Santiago
I’ve played Santiago three times thus far.
Rules
The game is fairly simple mechanically: you have an empty tile-based board, and you bid for tiles which you must place. You have control markers on the tiles, but these markers will go away unless the tiles are adjacent to a stick, which may be placed in between the tiles on the board. The person who bid the least for choice of tile gets to decide where the stick is placed each round (and the stick must be placed). The other players offer up victory points as bribes to the person who bid the least so that their tiles don’t lose control markers at the end of the round. After 11 (or 9 in a 5 player game) rounds, the game ends and you score up.
Each tile has two attributes: the number of control markers it’s owner gets to put on it when it is placed, and the color (ie “crop”). Both of these attributes are important.
End game scoring is as follows: each orthogonally contiguous area is scored in turn. A player receives a number of victory points equal to the number of tiles in that area multiplied by the number of control markers they have in total in that area. So if I have 7 markers on an area that has 9 tiles, I get 64 victory points. If I have 4 control markers on an area that is 3 tiles large, I get 12.
So you want to prevent growth in areas where others are strong in while encouraging growth in areas that you are strong in.
The first thing you do each round is flip over new tiles for bidding. In a 4 player game, this means revealing 4 tiles. Starting with the person to the left of the person who bid the least last turn, everyone in turn bids a unique amount of money (aka victory points) to determine their placement in the pecking order for tile choices. If you bid the most, you get first dibs. You give that money back to the bank and take the tile of your choice, and then it moves on to the player who bid the next highest, and so on. Each player pays their bid, takes the tile, places the tile and puts their control markers on it. The person who bid the least becomes the “Overseer”, and receives a special token. He gets say on where the “canal” is places to irrigate the crops (tiles).
Keeping in mind that if your tile doesn’t get irrigated, it loses a control marker (and you either place 1 or 2, depending on the tile you got), the person to the left of the Overseer may chose to take his “proposal canal” and place it on the board, while offering to bribe the overseer a certain amount of money (VP). The next person may choose to support the original bribe with money, decline to bribe, or lay his proposal canal in a new location. Once all the players have made their choices in this bribe phase, the Overseer may accept any bribe he wishes, placing a canal where the briber proposed, or pay 1 more than the highest bribe and place the canal anywhere he wants.
Once per game after the Overseer places a canal, each player may place an extra canal they hold in reserve as well. Only one may be placed per turn amongst them all, and the choice goes first to the person left of the Overseer.
The game is over at the end of the last round (11 rounds when less than 5 players, 9 rounds with 5 players). May the person with the most money (VP) win!
Gameplay
I really like this game. Each turn is very simple: bid for turn order, place your stuff, try and bribe the Overseer. Rinse and repeat.
The brilliance of this game comes mostly from the interactions between the players. Trying to convince so and so to take this because it’s in their best interest or screws somebody else really good. The dynamic between taking the leftovers for tile placement and getting to hold the canal for ransom is pretty sweet. A clever player can often maneuver for his benefit.
The game can get kind of mathy, if that’s the way you prefer to play games. It doesn’t have to be though, I don’t think – you can play a good game just on loose ad-hoc comparisons and gut feelings.
It’s pretty tough to figure out just who’s winning. It takes a while to count up the points at the end (we go through field by field and give VP to each person according to their control markers, removing the markers from the board once the VP have been given).
Peeves and Perks
I don’t like the paper money. There have been multiple times where the money is unaccountably lost, sat on, or dropped on the floor. Pocketed, one time. I’m going to just use poker chips.
The box insert is a mixed blessing. It’s perfectly designed to hold the stuff. Things tend not to “escape” if just put in the proper place. However, it’s very difficult to get the components out of the box (particularly the control markers). I’m going to bag it all and remove the insert.