Toledo: Simplicity and fun in a Martin Wallace design

  Toledo (Mayfair Games, 2008)

Game: Toledo

Designers: Martin Wallace

Publisher: Mayfair Games (2008)

Age Range: 10 & up

Number of Players: 2-4

Game Time: 1 hour

Mechanics:

Complexity: 4

Challenge: 5

 

            Like picking Poison as the first game by Reiner Knizia to be discussed here (March 21), selecting Toledo as the first Martin Wallace game is a little strange. It’s not just that it’s one of his lesser known games (and it is), it’s that it bears little resemblance to the games for which he is hailed as one of this generation’s premier game designers. Age of Steam (2002) is generally considered to be his magnum opus. It ranks at # 11 on the Boardgame Geek list and was picked for an international gamers award in 2003. There have been, to date, 36 expansions to the game, including one that embraces a map of the moon. Other titles, which are better known and more widely appreciated, include Princes of the Renaissance (2003), Tinner’s Trail (2008), Struggle of Empires (2004), Byzantium (2005), Tempus (2006) and Brass (2007).

            As I’ve noted in previous posts, I have always been something of a slow learner when it comes to games employing a high degree of rule complexity, especially when my teacher is a rule book. Even with a live teacher, though, it can sometimes take an annoyingly long amount of time for me to grasp what’s going on in a game before I can become effective at just playing it. Being competitive at such a game can entail a whole added layer of time (consider my seven-year odyssey at the game of Puerto Rico and my stubborn 14% win percentage).

            All this said, I own two Martin Wallace games that I have never played – Age of Steam and Byzantium. I try to understand games myself before attempting to introduce them to others and I have never been able to adequately grasp what’s going on with these two well enough to explain in a live game situation. I did, twice, attempt to bring Byzantium out onto the table with two remarkably intelligent friends and after a couple of hours of trying to figure out what was supposed to be happening, we gave up. I still have yet to adequately participate in a game of either Byzantium or Age of Steam, though I remain interested in doing so.

           So then, the good folks at Mayfair Games forward me a copy of Toledo for review purposes and not only am I able to grasp what’s going on with just the rule book in hand, but I find myself thoroughly enjoying the system and thinking that far from being in the normal ‘serious gamers’ type of game, this is a pleasant ‘gateway game’; albeit to the world of gaming in general and not, definitively, to other Martin Wallace offerings.

            The deal with this game is sword-making and the city to which its title refers is in Spain, not Ohio. The object of the game is to utilize various craftsmen on a road to the Emperor’s palace and deliver three swords. The player who has delivered the most elegant swords (the ones with the highest total point value) to the Emperor wins the game. There, I’ve done it. . explained a Martin Wallace game in three sentences.

            There’s just a little bit more to it than that, but the rest is just movement and action mechanics. The board is something of a map of the city of Toledo, Spain with a 19-space road from the Cathedral (start) to the Emperor’s palace (the Alcazar). Each player starts with five playing tokens in a given color, eight business tiles and five movement cards (you’ll draw more from draw pile as the game progresses). On a player’s turn, he/she will exercise an either/or set of options – draw two more movement cards from a draw deck or place a business tile, move a pawn (or pawns) along the path to the emperor or move a piece back to the start. There are four types of business cards (you get two of each) – steel merchant, gem merchant, swordsmith or fencing master. If you opt for the ‘placement of a business’ option, you will take one of these and place it on one of the board’s 19 spaces. Then, when you exercise your ‘movement option’ you can move onto this space and ‘do business.’ Move your pawn onto a gem merchant space and you get a gem. At the steel merchant, you get steel and at the swordsmith’s you get to take these resources and fashion them into a sword. Three bars of steel will allow you to craft a sword with a point value of five. Four steel and four gems allow you to craft a sword with a point value of 15 (there is only one of these and one of value 12 in the game). The other ‘do business’ tile that you can initially place and then employ is the ‘fencing master’ which will assist you with fighting duels. Yes, fighting duels; any time you land on a business occupied by an opponent, you must fight a duel, realized through a ‘turning card’ process. When you ‘do business’ with the fencing master, you gain a ‘skill tile’ which increases your odds at winning a duel.

            Move your pawn to the Alcazar with the crafted sword in your possession and turn it into the emperor. First person to get three of them to the Alcazar signals the game’s end. Each player is allowed one more turn and then the values of the delivered swords are totaled to determine a winner.

           There are a couple of other little tricky rules, like the ability to move a pawn, or pawns multiple times on a turn if you employ the same value movement card. If you own four movement cards with the value of 4, you can move four times in a single turn. Possession of a ‘move skill’ tile (obtainable at the fencing master business) will allow you to take multiple moves with different movement card values.

            It’s a quick game, which will normally take less time than it takes to just explain most other Martin Wallace games. I like it for just this reason. Make no mistake, however, the combination of simple mechanics and a clear objective does provide a challenging experience, albeit more of a tactical, than strategic challenge. It’s not a brain burner, but your brain can’t just sit back and take a nap either. If you think of the expanse of ‘gateway games’ as a continuum, from games that just get people down at a table playing, to games that actually start flexing brain muscles that’ll be useful as more complex games are introduced, Toledo is very much in the direction of the latter.

            It’s only been rated 548 times on Boardgame Geek, with an average rating of 6.41, placing it at # 955 on the list (compare this to the original Age of Steam, with over 3,000 ratings, an average of 8.03 and a position just outside the list’s top 10 games). I’ll get back to you when I’ve successfully deciphered any of the more complex offerings in Wallace’s backlog of designs.

 

For more info:  www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/34599  www.mayfairgames.com