go to MAIN back to the TheGreatGames

Your first step into the world of German games

Capitol by Alan R. Moon & Aaron Weissblum

CAPITOL by Alan R. Moon & Aaron Weissblum art Claus Stephan publish Schmidt Spiele Players: 2-4 Duration: 60 mins. PACE: Medium. Sometimes need to take a minute to consider an important move. COMPLEXITY: Medium. Average to learn. Game has nice simplicity but tough choices each turn. Players have to think short term and long term. LUCK: Low. Sometimes great cards come up for one player, but almost any cards can be planned around. TENSION: High. The competition for constructing buildings off the board is tense, then bringing building on to the board and hoping they'll score for you is great. VICIOUS: Low. Heavy competition, but not a real cut-throat game. SOCIAL: Little. Concentration required. but groans uttered throughout as good moves taken. VISUALS: Excellent. Nice tones and gorgeous wooden pieces. The pink / purple / cyan zone colors are odd, but not bad. Great 3-D visuals as board builds. THEME: Medium. The theme doesn't feel unnatural, as buildings going into zones is aided by actually building buildings. The rules make it feel a bit more abstract. GAMER APPEAL: High. NON-GAMER APPEAL: Unknown. 2 PLAYERS: Unknown: Have not played yet. REPLAY: Very Good. This game is a challenge that pack lots of difficult decisions into a simple game. Great strategic game. I've played 3+ times. Good with 3-4 players. Best with 3-4 players.

Other  games by Alan R. Moon & Aaron Weissblum Capitol (collab.) King's Breakfast New England

Quick summary | Some game are worth buying for the bits alone. This game has a beautiful board, lotf od beautiful wooden pices and colorful cards. Players are ostensibly rebuilding Athens or some such city in a great strategy game from Moon & Weissblum. Players have a handful of cards in 3 types. Those cards are also numbered with gold pieces. So players may either play the cards to use the action that the type allows for or they may save the cards for the gold pieces depicted to use for auctions at the end of the round. That alone is a tough decisions, but that isn't the only one! You want to your place your buildings in such a way as to control districts. Buildings are built off the board by adding additional 'floors' to them, then they are roofed (or capped) then they are placed into a district -- all 3 actions are done by playing the 3 types of cards in any way you wish during your turn. In order to control any one of the 12 districts, you need to have the most number of 'floors' in that district. So if Bob has a 1 and a 3, then Mary has a 2 and a 3, Mary wins the controls the district with 5 'floors.' The catch is that a player may only play a building if it is the same height or one higher than the highest building in that districts. So players may build a 10 unit building, to try and stay ahead of the other buildings off the board, but then will get no chance to use it! Any cards that weren't used to build with now can, because of the numbers on the tops of the cards, be used to bid on extra items: fountains add bonus points to districts as well as giving out points to 2nd place in a district; Amphitheatres allow you to draw more cards in the 'card draw phase'; Temples double all points! As with many games Alan R. Moon has had a part in designing, the game has a timelessness to it. I highly recommend this as a fairly quick strategy game (60 mins with experienced players.) I, along with many others, look forward to see what Aaron and Alan may come up with in the future.

This page by Yirmeyahu Avery