its quality (Waka Waka comes to mind, where the game board scores higher for me than does the game itself). But there‘s no accounting for taste! What could have been achieved as regards to visual effects with a bigger board! With the one provided the famous magnificent castles are depicted as meager houses. But maybe my expectations have been too high and thus could not be met by the game and have resulted in my rather harsh verdict. For me, La Loire is a simple movement game that has been overdone and rendered unnecessarily complex and also made more difficult due to the narrowness of the board. I would advise to go to the Loire Valley directly, you will have more fun this way.
Rudolf Ammer
Players: 1-4
Age: 10+
Time: 120+
Designer: Emanuele Ornella
Art: Mattia Mentastro
Price: ca. 35 Euro
Publisher: Mind the Move 2012
Web: www.mindthemove.com
Genre: Trade and transport game
Users: With friends
Special: 1 player
Version: multi
Rules: de en
In-game text: no
Comments:
Very simple, only functional components
Board is too small for a full complement of players
Rather simple mechanisms
Compares to:
All games where you buy in A and sell in B
Other editions:
Ystari, France
My rating: 3
Rudolf Ammer:
Unfortunately the game suffers from bad graphics as well as from a board that is way too small
Chance (pink): 0
Tactic (turquoise): 1
Strategy (blue): 2
Creativity (dark blue): 0
Knowledge (yellow): 0
Memory (orange): 0
Communication (red): 0
Interaction (brown): 0
Dexterity (green): 0
Action (dark green): 0