Vecna's Eye

by Tim Morgan

I've been playing a lot of German board games lately.  It all started with Settlers of Catan and has snowballed from there.  I've been especially intrigued by their two-player games.  As odd as it sounds, there aren't that many new, two-player board games out there.  Sure there are tons of war games, but the best thing about a 2 player game is the ability to start one quickly and easily, and war games don't usually do that.  Anyway, there are a lot of new two-player games coming in from Germany.  Games such as Kahuna, Lost Cities, Caesar & Cleopatra, Rosenkoenig, and Hera & Zeus.

While learning to play Rosenkoenig, I taught several of my friends to play, before deciding that I didn't really care for the game.  I couldn't really put my finger on why I didn't like it; it just reminded me of chess.  So I put Rosenkoenig at the bottom of the pile and suggested Lost Cities when people wanted to play.

But everyone kept wanting to play Rosenkoenig.  I was a little surprised, but went along with it, eager to discover what they saw in this little game.  I even taught my 5-year old daughter how to play.  It's a cute little game that is very simple to learn, with easy to understand rules and a subtle strategy.  

But I still don't enjoy playing it.  I don't mind playing it, and the social interaction during the game is nice enough that I will play it, but I don't enjoy the process of the game.  I don't enjoy the challenges that the game creates.  And the more I played, the more I wondered: Why?  Why don't I like this game?

I suppose I should say before going much further, that I don't like Chess and Othello either, and the play of Rosenkoenig is reminiscent of both of these games.  The Rosenkoenig is made up of a 9 x 9 grid of squares.  The pieces are double sided circles - red on one side and white on the other.  There is a deck of 24 cards, each with a compass rosette capable of showing 8 different directions (N, NW, W, SW, S, SE, E, NE) and 3 different distances (1, 2 or 3 squares).  Thus, there is one card for each direction for each different distance.

At the beginning of the game, each player is dealt out five cards face up and a crown token is placed in the center square of the board.  Players take turns either playing a card, or drawing a new card.  The maximum hand size is five cards.  When playing a card, the player whose turn it is moves the crown the direction of the card and the distance.  The space must be empty to make a legal move.  Then a token of the player's color is placed in the square and the crown placed on top of it.

Also, four times during the game, you can land on your opponent's token and change it to your color.  These are kept track of with Attack Cards; each player gets four and has to turn one in when he changes a token.  Players must make moves if they have any moves open to them.  If they don't have a legal move, they must pass their turn until they do.  If neither player has a legal move the game ends.  The game also ends when you run out of tokens.  After the game ends, points are scored based on how many tokens you have that are adjacent to each other.

As an additional note, since this is almost a review, the game is the German version of the game with English rules inserted.  The English rules are very well written (by Stefan O'Sullivan).  And, like nearly all German games, the components are excellent.  The 4-fold board folds out flat.  The pieces are attractive and made of wood.  The game is imported by Mayfair and overpriced at $28.00.

The strategy of the game revolves around keeping track of the moves available to yourself and your opponent (remember, your cards are face up on the table).  Good strategies are to force your opponent into using up his Attack cards on bad moves and trying to make it so he has to pass.  Usually it's best to save your attack cards until the middle of the game, although by the late game the board is getting crowded and you be wasting them on bad moves forced to you by your opponent.

But why don't I like this game?  I don't know, and I was hoping that writing this article would help me put it into words.  While on the surface it appears to be a game about territorial control, it actually is not.  It's an abstract game concerned with placing pieces on a board.  The pieces don't represent anything and the board doesn't represent anything.  The object of the game is points and you get points by playing your pieces next to your other pieces and keeping your opponent from doing the same.  It is not a simulation game, even though it tries to pass itself as one.  Much like Chess.

Because it is abstract, I find it hard to relate to.  The play and strategy is not intuitive.  The things required of one to succeed are strange to me.  They involve a lot of forced examination of the board, first to determine possible moves, then to determine possible moves of the opponent, then on to 2 and 3 and more turn strategies.

Not that these features make a bad game.  I would put it in a category containing many of the most revered classic games of all time:  Chess, Checkers, Othello, Pente, most playing card games, and many more.  It's just a preference thing.

--Tim Morgan

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