Successor for King Thedorius
Crown of Emara
Care for Citizens on two boards
Once again, there is demand for a successor to the King. The Council of the Realm has, together with the King, devised a challenge k in which aspirants to the throne must achieve the greatest possible satisfaction of the residents of Emara.by catering to their needs and providing housing.
Crown of Emara is an expert’s game in set in a medieval background.
Already in the set-up of the game, Crown of Emara shows itself to be very different from many standard board games. Crown of Emara features two separate boards, one board represents the City, the other one the surrounding Countryside.
In general, during the game, you combine actions and movements of workers; an exact planning of moves and of the order in which actions are done is eminently important.
Each player commands two Counselors of Emara. One counselor moves on the City board in a circular movement, the other one does the same on the Countryside board.
Both boards are divided into four areas or locations.
Locations on the City board are Cathedral, Castle, Market and Construction Site.
Locations on the Countryside board are Forest, Grainfield, Quarry and Weaving Mill.
Another specialty is the scoring track, featuring two scoring mechanisms, but more on this later.
When you open the game box, you find copious game components, which already at that points lets me suspect - without having played the game - that the game is not the classic simple family game, an impression that is later confirmed in playing the game.
For setting up the game you put the two boards next to each other on the table. Then you select your color and places one counselor on each of the boards, into the given slot of his color.
The game comprises six rounds, and in each round each player has three turns.
One turn comprises three action options to be done in any order:
· Resolve the action card
· Resolve movement action
· Maybe resolve additional action
Playing of the action card not only determines which card action you will resolve, but also determines how many steps one of your counselors can move on his board.
Each player decides which of the three action he resolves first.
By moving his counselor on the Countryside board, a player can acquire various resources. Moving the counselor on the City board offers implementation of various actions.
Before I can go into more details on those action, I must give you a quick glimpse on the scoring track on which you mark/receive citizen points and building points.
During the game, you will keep acquiring again again citizen points as well as building points. At the end of the game, however, for each player only the lower value of those two point totals is important, because this lower value determines the real victory points accrued by a player.
City Board
On the City board you can give donations in the Cathedral and acquire books for those donations; those books can then be used in due course to acquire additional building and/or citizen points; furthermore, you receive a favor token at the Cathedral, which you can use immediately or later.
In the Castle, you receive one Signet ring, if you give a gift of one resource to the King. Those rings are almost always necessary for the additional action of Increasing your Noble Rank. You can also change one book for five building points in the Castle.
In the Market, you can swap one resource for one gold coin and can acquire a lot of citizen points by discarding books.
The Construction Site gives you various options to acquire building points and citizen points.
Countryside Board:
By moving the counselor on the Countryside board, players acquire resources: Wood, Cloth, Grain or Stone. On the Countryside board, there are three slots each on each of the four locations, where you can place one of your four craftsmen; those craftsmen increase your income or enable you to change grain into bread, which in turn allows you to acquire lots of citizen points at the Construction Site.
The game offers three additional actions: „Increase your Noble Rank“, „Hire a Craftsman“ and „Recruit an Advisor“.
Increasing your Noble Rank also gives you a lot of citizen points, but no other additional advantages.
Hire a Craftsman increases, as already mentioned, the income on the respective locations on the Countryside board, and, in addition, they also give you some citizen points.
Recruit an Advisor gives you either an instant effect or a once-only effect or a permanent effect. Those effects can be citizen points, building points, increase of income, reduction of costs or other effects.
The background story has little or nothing at all in common with the flow of the game. In general, the game is visually attractive, but is, however, seen from a games mechanics viewpoints, in some parts a bit overburdened.
The visual design of the cards must be praised as well done, the very detailed presentations support players with the use of good symbols and provide an easy understanding of the action options and their results.
Visually not so well-done is especially the City game board, which comes across as excessively ornate, and in the individual quarters of the city, as regards to game mechanisms, the actions possible there are too many which makes understanding the game and it can happen again and again that you overlook and therefore forget some action options when resolving actions. The meeples, discs and tiles in the game are very prettily designed and usually easily understood as regards to their value or their function.
Crown of Emara is not a family game, with the two boards and the numerous action options it is a game suitable for experienced players.
Of course, in theory, families with some gaming experience can play they game; but they will rarely manage optimum moves and probably will rather not win against real experienced players, as they will be prone to overlook better action options rather too often.
To achieve a correct timeline for resolving the close connections between the various cards, actions and movement of counselors will be too much of a demand for casual gamers and therefore they will not have a lot of fun with the game.
To all experienced players, experts and fans of complex games, this game can be recommended without restrictions.
An element of chance is inherent in the game, as you only have three cards in hand for a round and this restricts your options for selections as you do not always have the best action card in hand for the action that you would really need at a given points.
Experienced players usually can compensate for that rather well, but it can happen that the timing in the appearance of action cards in your hand can have a big impact on your game.
The down time between actions of players is nicely judged, only notorious ponderers can spoil that aspect for you. Usually, however, that is not too bad, as you are already busy with planning your own next move.
My husband and I, and a lot of players in our test games, have liked the game very much; some expert players in our round, however, were of the opinion that Crown of Emara is somewhat overburdened with action options at that the fun probably was not increased by that very extensive selection of actions. Probably, a reduced amount of options would have provided the same amount of fun in playing the game. All in all, the game offers a good mix of various game mechanisms and the interaction between the various aspects of the game is very well implemented.
My conclusion: Crown of Emara is a game for expert players, which will offer continuing fun in playing to many of those players. All the same, it will probably not top the list of expert game highlights, but will have a lot of fans among the group of experienced, but not absolutely expert, players.
Players with little gaming experienced are advised to try it somewhere before buying to make sure that they can manage to play it.
PS. The designer of the game, Benjamin Schwer, has previously developed the family game “Yeti”, also published by Pegasus, a well-received family game.
Maria Schranz
Players: 1-4
Age: 12+
Time: 45-75+
Designer: Benjamin Schwer
Artist: Dennis Lohausen, Jens Wiese, Andreas Resch
Price: ca. 39 Euro
Publisher: Pegasus Spiele 2018
Web: www.pegasus.de
Genre: Worker placement, card management
Users: For experts
Version: multi
Rules: de en + es nl pt
In-game text: no
Comments:
Many options
Optimum action not always easy to find
Very beautiful components
Well-interlocking mechanisms
Compares to:
Die Tore der Welt
Other editions:
999 Games (nl), Ediciones MasQueOca (es pt)
My rating: 6
Maria Schranz:
I like the game very well, and can recommend it to all experienced and expert gamers; however, I believe that it would provide lots of fun if the plethora of options would be reduced a bit.
Chance (pink): 1
Tactic (turquoise): 3
Strategy (blue): 3
Creativity (dark blue): 0
Knowledge (yellow): 0
Memory (orange): 0
Communication (red): 1
Interaction (brown): 1
Dexterity (green): 0
Action (dark green): 0