Upon reviewing our collection and more specifically themes of games we are finding that we are liking more and more that have an Asian theme to it. From Rajas of the Ganges to Xi’an, Momiji, and of course my favorite Tang Garden (the last three are from our favorite game designer, Francesco Testini).
We decided that this week we wanted to keep it up and play a game in which you purposely are “bribing” officials to gain more favor. Read on if this has caught your attention.
GÙGŌNG (2018)
China, 1570. China is under the reign of the Longqing Emperor, of the Ming Dynasty. He inherited a country in disarray after years of mismanagement and corruption. He resided in the Forbidden city, which was the seat of many emperors under the Ming Dynasty. Constructed from 1406 to 1420, the complex consists of 980 buildings and covers 72 ha (over 180 acres). It is also under the Ming Dynasty that the Great Wall of China was rebuilt, fortified, and expanded. Around this period, China was under heavy attack from the Mongols, so maintaining the Great Wall was essential. Most of what we now have left of the Great Wall, we owe to the Ming dynasty.
The country was already famous for its very intricate bureaucracy, but this also led to a lot of corruption. Even though the penalties for corruption were very high, the highest Officials of the Forbidden City would pretend to uphold the ban on corruption, by accepting gifts of petitioners, and returning one of seemingly lower value.
Gùgōng uses this extraordinary custom as its basis. Players take on the role of powerful Chinese families trying to gain influence and power by exchanging gifts with Officials. The gift cards you offer as a player have to be of a higher value than the one you receive, forcing you to make strategic choices regarding which actions you want to take each turn. You will travel around China, sail down the Grand Canal, purchase precious jade, help construct the Great Wall, secure advantages through decrees, influence the game through intrigue, and ultimately, receive an audience with the emperor. If only 1 player succeeds in doing so, he wins. If several players succeed, the player with the most VPs among those players wins the game.
—description from the publisher
Weight 3.09/5
A Little More Info
The game board is large and at first feels very intimidating, but we can tell you that it is not as bad as you would initially think it is. The board is divided into seven (7) sections where you can take specific actions so let’s take a look at each before we discuss what each round looks like.
• Great Wall: This next section (below and left of Travel) is where players renovate the Great Wall to protect against the Mongol invaders. Once the wall reaches a certain point based on the number of players, various bonuses are given. Everyone who has a brick in the wall is eligible for Intrigue benefits (I bet you are a Pink Floyd fan and sung that last part adding the word "another" in it didn't you).
• Jade: The jade market (below and right of Travel) is where you can acquire pieces of jade which will give you increasing amounts of victor points for each one you have. The cost of each piece increases as more is bought.
• Intrigue: This section of the board (Above and left of the Grand Canal) serves a few purposes.
o The first one is gaining the first player marker for the next day. If you are the first one in the round to move up in intrigue, you can the marker that indicates you will be taking (or keeping) the first player marker.
o The next purpose is to be a tie-breaker in scoring points and other bonuses. Whoever is in the lead or is on top of the stack is considered ahead of the other players in status.
o Lastly, Intrigue points can be used to gain rewards for when the section of Great Wall renovation is completed. The benefits include gaining additional servants to changing one of the Destiny Dice to even gaining one piece of jade.
• Palace of Heavenly Purity: This is in the center of the board (above the Grand Canal) and is where you place your Envoy meeple in it. Your Envoy must reach the top of the track to enter the Temple and be worthy enough to win the game. If you do not reach the top, you can not win the game at all.
• Decrees: This section (above and right of Grand Canal) of the game provides special advantages to assist you in your attempt to be the most favored family. There are three levels of decrees with various costs. Level 1 decrees provide benefits for each Morning Phase; Level 2 provide Day Phase benefits; and Level 3 are End Game rewards. Also, you can choose which decree you want and do them in any order (but you can only do each one once).
• Grand Canal: The Grand Canal (bottom of the game board) is where you can place ships to travel to be able to game three different types of rewards once a ship contains three servants and ends are certain locations. The three different rewards are as follows: 4 Victory Points (you can do this up to 3 times); Gain an extra card for you hand (done up to 2 times) which the extra card is used throughout the rest of the game; and Gain a Double Servant (completed only once) that can be used a various locations. Any ship that is left on the Canal will move one spot during the Night Phase.
Now that the we have an overview of the board, let’s look at the three different phases of each day which explains the game play a bit more as well. The game is played over a 4 day span.
The Morning Phase consists of preparing the board for the new day (for the first round this is done during setup) and is done in five steps.
