Unsere Rezension
Wien 1897
Würfel-Placement wie im Königsburgenland
„Wien, Wien, nur du allein ….“ A famous song on Vienna stating that Vienna alone should be the city of one’s dreams, but is it also the city of board game dreams? So far, the really interesting crop - as regards to games and playability - has been a rather meagre one. Basically, there have only been Wien/Vienna editions of “Monopoly” and “DKT”, in the recent past Vienna versions of “Cluedo” and “Catan” joined the club. On top of this, we noticed the quiz - guessing - assessing game “Wiener Sammelsurium” - based on the book by the same name, written by Harald Havas”; the still actual “Wien!” on the other hand is a version of “London: The Board Game” and “Ganz Wien” is more or less targeting the rather non-games-playing uses of the Viennese public transport system. One reason for the nearly complete blank for Vienna on the play-games map might be that designer and publisher enter dangerous grounds with such a project. As is well known, Viennese people love to moan, grumble, complain and nag a lot and the so-called “golden Viennese heart” can turn out to be rather bitchy and mean, and therefore it could happen that a board game with a Viennese topic might met with some nagging malice.
Lo and behold, a typical Viennese is approaching, let’s hear what he has to say about this board game:
„Aha, ‘Vienna’, something new again, and by a German publisher. That’s what I call courageous! And this Johannes Schmidauer-König surely is a Kraut, too. No? Oh well, he comes from Upper Austria. Well …. Don’t know him, has he published something else before? He did? Ah, well,’ Dog Royal`, a version of ´Dog`, this ´Mensch ärgere Dich nicht` version with cards. Really, he is a pianist? So, a multi -talented person - well, let’s wait and see!”
But why ‘Vienna’, here in Vienna you should speak German, Song Contest or no Song Contest. Is probably only meant for tourists anyway. What’s the topic? We are meant to assume the role of a shitty - what?! - Ah, no, a shifty man about town and aspire to climb the social ladder in Vienna. As we have just arrived in Vienna, we take a coach to move about - what do you mean, a coach?! - The Viennese rolls his eyes - “in Vienna a coach is called Fiaker; so, we move across Vienna in a Fiaker and try to win favor with important persons in many different locations to win more influence with their help. Influence, why camouflage things - it’s the usual victory points that we are after again.
Let’s fold open the game board: This looks like Brügge, well, small wonder, the graphics of the board have been done by Michael Menzel again. But it looks a bit paler, Brügge is the better design of the two. And there are lots of tourist attractions - Riesenrad/Ferries Wheel, St. Stephen’s Cathedral, Castle Schönbrunn, and so on. Comes across a bit haphazardly thrown together. Well, it is a dice game, after all” - the Viennese laughs loudly over his well-placed pun - “but, look, how nice, on the back side of the board you have Vienna at night, that would have pleased Rainhard Fendrich a lot, may God rest his soul. Oh, he is not dead yet, I got him mixed up with Udo Jürgens! He is the dead one! And look, that’s funny - there’s light in nearly all the windows, but not in the City Hall, here we go, lazy magistrates. But it’s a pity, too, somehow - the illuminated ballroom has a certain allure. And the Riesenrad is completely in the dark, too, they could have illuminated a cabin or two. Do you remember, Mitzi, the two of us on the Emperor’s Meadow and the Riesenrad behind it?” - The Viennese glances sentimentally at Mitzi who takes a sip of Grüner Veltliner - “just a moment, Riesenrad in the 19th century? Ah, yes, that works out, they built it in 1897, but then they could have called the game “Vienna at 1900”, that would really have been a given.
Schorschi, unpack the 44 character cards! Oh no, they only show ten different images, well in Brügge Menzel did take a lot more trouble, there is something different depicted on each of the 165 cards. Or maybe the publisher was too stingy; typical German, the have money for Greece and then they begin to economize in a game called´Vienna’“ – the Viennese laughs heartily at his own “successful” flippancy - “and what do we have on those character cards? Probably Klimt, Mahler, Schnitzler, Otto Wagner and so on? No, only some general characters, well, at least there is a Pompfüneberer (undertaker), and this one here could be the Zombie version of Emperor Franz Josef“ - again the Viennese laughs at this „felicitous“ flippancy - „come on, why didn’t they take some of the typical Viennese blokes for their templates, there was an exhibition on those only two years ago at the Wien Museum, for instance the washer woman, the lavender women, the ‘Pülcher’ (small-time criminal), or the shoemaker’s apprentice or the market vender, and so on?
