Naturelich Games

Game design
Before I (finally) start explaining gameplay, let's look at the game design. When I walked past the Eggertspiele booth at Essen, two things immediately struck me about Dolmengötter:
1. The strange title (see above).
2. The design.

Both board and box look poorly designed. They're too simplistic and clearly communicate: "If you are a mainstream German boardgamer (Settlers-, Carcassonne-, Ticket to Ride-type) you don't want to play this game. Keep away. The edition is too small, anyway. The game is probably too complicated for you anyway." Personally, I believe the publishers could have invested more effort into getting the board and the box design right. Antike, the second Eggertspiele release in 2005 obviously enjoyed far more attention on design issues.
The huge number of wooden meeples save Die Dolmengötter from getting a totally low-cost flair. If a game is priced at €24 can we not expect something which treats the eye with a little more respect?

Gameplay
Let's dive into the major rules a little bit. Each player takes control of three ancient druids which wander across the game board. The game board depicts interconnected stone-placement fields. During each turn one of your druids may erect a single stone on the field they are leaving. These single stones will eventually form a complete stone circle. Since all stone circles are connected to each other, one stone may be part of several (up to three) different circles. Within each circle, players compete to gain a majority of stones over the other players. If a player gets a new majority, a Dolmen may be put inside that stone circle (on top of Dolmen already present). The others may try to counterbalance the majority. If successful, they get to put one of their Dolmen underneath the first. Even better, they may attempt to get their own majority of stones. In this case, they may put a Dolmen on top. Once a stone circle is complete (or the game ends), the players score points for their Dolmen. Scoring depends on two factors that have to be multiplied:
- Factor 1: The Dolmengod: each Dolmen bears a number of different value from 1-4. This number symbolizes our famous Dolmengod.
- Factor 2: The level of the Dolmen in the stack combined with the size of the circle. The bigger the circle and the higher the Dolmen, the bigger the multiplier.

By moving their druids tactically, players compete to get their most valuable Dolmengods into the highest level of the biggest stone circles. This needs to be done carefully: stones will block the druids' path and may eventually trap them. And getting them untrapped through the means of a magic druid's flight is a costly operation: it takes one turn to collect the requried herbs. On the other hand: you may relocate the druid to any unoccupied place on the game board. Magic in ancient times indeed was powerful...

Naturelich my opinion
Die Dolmengötter is about tactical movement as well as majority control. There is no luck-element. None. Whatsoever. But the game is not heavy or lengthy, although the box-imprinted time estimate of 20-30 minutes is probably more at the higher end. Luck-less games have a tendency to force players into long long thinking which painfully slows the game. This is not the case for Die Dolmengötter. During a 30 minute game you have to be careful and attentive during all turns, evaluate your opponents' tactics and constantly think about your next move. The game seems to keep everyone extremely involved even outside their own turn. And this is not only due to the fact that you may actually be permitted to place a Dolmengod on the board because of your opponent's druid moved in a favorable way. So, overall, I shall give this game a light to medium rating, depending on the number of players.

The game creates a lot of depth with only very few rules. The rulebook is rather over-complicated and its design is similar to the gameboard. But explaining the rules to others (in my case: other grown-ups) is really easy and the first game gets rolling quickly. There are two small steps on the learning curve, but I tend to include those into the initial explanation:
1. Whoever starts to put the first stone in a circle will have the first majority there. And there are few cases where another player may get a majority in that circle. So better focus on adjacent circles.
2. In large circles there will be several majorities as the game progresses. Therefore, placing a higher Dolmengod later may get him into a higher level than the older one (particularly true for Dolmengod valued at 4).

This is about all the learning curve players need to take during the first few games. After climbing this, the game is pure fun. Die Dolmengötter forces you to cooperate with fellow players. Completing cirlces on your own won't do the trick. Only by helping others, will they help you. The art of playing Die Dolmengötter is to take a strategy of balanced cooperation which returns slightly higher scores than those of your opponents. After playing a huge number of games it has become apparent that scoring occurs mainly at the end, i.e. only very few stone circles get completed during the game. The granularity of scoring is pretty easy to predict and varies between a minimum of 1 and a max of 20 points per Dolmen. The 20 pointer is only possible once for each player, it is more typical to score between 4 and 10 pts). All games between equally skillfull have been very close (probably in a 1-15 point range between first and fourth place) which makes me think that this game is very well balanced.

To sum it all up: for me the game is a definite must-play. All my fellow co-players liked the game a lot. If only the design had been better this one might have become a big hit. But since things are the way they are I believe this game will be a pearl in my collection which I can draw for both casual and passionate gamers. Even in a few years from now, it will still be a lot of fun.