• Step 1: Determine the First player. If you have the blue medallion from the Intrigue location of the board you can the first player marker and get to start the Day Phase.
• Step 2: Refill the Map. This is where you would draw new tokens to fill empty city spots in the Travel Section.
• Step 3: Roll the Destiny Dice. The destiny dice will be explained more in the Night Phase.
• Step 4: Execute Decree advantages. This is where you gain the Level 1 decree bonuses.
• Step 5: Receive new servants. You advance the Day Tracker to the next round and receive the indicated number of servants (placed in the Servant Pool on your player board) to be used in the Day Phase.
The Day Phase is where you take actions by “bribing” the officials in each of the seven areas of the board. This is done in two parts.
Part 1: Exchange Gifts- This is where you will take one of your 4 cards (if you received the extra card(s) from the Canal Bonuses you will have 5 or 6 cards) and exchange it with the official in the area of the board you want to do.
Part 2: Perform Actions- If the card you exchanged has a symbol of an area of the board and you gained (or paid) to use it, proceed with taking that area’s action before you take the action of the area you exchanged the card at. This is optional and you don’t have to do it if you don’t want to or not able to. However, you must take this action first if you are going to take both actions.
Next you can then take the action of the location you placed your card in. Just like the card action, this is optional and you do not have to do it if you don’t want to or are not able to do it.
Most of the locations on the board provide you with two different options to pick from (Jade and Decrees only have one action). Typically, the second option provides extras benefits but do cost extra servants to use. We will let you look at what the specific actions and options are for each location.
Once all players have exchanged each of their cards then you proceed to the Night Phase.
The Night Phase consists of two easy steps.
Step 1 is where you check the numbers on the cards in your discard pile and if you have cards that match you gain extra servants for the next day. The player that has matched the most cards gain a bonus of 3 victory points and moves their Envoy one step closer to the Palace (if there is a tie the player ahead on the Intrigue track gains the bonus).
Step 2 is where you move your ships one step further down the canal. If your ship has three servants on it, you make take the bonus action associated with the new spot.
If this was not the fourth day, you then proceed to the Morning Phase. If it is the end of the fourth day then you proceed to final scoring.
Final Scoring is done in four steps in this order:
1) Score the Great Wall if there are any servants left (with out Intrigue Benefits).
2) Score Level 3 Decree points.
3) Receive points for your position of arrival in the Palace of Heavenly Purity. Remember that if you do not reach the Palace, you can not win the game.
4) Received points based on the number of Jade tokens you own.
If there is a tie after final scoring, the person ahead on the Intrigue Track wins the game and is declared the most influence family in China.
The game also has an expert mode and solo variant adding more replay ability to the game.
What we like about the game
Going back to a standard answer… the artwork. We love the looks of the game on every aspect. It does give you a nice sense of being in ancient China.
As for the game play itself, reaching the palace is the one thing that everyone must do in order to have a chance at winning. If you don’t reach the palace and you have the most victory points, you still lose the game.
Now is there one other area of the board that can help provide a victory solely? The answer is no. You must find the right balance for your strategy in order to win, and we love this aspect.
The last thing we love is that with each game the initial setup is different, so no two games will be alike. This keeps the game fresh and exciting.
What we don’t like about the game
Believe it or not, there isn’t anything that stands out to us in the negative of the game. Even though I have lost two games to my wife and one game to our friend and remain victory-less thus far. This is a game that we find fun and enjoyable and if I ever win a game that may be just a miracle waiting to happen.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Gùgōng is a game that does take up a lot of table space but does not take a lot of time playing it. We were truly amazed by this and how easy it was to learn the game.
There is an expansion to the game which we don’t have as of yet but are planning on adding it to our collection that adds four separate modules to the game all of which can be integrated together or individually. We are excited to try this out in the future.
Do we recommend this game for your collection? Why yes we do. My wife definitely feels that way since she is undefeated in the game; maybe someday I will be the most influential family in China, but until then, I remain a humbled peasant in the Ming Dynasty.
Is the price of the game worth it? We think so, however, on the secondary market the Kickstarter version (with game trays and upgraded components) of the game is sky-high in price and for us the upgrades would be nice to have but is not worth the weight in gold. The standard version of the game does the trick (we can add our own green glass pieces to use as the jade at little cost).
(This is a new section where we give our approval or disapproval based on the BGG rating scale)
We give it a solid 9 out 10 rating with four thumbs up (because there is two of us).
No comments:
Post a Comment