Anyhow, let’s take a closer look at this game board: A road is winding its way like a snake from the top left-hand corner to the bottom right-hand corner, from Prater to a Heuriger, with the Ringstraße in-between, comprising a total of 24 squares and a special case. Well, that at least is a somewhat logical sequence, if you would move from Prater to Schönbrunn and finally to a Heurigen in Mauer. But why did they not take the map of Vienna and - after moving along Praterstraße - did a tour around Ringstraße - after all Ringstraße celebrates its 150 Years Anniversary this year - and finished off with a detour to St. Stephen’s Cathedral? Because, a logical connection between the various squares and their individual functions is not really there. At Naschmarkt, for instance, you receive two coins, whereby in real you should pay something at a market. And, furthermore, the squares are only marked with their names, the buildings are not depicted. Well, let’s play with the night side of the board, this makes me less angry about the design.
Now, Ferdl, you take the red dice, because you are drinking a glass of Zweigelt; Mitzi with her Grüner Veltliner can play green, and I take blue, because that’s the status I’m in anyway … and Schorschi with his Coke gets black. Nice that our drinks do fit the colors so nicely, because otherwise we could not remember, who plays which color. Or, stop - in a game for four players we do only need four of the five dice, let’s take the fifth dice of each color for the victory points track and put the victory marker down on the table, so that we know who, or better, what color we are. To continue: ‘The player who was in Vienna most recently, takes the starting player card.‘ Do they want to make fun of us? This doesn’t really work, so we have to do this otherwise - Schorschi, roll the die for the starting player.
And how does the game work, now? Well, the same way as in ‘Kingsburg’, can you still remember? That game, by the way, has recently been re-published as ‘Kingsport Festival’! Anyhow, all of us roll their four dice and then place them, in turn order, on the squares on the board, of course with dice values corresponding to the numbers printed on top of the squares. To make up a number we can only use the sum of two of our dice, but in some of the squares two different numbers are provided and for some dice results you can even choose among several squares. On top of this, you can never move back on the track, ever. If you did already place dice on ‘Seven’ you cannot place a die or dice on ‘Five’ anymore. Just like in ‘Egizia’, where you could move your ships forward on the Nile only, too. Well, never, unless you pay a coin. If you pay a coin you can also re-roll any number of your dice, or rotate a die by one point up or down, for several coins you can do that several dimes. My complements, this really fits our ‘oh, that’s okay’ mentality perfectly, we usually take liberties with things, too; and something can always be worked out, especially for or with money.
And what can the individual squares do for you? First ‘Kriau’: You receive one coin or one victory point and may relocate the policeman to another square which is then blocked for this round. A ‘Gendarm’ in Vienna” - the Viennese rolls his eyes again - “If Kottan gets to hear that he would put Schmidauer-König through a cross-examination” - and once again the Viennese enjoys his own joke most - “and this is how it continues throughout the game, receive money or spend money, accrue victory points and at 25 the game ends. But wait! Squares with a lightning bolt symbol are the exception, they implemented instantly while all others are implemented at the end of the round - when all players have no dice left anymore - in the sequence of their position on the read. And you can always place a die on the square for ‘Geheimbund’ , even several times, and you get one coin for each die on this square. Which ‘secret union’ is that Geheimbund meant to be? Maybe the ‘Geheimbund der Samariter’?” - again a loud laugh at his own joke from the Viennese - “they would have done better to call the square ‘Salzamt’, because you can always pay a visit to ‘Salzamt’ (a hypothetical administration office in Viennese lore, where you lodge complaints that you know are in vain).
There are five squares that are a little bit different, the squares on which you receive a red card: At Stadtpark you acquire the position of new starting player, at Secession you switch into an extra fast Fiaker that allows you a double move at every turn; at Heldenplatz you find a rapier with which you can turn all your one-pip results on dice to any number of your choice, and and at the university you receive a piece of Sachertorte. Sachertorte at University” - the Viennese is rolling his eyes again - “What the use of that there? Students should concentrate on studying and not gorge themselves on sweets, dawdling and wasting time. Anyway, the Torte gives you a white extra die which is obviously meant to represent the whipped cream on the cake.
