Vinci - The Rise and Fall of Civilisations

Complexity Medium Cost £25 Duration Medium Players 1-6 Producer Descartes Editeur Size Medium

Premise

Control the destinies of proto-civilisations

Review

This is an excellent game from France that is almost as good as the best German games. The concept is simple. Each player controls a proto-civilisation whose attributes are semi-randomly selected. The aim is to exploit these bonuses to gain as many provinces (of the greater European are) as possible, and so the greatest number of victory points as possible.

Play starts by players selecting in their turns new civilisations by taking a pair of attribute tokens from the six sets on display. These are randomly selected. The first pair are free, the next cost two VP, the third 4VP etc. Part of the skill element is deciding when to sacrifice VPs to gain a better set of attributes. These VPs are added to the skipped token pairs, and are gained by another player when they take those tokens.

Each player has an army that represent their ability to "attack" and control other areas. The numbers of armies is calculated by adding bonuses from the tokens to a base (which varies according to the number of players). The player then uses these tokens to arrive on the map and to start colonising. Some tokens (such as Weapons or Mountaineering) give bonuses to attack, others give bonuses to defence.

After the player has finished, they rearrange their tokens and check for cohesiveness. At the end of a player's turn, all tokens must be connected (unless they have the Messages attribute). Any tokens that are not connected to all others are removed.

The player then counts up the points and changes his VP total on the VP track.

At some point, the empire will stagnate, perhaps through losses or by using up all available tokens. Players can then declare that their empires will go into decline. At this point, all tokens in each player province are reduced to one. Some attributes will continue to affect empires in decline, otherwise all special bonuses are lost. Players then gain a new civilisation on their next turn.

Players can have multiple empires, one active and several in decline; but they are not allowed to become adjacent. If any do, then the touching declining empire counter is removed. Players score for all their empires, and continuing to score from declined empires is key to winning the game. The goal is to get 100-150 VP (depending on number of players).

The production quality of the game is improved from the first printing. The rules are better, there are more summary cards, and a sample game card. The clarity of the board is also improved. The box is still slightly bigger than it needs to be however, and the quality of the graphics are still inferior to most German games. These are relatively minor niggles however, and in any case the game is about five pounds cheaper to buy than comparable German games. An added feature of the new printing is that rules for solo and two players are added (the original was 3-6 only).

If you like Civilisation but find it overlong, you will probably really enjoy this game.

Rating

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