The Village wins the Kennerspiel des Jahres Award - And I Like It Hot

What's a medieval?

It's a typo.

You're that small a group, eh?

This sounds a little creepy. Do you bump them off explicitly or just send them into really risky behavior until a bad roll of the dice?

S.

@ Sag

The gal gamer community isn't that small. It's larger than the active community here on F:AT. It's just spread out over LiveJournal, Facebook, Twitter, personal blogs...

There is a time mechanism, like in Red November. Each player has their own personal Time Track. Actions take a certain amount of time, like studying to be a craftsman might take two years, or traveling to another village might take one year. Whenever your time marker gets all the way around your track and back to start, you have to choose one of your family members to die. It's not an easy choice because you lose whatever benefit that family member was providing. The longer a family member stays alive and advances on their choosen path, the greater the benefit they provide. However, dead family members who don't make it into the Book of Honor don't give you any points at the end of the game, and there are a limited number of spaces in the book. So there is little game of chicken going on with the other players to get those spaces.

I think that this "lose what you have spent time building" aspect is what my friends didn't like about The Village. Rather than build one engine that gets bigger and better through to the end of the game. You are are simultaneously building a couple of different little engines. One might develop very slowly and last through the whole game. One might be built and then be killed off in two turns. You always have to have something on the back burner, ready to bring to the front.

I was just spoofing your typo.

So your people keep improving in capability, and the conflict in the play is between keeping them as a resource and scoring them for points. That sounds interesting.

Why isn't this game getting more attention? Not released in the U.S. yet?

S.

This sounds really neat. I'll have to see about trading someone for it.

I think the life cycle is the part that actually makes it unique. Your player meeples age as they take actions and if they die while there's still room in the Book of Honor, you get points. (There's only room for so many and it's first come, first served). When death occurs you choose a family member from the oldest generation. The meeples are all numbered for this reason. So in this game your number is literally....up.

If they die in the traces so to speak (read at work) and there's no more room in the Book of Honor they get buried in an unmarked grave. No bonus points for you! I think the life and death cycle is an engaging part of the game. You have to manage your workers in a way that allows them to age and die honorably.

Hell they even go to Church and embark upon walkabouts that also earn them points. Your meeple can spend most of his life traveling. It's up to you. It does a good job of simulating life in a small village. You barter and trade. You work for money and harvest crops.

The life and death cycle is also the game's ending mechanism because when the unmarked graves or the Book of Honor is full, the game ends.

I've seen it demoed and it looks like a lot more fun than its thematically pointless cousin Kingdom Builder.

A few months ago Tasty Minstrel Games picked it up for US distribution, but they haven't released it yet. There were a handful of import copies in shops, as is usually the case after Essen, but they went pretty fast.

Anyway, it's on the HOTNESS at BGG today, so I suspect everyone will be talking more about.

HA! That was even sooner than I thought. I just got a message from one of the dudes who wouldn't play The Village with me a few months ago. He's all like: So you have a copy of The Village don't you?

When it's just me with a game, it's not even worth trying. A live human person who has known you and has gamed with you for 5 years standing in front of you saying, "I think you may find this interesting," and you turn up your nose because you haven't seen any one talking about on BGG. But some German dudes who don't know anything about you or what you like give it an award, and the game makes the HOTNESS list on BGG, and less than 24 hours later you are hunting down a copy to try.

I really like the must strip apart your engine feel to the whole Euro thing.

Another game you might want to look at with that aspect is Uruk. It is a tiny, compact Civ-themed game that is centered around a tech tree using cards that are multifunction. It has a limited number of building slots, and the overall compactness of the game really piles on the puzzle aspect.

There is a fair amount of luck as well, as you really rely on compatible cards coming up for draft and there are a set of random god cards that screw with people as well. The end result basically means that it is a little too random for the Euro players who really like predictable, and too dry, thinky, and Euro-y for the AT crew.

I'm a huge fan, but everyone else runs screaming.

36$ at BGG Marketplace, that place in Atlanta that always has EVERYTHING is selling it.

Eh...its the same with the Academy Awards and things like that. All of the sudden something wins an award and everyone flocks to it with adoration.

People no longer think for themselves. They let other people do the groundwork, then they look at a metacritic number (or whatever) and decide that its worth owning/loving.

SuperflyTNT wrote:
"I'll have to see about trading someone for it."
Someone? Hmm, could lead to a new concept of rating: "It's so bad it's not worth an Octavian", "I wouldn't give two Weeks for that game", "That games Loterific", etc.

LMAO! Well played, Adrian!

This doesn't sound like I can play it completely wasted so I'm really confused as to how it won the Kinderspiel? That's kinda the whole point of the award!

Are you spoofing my typos too, or are you drunk? I wrote Kenner not Kinder. But you made me look.

That's probably because you usually like games he doesn't like. If a Euro guy came to me offering to play a game I have never heard of, and that doesn't look particularly interesting, and claimed it's something I may find interesting, I'm not sure I would jump on it, before hearing some praise about it from F:ATties.

BTW, you made me interested in the game (not that I would buy it, but now I probably won't turn down an opportunity to play it). You also made me realize, that it's not Kingdom Builder, with which I completely confused this one up until now.

Ha no, I didn't even know KennerSpiel was a thing and couldn't be bothered to read all the letters so I assumed KinderSpiel.

Kennerspiel is the award for best gamer's game. It means the game is for hardcore eurosnoots, or something.

Ahh, I knew that was a thing, forgot that's what it was called. I'll stick with Kinderspiel.

Friends don't let friends play Worker Placement.

S.

Unless it's Dominant Species. There are exceptions to everything.

I just had a particularly bad play of Dominant Species so I doubt I'll play it again. Six player game which would appear to make sense given the board, but apparently it's only good to four. The owner flipped the board when everyone became frustrated with the endgame.

It produced the same frustration I always get with Worker Placement. Just a truly awful mechanic.

The Village sounded interesting until I figured out I can only do things other people don't. I'll pass on it regardless of it being kid game of the year.

S.

The Village isn't a worker placement game. You can choose to do the same actions as other people.

It's more of an action+resource drafting game. There is a set number of each actions available each round, and each action has a pool of random resources. When you pick an action you also get to take one of the resources from that action's pool. When the pool is empty, you can still choose that action, but instead of getting a resource you have to pay resources.

The mechanism is more like Moongha Invaders than like Agricola. You choose certain actions to put your dudes on the board and other actions to move them around and make them do stuff, but what your dudes do is harvest wheat and study at the monastery, rather than stomp cities and attack monsters.

Thanks Uba. I'll look for a copy at WBC.

S.

@ Sag

I'll be bringing my copy so I have something to play with my WBC friends that don't like AT games. We can play if you really want to, but if we are sitting at a table together, I bet we can think of at least 20 other games right off the top of our heads that we'd rather be playing together.

Ouch! I've never played it with six myself. And now I never will. It's a long game with four. I can't imagine playing it with six. I'm no fan of worker placement either but there's exceptions to every rule and Dominant Species for me is one.