Notre Dame, Silk Road
Posted by Rob Herman at September 17th, 2007
Sorry for the long absence. I demoed Notre Dame this week and Silk Road two weeks ago. I thought Silk Road was OK, if a bit underwhelming for the $50 price tag. Then I played Notre Dame, which is fantastic and $10 cheaper. Reader Fu Leng is right: Life is too short to play merely good games.
Notre Dame: People are saying this in the same breath as mighty Puerto Rico and that’s tough company–and it speaks very well of this game that it holds its own. The two mechanics at the core of the game, action-drafting and building up resources in a triangular fashion, work very well. We played it with 5 new players–two had read the rules, three totally new–and finished in 75 minutes including rules explanation. (To be fair, we’re all seasoned gamers.) It’s lighter than Puerto Rico or Caylus Magna Carta but fills a similar niche; I much prefer it to Pillars of the Earth. If it has a weakness, it’s that player interaction is minimal. Verdict: 3++, maybe 3+++.
Silk Road: You know that feeling in Settlers when you roll a 7 and have to hit someone with the Robber, but don’t have a clear choice? OK, imagine that every turn of the game. Silk Road is packed with decisions but not only are they difficult, they’re made with limited information and don’t matter much. Production quality is fine but wasteful; inexplicably, they’ve opted for, say, wooden money chits (where every other game in the Universe uses cardboard), pushing the cost of what’s actually a small game up to $50. Look, people, for $50 I can get Memoir ‘44. It’s a playable game that I wouldn’t say no to playing in the unlikely event someone asked me to. Verdict: 2
I don’t have much to add to your description of Notre Dame. (Well, you should have mentioned how cool it looks…) As for Silk Road, though:
We tried it with 3 people. It was sort of interesting, and we agreed at the end that it might have made a good bargaining game. Strangely enough, the rules didn’t mention whether this was expected or not.
It turns out that the rule book says, in the tag line, “A game of bartering and adventure”! Oops. Still no advice/rules in the text telling you how to barter, though…
I tried the game with 5 players over the weekend, and it was much drier than the 3-player variant that we did. The normal rules give everyone fewer chances to take actions, so it didn’t seem like I had enough time to do anything with my resources. And while 3 players with limited information might make a good bartering game, 5 players with limited information is just off-putting.
Verdict: I would be interested in trying Silk Road again with 3 people (though I doubt I’ll get around to it…) I wouldn’t be interested with more, though.
I think you’re right; Silk Road suffers from a similar problem as Winner’s Circle (and many other games, I suspect) which is that the game stays the same size, but it’s being divided more ways, so you end up with less game. Contrast with Princes of Florence, Notre Dame, Ra, Puerto Rico, and other games where everyone gets to act on everyone’s turn.
We may want to reevaluate Silk Road. Apparently (assuming I read the rules right) you are supposed to auction the Caravan Master every turn. Not sure if the change is important, but it certainly makes for more decisions.