And then there is Empress Sisi, which you can pick up at Burgtheater. Well, that too, is not very plausible, she was constantly travelling the world - Madeira, Korfu or Geneva; her last trip did not go well with her, but she surely was a very beautiful corpse. But in her sixties she surely was not looking so fresh and blooming as on her card in in game, but on that card she’s looking more like Romy Schneider anyway. It would have been better if they had placed the Sisi card at Kapuzinergruft and had taken Katharina Schratt or Adele Sandrock for Burgtheater. And what can Sisi do for you? She assists you with influence and brings you one of three different symbols, Krone, Kreuz und Bürgerhut - Crown, Cross and Citizen’s Hat. ‘Krone, Kreuz und Bürgerhut‘ - that’s really trite, but for all I care, the cross at least goes well with Vienna, as death is nearly the most important thing here, but crown and citizen’s hat? ‘Wein, Weib und Gesang‘ - that would have been the proper trilogy for Vienna.
And with a roll of six you can buy character cards in all four of the coffee shops, those cards can give you more influence than Sisi, and those cards cannot be taken away from you. For this influence you can acquire victory points at Pestsäule, Stephansdom, Schloss Belvedere and Gloriette. You just check both your neighbors who has more or less symbols of the respective kind and then get two or three points for each majority, not unlike the military scoring in ’7 Wonders‘. At the end of the road you find Tiergarten and Heurigen where you need to place any kind of double result on dice. At the Tiergarten you filch from your fellow players and at the Heurigen there are points available for your own red cards. And that’s it, we can begin!”.
– three glasses of wine later -
„Well, well, it plays rather nicely, after all. And Schorschi did win, surprisingly, despite the fact that he only ever collected coins and thereby collected the five points from that square of value 8, several times! We should have more often placed the Kieberer (Gendarm) there or filch from him at Tiergarten. Mitzi with her crowns ended up in close second place behind him, she got a bad break because Ferdl also played for crowns, On the other hand, if only one player was collecting crowns, he would probably have won the game after four rounds. And, furthermore, the poor girl rolled her dice badly, oh well, that’s normal for a dice game, and for me the dice were not rolling well, either and the prospects were none too good.
The whole this is very restricted, reduced and slimmed down to coins, victory points and a few cards, but on the positive side there is now unnecessary to and fro as often with the converting of resources into this or that or this which in the end results in victory points, after all. As a consequence, gameplay is rather dry and sober, which is a blatant contradiction to Vienna. Anyway, a little bit of tactic cannot go amiss and you should be able to finish a game within half an hour, well, maybe, if one were to be a bit more sober. When the proclaimed and promised ‘atmospheric intensity’ would really be there I might even acquire the game. Tourists, on the other hand, will be astonished too: A glossary on the location in the game is completely missing - they will never believe that there is really a Café in Vienna by the name of Griensteidl, setting aside the fact that it was demolished in January 1897. And the ‚Heurige‘ has been mixed up with ‚Henrige‘ in Germany.”
Harald Schatzl
Players: 3-5
Age: 10+
Time: 45 min
Designer: Johannes Schmidauer-König
Artist: Michael Menzel
Price: ca. 25 Euro
Publisher: Schmidt Spiele 2015
Web: www.schmidtspiele.de
Genre: Worker placement with dice
Users: With friends
Version: multi
Rules: de en
In-game text: no
Comments:
Box size due to board
Backside of the board shows “Vienna at Night”
Relatively few rules
Symbols easily understood
Of relaxation interest to experienced players
Compares to:
Kingsburg, Kingsport Festival, Egizia
Other editions:
Currently none
My rating: 5
Harald Schatzl:
Vienna concentrates a good and proven dice-placement mechanisms to its essence, supplemented with a few new ideas. There is no big variety in options for different ways to play, but that does not matter due to the short playing time. Unfortunately the vibes of the topic could not be transplanted properly, at least from a Viennese point of you, I am tempted to say “of course not”.
Chance (pink): 2
Tactic (turquoise): 2
Strategy (blue): 0
Creativity (dark blue): 0
Knowledge (yellow): 0
Memory (orange): 0
Communication (red): 1
Interaction (brown): 2
Dexterity (green): 0
Action (dark green): 0