Dec
16
Masons
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/Hans im Glück
Year Published: 2006
Price: $39.95
Playing Time: 45 minutes
Number of Players:
2
3
4
Age Range:
Teen
Family
8-up
Game Type:
Card
Strategy
Architects design with exacting detail to ensure that their creations (1) meet all the necessary safety guidelines, (2) look polished and beautiful, and (3) don’t fall down and crush anyone.
Builders in medieval times weren’t anywhere near as exacting, if Leo Colovini’s Masons is any guide. Sure, masons had plans, but they weren’t too fussy about where the walls were located. They threw the walls around the landscape left and right, and if they happened to encircle land and form a city, well, that was just happy circumstance.
Now you get to try your hand at masonry. The game board depicts an open landscape with water on two opposing borders and boundary lines slicing the land into three regions. The land is divided into 45 triangular plots, with 15 plots in each of the regions.
On a turn, you place a wall on the border of one of the plots, then roll three dice: one die with the colors white, gray and black on two sides each, and two other dice with six different colors on each side. The first die tells you what color tower you must place at one end of the wall; the two colored dice indicate the colors of houses that you must place on the board, with one house being placed on each side of the wall. (If the wall is on the seashore or the edge of the game board, you place only one of the two houses. If you roll white on a house die, you place a colored house of your choice.) Finally, you place a white, gray or black tower of your choice at the other end of the wall, if that space is open.
If your wall (combined with other walls already built) has now enclosed part of the board, you’ve formed a city. You can then choose to remove walls that separate the newly-formed city from an adjacent city (if one exists) to create a larger metropolis. Any two houses of the same color within a new city are removed from the board and replaced with a palace of the same color.
After any new city is built, all players have a chance to score. Each player starts with a hand of six scoring cards. These cards depict various possible building combinations: a city of exactly one, two or three spaces, white towers that aren’t part of cities, all towers on the seashore, red houses outside of cities, palaces inside cities, all houses in one region, and so on. When a city is completed, you can play one or two scoring cards and score points based on the current board situation. You draw only one card to replenish your hand, however, so be wary of spending your cards too freely. You can also choose to pass on scoring, discard one card, and draw two. After scoring, the player with the lowest total score can discard any number of cards and draw replacements. This catch-up mechanism is a good way for players to dump cards that are unlikely to net more than a few points and possibly end up with more valuable architectural plans.
The game ends when one of the four resources—towers, houses, palaces, walls—runs out. Each player then has a final scoring opportunity, and whoever ends up with the highest total score wins.
Masons really shows off the difference between Eurostyle and mainstream American games. In Masons, the pieces are all wood, and they feel great in your hand and when you plonk them down on the board. The only plastic in the game is the box insert that holds all the beautiful bits in order when you’re not playing.
Although the game length is listed as 45 minutes, game times can vary to extreme degrees. Place 15 isolated walls, for example, and all 30 towers have been used up, ending the game; keep combining cities, on the other hand, all you’re return walls and towers to the general supply to push the game onward.
Rolling the dice after placing the wall certainly adds a random element to the game. You’re playing the odds on what might come up and hoping the results will synch with the cards you hold. As such, adding more players to the game exacerbates the randomness because you have fewer opportunities to direct the building of walls and the general construction of cities. Play with only two, and your influence on the board becomes much stronger.
Masons still works well with four—as an experienced player showed when he crushed three neophytes by a stunning margin—but the two-player game ups the control level and gives the most satisfying play experience.
We prefer building walls with game boxes in place of bricks. To add Masons to your own game wall, stop by any of these online retailers: RC Hobbies, Funagain, House Full of Games, or Thought Hammer.
this game seems to be one of thinking and you should oay some attention to play it