Dec
13
Alexandros
Theme Week: The Fewer, The Better
Games by designer Leo Colovini tend to be more strategic and less chaotic when played with the fewest number of people listed on the box. (Some argue that his games are most fun when played with zero players, but we’ll ignore those sourpusses.) FAB has already reviewed Colovini’s Cartagena and Familienbande; this week, seven more games from Signor Colovini.
Designer: Leo Colovini
Publisher: Rio Grande Games/Winning Moves Germany
Year Published: 2003
Price: $32.95
Playing Time: 45 minutes
Number of Players:
2
3
4
Age Range:
Teen
Family
12-up
Game Type:
Strategy
Area control
Alexander the Great conquered more land before breakfast each morning than most of us will see in a lifetime, but conquering loses its thrill after awhile and Alexander wasn’t above sharing the wealth with his most trusted underlings—that is, you and one to three other generals.
In Alexandros, you’re trying to become Alexander’s favorite lackey by claiming as much territory as possible and levying taxes on the poor sods who live in those conquered lands.
At the start of the game, the Persian Empire is large and unified, stretching from Turkey south into Egypt and north and east through modern Iran. The territory is divided into adjacent triangular spaces, with roughly two-thirds the spaces being empty and one-third containing a symbol in one of five colors. Alexander is placed in Constantinople, and his movement through the Empire will divide the territory into more easily claimed pieces.
Each player starts with four guards and one card; the cards boast one of the five colored symbols, matching the symbols on the board. Two cards are then turned face-up, and the game begins.
On a turn, you choose one of the two face-up cards, put it in your hand, and move Alexander to the closest empty space of this color. You place Alexander on any corner of this space, then mark a path from his previous location with boundary walls. When placing boundary walls, you have to use the shortest possible path, but multiple “shortest paths” are usually available, giving you carving options. (Determining the closest, empty spaces is easy at the start of the game, but gets confusing as the game progresses. If a space has a wall, a guard, or Alexander on it, then it’s not empty.)
After moving Alexander, you take two actions out of four possibilities; you can perform the first three actions twice on a turn, if you wish:
- Draw a card. You draw a face-up card or the top card of the deck and add it to your hand.
- Occupy a province. If boundary walls (and possibly the Empire border) have enclosed a number of triangular spaces, you can occupy the area. You place one guard on any number of symbol spaces in the province, then discard a card for each symbol space you didn’t cover. If someone else has already occupied this territory, you first kick out their guards by discarding two cards matching each space where one of their guards stands.
- Take back a guard. Remove one of your guards from the board and return it to your supply.
- Levy taxes. You must discard one card that matches the space where one of your guards stands; each player then counts the number of empty (i.e., non-symbol) spaces in provinces that hold only one guard of their color and scores that many points.
With the levying action, everything else in the game comes together. To score points during levying—whether during your turn or someone else’s—you must have exactly one guard in a territory. If you’ve used multiple guards to claim a territory, then you better pull them out, both to score and to be able to claim more land later. To claim territory in the first place, you need to collect cards and use Alexander to carve up his holdings. To avoid having another player outscore you during levying, you need to either kick him out (which takes cards) or carve up his land (which takes both skillful use of Alexander and a bit of luck in the right cards being available).
The game ends once a player scores 100 points or more or the supply of black boundary walls runs out. If either case, the player with the most points wins.
First-time players typically have no clue what they’re doing. Even the “moving Alexander” action stumps them sometimes because the long-term effects of a move are often hard to determine. With four players, this problem is exacerbated; the game lasts roughly the same number of turns due to the supply of boundary walls, so with more players, you take fewer turns, which gives you less control over the flow of the game.
An additional issue with three or four players is that when you take a province away from someone else, you must pay them half the cards spent in the process—thus giving them much of the fuel they need to retake the land on a future turn! With three players, this twist provides an interesting change from the two-player game; with four, though, the lack of control can be frustrating.
Ideally your first game of Alexandros will be an easy-going test drive in which you pull levers and push buttons merely to see what happens. Don’t worry about winning—save that goal for the next game when you can give Alexander a run for his money in the field of all-conquering tyrants.
Conquering land is expensive; buying Alexandros isn’t. You can find the game at online retailers such as Thought Hammer, Funagain, Game Surplus, and Time Well Spent.
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