The Princes of Florence - 2 December 2009

A Rio Grande game, still in the top twenty on Board Game Geek and the winner of a clutch of awards, but barely (perhaps just once or twice) played by us - and certainly not mentioned on the blog before. The Princes of Florence rulebook does its very best to stop you wanting to play the game - even with Kieron avoiding his usual "free association" style of sharing rules, it was really hard to understand. Finding it difficult to get into isn't helped by the terrible graphic design - cards and boards are mostly a yellowish colour with a really challenging font and limited use of pictures. (Some folks on BGG feel similarly - it seems there is a different version that looks lovely - see here for example).

Eventually we got through the rules and found to our complete lack of surprise that it was much simpler once you actually started playing. The game involves developing medieval and renaissance cities to attract various professions. It involves bidding, trying and changing strategies, making the most of cards you pick up, and fitting tiles together to develop your city. So a bit of everything really.

And it's a lot of fun with different approaches to take, for example Stu pursued builders and cramming his city, James went for as many artisans as possible, David went for Prestige bonuses. It was a close game with the lead changing throughout. Orhan took a strong lead in the middle of the evening but the endgame was between David and James, with David just jumping ahead by one point in the final Prestige tally. Scores on the doors: David 55, James 54, Orhan 48, Kieron 43, Stuart 42. A game we should play soon enough that we don't have to go through all the rules again!