|
Berry Mason, QRC, LLBLT(Hons)
-
After announcing my desire to purchase this game from my FLGS I almost fled in shame when one assistant laughed at me for wanting a picture of a naked man.
I didn't know it had a picture of a naked man on the cover—actually he's in a loin cloth—and given that I worked at a non-tantric religious institution my friend never bought the box to work. All I knew was that the game looked pretty. Pretty games are essential for me as I will end up spending a long time staring at the game once I am eliminated.
In Taluva you place first a tile then one (or more) of your buildings If you can't legally place a building then you take advantage of the nearly naked man on the box to distract any opponents while you make an illegal placement. This is not in the small and elegant rule set but clearly cheating is always an option if your opponent is stupid enough to fall for such a ruse. The tiles are cool because they're trefoils. Trefoils are twenty-seven times cooler than regular foils but only about one fifth as cool as cinquefoils. Annoyingly, cinquefoils are harder to place so they're seldom used in any game and regular foils are too busy getting uglier and less feminine in James Bond films.
It's a mad rush to place your huts or towers or temples on the pretty, evolving landscape. Huts can go almost anywhere. Your people must be pretty fecund since a one hut settlement can easily explode into an eight hut settlement in a turn, either that or shoddy building codes allow rapid construction of substandard shanties which is possible given the probably remote from authority location of the game setting. I think your society must be in the tropics. There is a nearly nude man on the box cover and gaily coloured flowers on some tiles. Also, the villagers build more huts at higher altitudes where it's easier to escape the heat.
The game doesn't have sharks with laser beams for eyes but it goes some way to ameliorating this deficiency by using a volcano as one hex on each of the three-hex trefoils. The rapidity with which plants grow in this newly extruded volcanic environment suggest a kind of Genesis Effect and the extreme degree of volcanism suggests that these tiles were indeed made with unstable protomatter.
I like to imagine that I am an evil genius in this primitive society who has somehow managed to find and activate a computer left ages ago by a benevolent culture or maybe it was my own culture that has since regressed technologically and sociologically who left this slumbering electronic-minion-who-would-be-overlord. It doesn't matter which since whatever the origin of this cyber-deity it allows me to control lava flows that will obliterate opposing settlements—or even my own villagers. Whom gods destroy is irrelevant; maybe it's caprice, maybe it's a nihilistic philosophy or maybe it's part of my master plan wherein, logically, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one—but I don't have to appeal to logic since I, pretending to be Vulcan, decide where the lava flows.
I think the computer has some sort of self-preservation routine since temples—which presumably house the terminal interfaces of the expanding Machine—cannot be destroyed once placed. The same rule applies for the towers which are erected on high ground: Protomatter Trefoil Tiles can be stacked according to real world scientific principles. I'm not sure if these latter erections are communication towers signalling to the Galactic Federation that a new race is emerging from pre-sentience into massive over population and the consequent war of genocide or if they're just giant phalluses which patriarchal techno-priests are averse to cutting down because it makes them feel icky; whatever the case lava ejaculated from the volcanoes cannot cover either type of structure.
(The scientific principles noted are that the volcano hex on the to be placed tile must go over the volcano tile of an immediately lower tile, thus preserving continuity of the lava chamber and that land mass can't over hang empty space, ie PTTs must rest entirely on other tiles. Obviously this is stop the creation of unstable Jenga like towers but that it is well grounded in geology is testament to the rigorous design process.)
I've played it at home, at friends homes, with children and, in the year since I first played it still hits the table often. The number of lunchtimes I played this game is without measure, not only because I didn't count but because I wouldn't want any boss to guess at how much time I might screw around at work in future.
Pros:
Looks good, quality components with a credit card sized rules summary for each player
Very simple rule set with elegant game play
Quick play time
Cons:
Overly big package but still the tiles don't fit in the protective insert
-
That's MISTER Estall to you sonny!
United Kingdom
Bisley
Surrey
-
Bravo! A truly entertaining review with a delightful blend of insane ideas and rich wordplay. Sir/Madam [delete as applicable] I thank you.
-
Randall Bart
United States
Granada Hills
California
Red October
Earth is one of my favorite planets
-
Great game. Silly box.
-
-
Great review, silly review
-
Daleks stole my lunch box
France
Morbihan
-
The Elder wrote: After announcing my desire to purchase this game from my FLGS I almost fled in shame when one assistant laughed at me for wanting a picture of a naked man.
-
Jay Sheely
United States
Pleasanton
California
-
This is one of my favorite abstract games. Very replayable, looks very cool, great theme, and tense gameplay between evenly matched players. I like it best with only 2-players.
I never thought of the cover as anything more than... the picture on the game. Who's the immature 13 year old who made the comments about the cover? What a maroon.
-
|
|
|
