Princes of Florence by Alea, 2000
Personal Information
Acquired: 29 August 2001
I first saw this game at the Game Surplus
web page. It was listed as a 2001 Gamer's choice nominee, so I thought
I would check out some reviews. After reading many raves at the
Board Game Geek web page,
I decided to
take the plunge and purchase it. Meeting at a friend's apartment, the
first game we played was accompanied by copious bowls of Ox-tail soup and an
emergency trip to Carl's Jr. to get some "real" food. The game itself was
quite fun as we all started to get a feel for the strategy. After a fairly
quick game, we decided to play again to test out our new strategies. Needless
to say, it has been a popular pastime ever since.
Description:
Princes of Florence is an abstract strategy game set during the Italian
Renaissance. The goal is to acquire the most prestige points by building
up one's palace (each player is a prince) and by recruiting skilled
professionals to create lavish works. Broken up into two phases, each of the
seven rounds consists of several auctions, followed by two actions per player.
One nice feature of the game is the fixed length. This
makes for reasonably short games (90 minutes or so), and puts interesting
constraints on what can be accomplished before the final score is tallied, thus
forcing players to make sacrifices.
Some reviewers have argued that player interactions are too limited, allowing
each player to implement his own strategy independently of everyone
else. Although this can be true, more advanced participants will most likely
have overlapping strategies, or will at least try to disrupt their opponent's
maneuvering, thus generating a healthy amount of interplay. This is not
to say that everyone will play Princes of Florence the same way.
On the contrary, there are
many, potentially winning strategies to try,
giving the game a high replayability.
I've also noticed the game plays
quite differently with 3, 4 or 5 players, as the competition for scarce
resources becomes more fierce. This also adds to the game to game variety.
Overall, this German gem is quite impressive and would make a nice addition to
any serious gamers collection.
My Score: 8.5/10
Links:
Board Game Geek page.
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