Naturelich Games

Klaus Teuber signing his game Candamir, Spiel 2004, Essen

If you like board games you are certainly familiar with Settlers of Catan (Die Siedler von Catan) - one of the most successful games ever. The game has evolved and become the basis for an entire merchandise. The latest addition to the world of Catan is Candamir - Die ersten Siedler (engl. probably: Candamir - The First Settlers). The game leads the players into the world described in the novel by Rebecca Gablé. It combines some well-known gameplay elements from the original game with a character-based role-playing approach. Players can improve their character's talents. This is achieved by sending the character away from the security of their village into the wilderness and reaching a selectable, pre-defined target field. Raw nature is naturelich the place where the character is confronted with obstacles (wolves, bears, snakes, other tasks), special adventures or different kinds of collectibles. In the wilderness, collectibles are called herbs, I guess :-). If the character fails to overcome an obstacle or adventure he looses stamina and slows him down. Stamina can be regained by converting several collectibles into healing potion (there's of course other potions).

The raw materials - also available on the target fields - can be converted into higly sophisticated equipment: chests, swords and parchments. If you deliver one such equipment to another inhabitant of the village (in a full role-playing game, we'd call em Non-Player Characters-NPCs) you gain a victory point (I'll spare you the additional options on how to gain victory points). The player reaching 10 victory points wins the game.

Sounds complicated to you? It did to me at first - and the instructions don't make your live easier. Well, actually they do... Because everything is explained to the most meticulous detail. This results in a long booklet text to work through. But it is really easy to play, once you got the touch of it. And once you have started playing the manual is an excellent piece of documentation offering solutions to all the questions our group could come up with.

But there is not only the board game. Candamir comes with a webpage with some additional goodies. The most noteworthy is a character editor, which allows you to create and print your own character cards. During Spiel 2004 in Essen, Kosmos Verlag offered to take a picture and created a unique character card from that. Naturelich, Naturelich is available as such a character. Not too good looking and charismatic, but at least some decent combat skills ;-) Just like my favorite roleplaying characters (kidding)...

To sum it up: the game takes 1-3 hours (with 3 players) and makes an evening full of entertainment. The game design is marvelous - a lot of attention has been spend on the smallest details and the drawings and characters are wonderful. The wildernesss/movement cards look a little bit strange as they combine photography with drawings. Personally I had prefered to have paitings throughout the game, but this is just a minor detail. The game-play is well thought through and allows for future expansions to come, e.g. new adventures, new characters, new special talents, etc. Definitely a christmas recommendation...

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A high quality, fan-made expansion is available for Ticket to Ride/Zug um Zug: The Belgian Expansion aka Les Aventuriers du Rail en Belgique. The expansion is created by Nicolas Maréchal. It comes with a lot of materials and a how-to guide.

Please note: Naturelich is just pointing out that this fan-made expansion exists. I am neither promoting nor endorsing the practice of fan-made expansions. I have not created a fan-made expansion or a copy of it.

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A high quality, fan-made expansion is available for Ticket to Ride/Zug um Zug: The Lyon Expansion aka Les Aventuriers du Rail a Lyon. The expansion is created by François Haffner. It comes with a lot of materials and a how-to guide.

Please note: Naturelich is just pointing out that this fan-made expansion exists. I am neither promoting nor endorsing the practice of fan-made expansions. I have not created a fan-made expansion or a copy of it.

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Zug um Zug (english version Ticket to Ride) has been awarded Germany's Game of the Year 2004 (Spiel des Jahres 2004) award. This guarantees very high sales. I was able to buy Days of Wonder's publication at the game fair Spiel 2004 in Essen on Saturday. I bought it at the Days of Wonder booth and got a free copy of Mystery Train (the first expansion containing 10 new mission cards).

Alan R. Moon, the designer of Zug um Zug, signing his game during Game Fair 2004 in Essen

The author of the game, Alan R. Moon, was signing the game at the booth. From the very few moments I saw him, he seems to be a very fun and friendly guy. Since the game contains a map of the United States, he actually signed onto the map and drew a small house labelled Me where he lives. What a great idea!

The signature of Alan R. Moon with a moon and his current whereabouts

When Alan arrived, he held another game called "Zug um Zug" in his hands which had a Deutsche Bahn-logo on it. I am not sure whether it was published by the German railway, but I assume it's a game which Deutsche Bahn created for promotional purposes. [Note: It is not published by Days of Wonder! If you have additional info on this, I'd appreciate a small Comment at the bottom of this blog entry).

Now, let's move our attention to the game itself. I have now played it once with two friends on the same evening. Without being to over-enthusiastic: I really like the game. Basically, it's all about building railroad tracks between US cities. One or more objective cards are used to specify the cities which need to get connected by a player. Each player holds different objectives and connections are not required to be direct (i.e. you could potentially connect New York and Washington via Houston). In order to build tracks you need to collect cards in different colors - the greater the distance between two cities, the more cards of the same card are required. Jokers (aka trains) may be used to replace any color. The longer the track the more points to be scored. The more difficult the missions a player fulfills, the more points to score. The player with the most points wins. These are the rules in short, the rule booklet covers only three pages and explains everything straight forward and in greater detail.

The game is relatively fast paced, people do not need to think all that much. You get to do something every once in a short while and you get some tracks build relatively easy. You see results quickly, although the other players may destroy your strategy every other second. To see the game move forward is important for me in order to think of the game as being fun. And that's what it is. In my first game with Raven and Shelak, I had some very difficult and highly valued missions: connect Seattle to New York and Pittsburgh to Nashville. The others went for some easier objectives and I seemed to be lucky to get these tracks laid out. Shelak and I seemed to be interfering with each other every now and then without giving Raven a too hard time after all. Well, in the end, we got a very tough result: Naturelich 117 points, Shelak 116 points, Raven 115 points. Rather close, don't you think?

To put it in a nutshell: Zug um Zug is a highly addictive, fun game to play. Thanks Alan, thanks Days of Wonder for putting this together.

Oh, and Alan, there is Naturelich a proposal for the 11th (yet blank) Mystery Train card.

Bribery: Connect Boston with both New York and Montreal to allow the game designer to journey onward to Europe again soon to let him introduce his next expansion. ;-)

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Reiner Knizia signing Blue Moon at the Kosmos booth at Spiel Essen 2004

Yesterday, Naturelich and friends visited Spiel 2004 in Essen, (one of) the largest games fairs in the world. It was astonishing and a wonderful day. We had the chance to look at a lot of new releases (sometimes with their German title only):

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