Of the games I taught at the World Boardgaming Championships for Rio Grande Games this year (11 of them, altogether), Asara by the Wolfgang Kramer/Michael Kiesling duo was my favorite. One of their earlier games, Mexica, was my introduction to Euro games, and now, nearly a decade later, they’re still producing games I like.
It should be noted here at the outset, that when I taught this game to a group of three rather serious gamers, friends of mine, they were all disappointed. They kind of turned up their noses at it, said it was like a million other Euros, combining already established mechanics and slapping a new theme on to the thing. And to be honest, it’s hard to debate that. It is, in some ways, like others, does employ familiar mechanisms, and there is a new theme.
On the other hand, it’s fun. Or at least it was for me, and the majority of people who learned it from me.
Let’s start with the bad news. There is a random quality to the game that is centered on a deck of 45 cards; nine each of five colors. These cards are dealt to players, in numbers that range between seven and nine per player; in a two-player game, you’d get the seven. To accomplish any of the game’s short-term and long-term goals, you need to play these cards (thematically, workers) onto the board and generally, you’ll need to match the colors of cards already in designated ‘purchase’ areas. So what happens if the deck shuffles just right and all four players in a four-player game are dealt seven cards of the same color?
This isn’t likely to happen, and if it does, you should stop what you’re doing immediately, take a photo, and sign a witness affidavit, because no one will ever believe you. As it relates to the game, the potential for bad hands exists, as it does in most games with random elements. The tactical problem, though, is tricky. You can’t really plan for anything. You get dealt a hand, and you deal with it, one worker placement at a time.
And speaking of timing, it’s important. If you’re lucky enough to be first, you take any card you want, put it into its appropriate spot on the board, and claim the game component you want/need. If not, and the player to your left goes first, you better think ahead to what you want to grab, if the top three components on your wish list get grabbed up by opponents, and you, without a color matching card to save your life. There will be times when you seriously want to play first, and, probably not coincidentally, there is a cardboard game component called “The Caliph’s Patronage,” which can be stolen from an opponent by placing one of those colored cards in the Caliph’s Patronage area. As a result, you can steal first place from whoever else has it at the time. You’ll have to do this in anticipation of a round to come, because playing the card on the board to claim it, doesn’t have any effect on the round itself.
There is an ‘out,’ a balancing mechanism involved with the color-matching rule, which dictates that if you don’t have a card to match one already in the area from which you’d like to claim a component of the game, you may play two cards of any color. See, the deal here is that a round lasts only as long as it takes for the players to put their seven (eight, or nine) cards down on the table, and either claim components or build something. Having to play two cards for one of those turns is a bummer, but it does rule out the possibility that you could randomly (bad hand) be completely shut out of accomplishing anything on your turn.
You can see, from this example, that you can talk about the game in a generic sort of way, without ever discussing its theme, or even what it’s about. It’s not hard to discern from this why there are those who would describe any theme attached to the above mechanics as being ‘slapped on.’ Again, hard to argue that point.
So what is its theme? And what exactly is it about?
In the mythical Asara, land of a thousand towers, you will “walk boldly and find yourself in a magical realm, where the cities are dominated by palaces with white alabaster walls, and towers topped by gold domes.”
“All over these magnificent cities,” the rule book goes on to say, “cranes reach into the sky, at work on various building projects.”
Does anyone really read that stuff? I mean, aside from you, just now. You gotta love the writing, though. Very evocative of an age and era. The artwork from one of the industry’s best, Franz Vohwinkel, doesn’t hurt, either. Terrific looking board that, though muted in tone, has an eye-catching quality to it that brought people from across a room all week at the WBC for a closer look.
The object of the game is to construct a series of cardboard towers, arranging them in either neat rows, or scattered all over the place in your personal game space, depending upon the level of your compulsions. It’s a shame they didn’t think to make this three-dimensional; plastic colored towers that you could actually place on the board and watch, as they grew in height. It would, of course, have made the retail cost staggering, but it would have been nice.
You will earn both in-game and end-game victory points for the construction of these towers. Towers built collect victory points cumulatively; in other words, the tower you build in round one will be earning points for you in the final round. At the end of the game, victory points will be awarded to the highest tower in each of the five colors, the highest tower of all that were built by the players, and for the player who has built the most.
You’ll also get one victory point for every 10 bucks you have in your possession at the end; Asari coins, they’re called in the game. And speaking of money, it’s free. You get it at the beginning, kind of pro-rated to give the person going last a leg up, so to speak. Start player gets 20, second player gets 22, etc. At the beginning of each subsequent round, each player gets 20 bucks. It strikes me as gaming’s answer to an economic stimulus package. But it works, I guess. One hand gives it away to buy stuff, while the other hand takes it back from the bank.
Anyway, and where might I have heard this before, player with the most victory points at the end wins the game.
The octagonal, modular board has four corner sections, two of which are designated for what is described as the “Professional Version” of the game. I ignored this completely at the WBC. They’re not rocket science additions, or game changers. They add one more element to your worker placement musings, and it’s not as if you have all that many to begin with. One allows you to draw two cards from the pile of leftovers after the deal, which translates into two more places for your workers to go. Only three in a four-player game will able to do this. The fact that with three and two-player games of this, that slot will be available to all (albeit at increased cost; not much) makes it slightly less interesting. It’ll likely lead me to suggest it for four-players more than any other number. I played it with two a couple of times, and everything works just fine, including the two extra turns. With four players, though, if you’re last, you could be SOOL (I’ll leave the translation to you), which makes attaining the first player piece important.
It’s not doing too badly on the Geek. Picked up about 521 ratings, and last I looked, it had a 7.22 average rating. Only one of the 521 gave it a “10,” and all he said was “good game.” Second guy among the “9”s wasn’t going to buy it at all; was going to wait until it was released in the states (he was writing in January, 2011). But he tried it out and made room in his luggage back from Essen for it.
Most assuredly, Asara is a gateway game, and as such, earned its way onto the short list of nominees for this year’s Spiel des Jahres award, along with Qwirkle and Forbidden Island (won by Qwirkle). This is probably what my group of three ‘serious’ gamers found objectionable. They want something they can sink their teeth into, not something they can lap up like ice cream.
To hell with them, I like ice cream.
Designed by Wolfgang Kramer and Michael Kiesling, with artwork by Franz Vohwinkel, Asara is published by Rio Grande Games. Recommended for ages 9 and up, it can be played with 2-4 players in under an hour. It retails in the area of $40. And yes, Jay Tummelson, of Rio Grande Games did provide me with a copy to prepare this review and teach it to the masses at the 2011 WBC.
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