Friends
Alter
Spezial
Building towers in OLD florence
Firenze
Well-known mechanisms well recycled
Firenze was published 2010 by Pegasus Spiele and is, besides Nuremberg, published by Huch & friends, the new opus by Andreas Steding, who produced a surprise hit – at least for me – in 2009 with his Hansa Teutonica from Argentum Verlag. For all those who are familiar with Hansa Teutonica this will be sufficient to get them interested in Firenze. All others should go on reading all the same.
Players are taking on the guise of Patrician families in medieval Florence. Aim of the game is to build the most magnificent dynasty towers to acquire the most prestige. To do so you acquire action cards with new building blocks, you build towers and either score them or tear them down again. All this does not sound very innovative and it is not innovative. If you have been playing a few board games you will not be surprised by a new mechanism here, but the combination is new and very well done.
Players alternate in their turns, in each turn you implement 6 phases, some of which are optional, all others are compulsory.
Phase 1: Take card and blocks
On the board there is a display with 6 cards. The cards come into play randomly. On each card entering the game 4 blocks are placed. These blocks are drawn from a bag and have different colors, the allotment of colors is different, white blocks are the most prevalent, the purple one are most scarce.
The cards themselves are very different, too. There are cards with a one-time valid effect, cards with permanent effects or cards simply giving you victory points for the final scoring; they can be positive or negative.
In your turn you must take a card with all blocks on it. The first card in the row can be taken for free, all others must be paid for. You pay by placing one block from your personal stock onto each card in front of the card you want to take, provided you have the necessary number of blocks.
This mechanism very elegantly evens out the different values of the cards. On bad cards normally a great number of blocks accumulate, good cards are bought expensively.
In any case, in this mechanism the attraction of the game is manifest. The decision which card to take with which blocks makes it highly interesting, but an element of chance is inherent in it, too. The right combination of cards and blocks at the right moment can decide a game when action I running high.
Most of the time the color of the blocks is more important than the card itself, but to understand this correlation you must know the rest of the rules:
Phase 2: Swap blocks (optional)
After taking a card you have the opportunity to exchange three blocks from your personal stock for one block from the display. Of course, this is expensive, but sometimes necessary.
Phase 3: Build towers (optional)
The blocks you collect are not only used for payment on cards, but – much more important to build towers with them. A player can with nearly any number of blocks build any number of towers or expand them. But the number of newly built blocks must be paid for, too. If you use one or 2 blocks, it is free of charge, 3 blocks cost you one block, which is put into the bag from your stock, building 4 blocks costs you 3 blocks for the bag, 5 blocks have a price of 6 blocks and 6 blocks a price of 10 blocks, all go into the bag with the general stock of blocks.
A tower can only be built with blocks of one color, but can have any number of blocks and you can also build two towers of the same color.
Phase 4: Tear down ruins
Towers, that you did not touch in this round, that are towers that were not expanded or not newly built in this round, must be torn down again. The blocks from a torn-down tower go half (rounded down) into your stock and half into the bag. Of course tearing down a tower should be carefully avoided and requires careful planning over several rounds.
Phase 5: Score towers (optional)
Towers built can be scored. This earns the builder/owner prestige points. The blocks of a scored tower go back into the bag.
But you cannot score any tower just standing around. On the board for each color a tower is depicted showing levels 3-8, Each level shows a the number of victory points a player will receive when scoring a tower of this height and color. The higher a tower and the scarcer the color the more victory points you score. Then the player places a seal of his color onto this level. A tower corresponding to a level with a seal cannot be scored anymore. At the start of the game a number of neutral seals is distributed on the towers, how to do this is decided by the players.
In addition to this there are special building orders placed on certain towers. This enhances the value of the level, but the special orders must be filled in sequence of their numbers. This variable set-up of the game enhances the appeal to play again and enables experienced players to push or tone down certain strategies.
When a player has spent his last seal the end phase of the game begins. This player scores 5 points for placing his last seal, then all other players have one more turn and then the final scoring happens.
Phase 6: Check limits
At the end of turn players may not have more than 10 blocks in their personal stock and no more than 5 cards in play, a surplus must be discarded.
Endwertung
At the end of the game a final scoring is taking. For each color you check which player has built the most towers of this color, marked by seals on the board. If you did build the majority you score additional points; in case of a tie the highest point in the color decides. Again rare colors score more points than the more frequent ones. Then the points yielded by cards are scored and the player with the highest total of prestige points has won.
Fazit
The game offers the classic virtues of the so called “German Board Game“, enough strategic and tactical choices to continue to be of interest, with rules that are relatively simple and straightforward. I enjoy especially the mechanism for choosing the cards and blocks. It has been already been used in Vinci or Small World, but is used much more consequently here, because you must take a decision each round: it also leads to much more complex considerations here, as you must take into account the advantage and ability of the card, the number and color of the blocks and possibly resulting advantages and disadvantages for the other players.
The duration of the game of one hour is within normal limits. The game is intended for 2-4 players, and it can be recommended without reservations for all number of players, whereby games for 2 are naturally more tactical and less chance-driven then games of three or four. The components, too, leave nothing to desire, the quality is fine, the art is nice, as one can expect from Michael Menzel, and the wooden blocks are nice to touch and can be stacked easily.
If you like all that you should take a closer look at Firenze, in my opinion it is one of the highlights of the vintage.
Markus Wawra
Spieler : 2-4
Alter : ages 12 and up
Dauer : 45-90 min
Autor : Andreas Steding
Grafik : Michael Menzel
Titel : Ident
Preis : ca. 35 Euro
Verlag: Pegasus Spiele 2010
www.pegasus.de
Genre : A game of acquisition and building
Zielgruppe : With friends
Mechanismen : collect blocks, build towers
Kommentar:
Interesting selection mechanism
High factor of interaction, sometimes deciding chance element
Lots of tactics, some strategy
Nice components
Vergleichbar mit:
Thurn und Taxis, Vinci, Small World
Meine Wertung: 6
Markus Wawra
Firence is a nice game of building and acquisition with some strategic and tactical depths based on relatively simple rules. Add to this nice and high quality components, and you have all requirements that a modern board game should meet.
Zufall 2
Taktik 3
Strategie__ 2
Kreativität
Wissen_
Gedächtnis 1
Kommunikation
Interaktion 2
Geschicklichkeit
Action