There are quite a few games in my collection which have not yet been played; recently, I've been making the effort to rectify this. Often it's not as easy as it sounds; somebody may have already played it and taken a dislike to it.
A case in point was my selection for last night's session, Graenaland. Designed by Vlaada Chatvil and printed by Altar a few years ago, I have frequently brought it along to sessions since I bought a copy back in 2007. Every time it has been passed over; for something more familiar, something folk are more excited about or because one of the group had played it elsewhere and expressed his unwillingness to play.
Finally, after almost four years, I got it played last night. I thought it would be average, and I'm unhappy to say I was right. We were only playing with three, and the rules do advise the game improves with greater numbers, but I don't think it will improve that much, as it is the kind of game the group dismiss. I knew this would be the case, and without leading anybody down that path, the others involved agreed with me. It wasn't a bad game; however there was just nothing exciting going on.
Allow me to take you through it a little. Everybody represents a Viking lord settling Greenland, in peaceful competition with his fellow Jarls. Players build settlements in the form of villages and buildings, move their influential heroes around the board and take resources for further building. Resources are split between players by "agreement", with the decision to split going to the vote, after the way the resources split has been proposed by a single player. The current player doesn't get to do this, but does have the privilege of building when all proposals have been agreed or dismissed. Because the votes are allocated according to the number of settlements a player has, in conjunction with any votes their heroes garner, it behooves players to form temporary alliances in order to take resources which would normally go to a stronger player's proposal. There is no trade between players, but they may cooperate in the building of public works, which can benefit all players in any particular area.
As it stands, this is a very interesting system of mechanisms which combine towards a model of cunning use of support, an alternative slant on the "pie rule" (where if the initial offer is rejected, nobody gets anything), clever influence of external factors through the use of heroes and some choice as to a building approach.
Where the game really falls down is the scoring system.
Graenaland is one of those games where players are attempting to reach a target score for the game to end, meeting a small number of victory conditions. I can get on with this kind of system only in small measure, and I'm afraid that despite the potential for something more cut-throat and clever, Graenaland falls way short of the mark. For a start, four of the victory conditions are completely related. If you aim for eight settlements, for instance, you're liable to meet the condition that requires two in each of three areas. If you're meeting this, then you're probably not too far off making the two buildings (or three if there's three players); going hand-in-hand with these, it's highly likely that you'll easily get four settlements in one area. That only leaves the fifth as less natural, which doesn't really take too much effort!
It's not a bad game by any stretch of the imagination; it just seems to lack the spark that would make it a great game. These days, for me at least, something that is just "good" or perhaps a bit clever in places is not enough; despite utilising some potentially mind-gnawing mechanisms, Graenaland just doesn't gel together as well as it ought to.
And I don't trust Vikings that aren't bloodthirsty!
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