Phil Eklund is best known in the hobby as the designer of Lords of the Sierra Madre, a game which has garnered no less than two rave reviews in the pages of this publication alone. His latest, Lords of the Renaissance, is an attempt to apply the same basic system to 15th Century Europe, but with rather less success than its predecessor. And, even more unfortunately, L of R is one of those games where the quality of its parts may have a direct affect on your decision to buy.
The best of the game's components is the map, a fair rendition of Europe from Portugal to the Sea of Azov and from Scotland to North Africa. The map is divided into land and sea areas, called duchies and seas respectively. Cities are shown as boxes within the duchies, and cities and duchies which are part of one of the six "empires" in the game (England, France, Aragon, the Ottoman and Holy Roman Empires, and the Papacy) are color coded. The map does look a little weird - apparently Mr. Eklund has been taking cartography lessons from Joe Miranda - but it's nothing that can't be lived with. The real problem with it is that, at 18 by 25 inches, it's simply too small. Many of the areas aren't big enough to handle the counters and coins that accumulate during the game, and the map, as a whole, can't easily accommodate the up to dozen players it sometimes uses.
That’s the Good News. The Bad News is the counters and cards. There are 316 of the former and 236 of the latter, all printed on undiecut, unperforated card stock. That's right, kids, it's scissors time. This seems to be reflect a minor, backsliding trend in the hobby (cf. “Vae Victus” and “Competitive Edge”) and I for one hope it doesn't go any further. I've worked most of my life with T-squares, triangles and matte knives, and I found separating the counters and cards tedious. Someone who got a D+ in Paper Dolls and Collage in kindergarten is going to have BIG problems.
Besides being a major pain to cut out, the counters and cards have other problems. For one thing, they're both printed on the same thickness of card stock, which manages to simultaneously be too thin for and too thick for easily shuffleable cards. Making the cards even harder to shuffle is the fact that they're small and square. Finally, the nationality of the counters is shown purely by the color of the printing on a white background and two of the colors are red and dark orange. This is not a game to play under poor lighting. Certainly I realize how difficult it is for a small company to produce high quality components. However, when someone pays almost 40 bucks for a game, they really shouldn't have to work this hard to get it ready for play.
All of that work would be worth it if Lords of the Renaissance were a really terrific game. Unfortunately, it isn't. While it is fun to play, L of R suffers from poorly written rules (apparently an Eklund trademark) and, more importantly, major historicity problems. These problems manifest themselves right from the setup of the game. Each player takes the role of one of 17 historical figures of the time, ranging from Prince Henry of Portugal to Usam Hassan, Lord of the White Sheep tribe of the Turcomans. Despite this apparent variety, though, all of these men are basically the same. They all start with the same (very small) amount of money (another Eklund trademark), and they all have the same goal: to accumulate the biggest pile of cash by establishing trade routes between off-map sources of silk, spices and other commodities and their o-map holdings. Now, becoming the richest man in Europe through trade may be a reasonable goal for Cosimo di' Medici, Jakob Fugger or the Doge of Venice, but Edward of York? Tsar Ivan III? Even the aforementioned trio were interested in more than just amassing a big bank account.
Other aspects of the initial setup make it seem as though the world began in 1460. There are no trade routes in existence at the beginning of the game (despite the fact that all of the empires start with ships and/or caravans), no guilds or resources are in operation, none of the empires have any money in their treasuries, and, strangest of all, there are no armies on the map (I had no idea 15th century Europe was such a peaceful place).
L of R is played in yearly game turns, each of which consists of 14 phases or "rounds". The rounds are grouped into seasons, with Winter consisting of two rounds and all of the other seasons four. Beginning in 1460 the game ends in 1479 (or 1499 if you play the extended version).
As you might imagine, cards play an important part in the game. They come in two colors, green (the player characters, Imperial Lords and Chancellors and a couple of special items) and pink (everything else). The pink cards are shuffled at the start of the game and 4 are placed on each space of the turn record track. In the first round of each season the topmost card of the current year is turned over and either played (if a Pestilence card) or auctioned off. (After the auction unclaimed green cards can also be bid on.) The cards represent a wide variety of holdings and events, such as guilds, resources, crusades, lawsuits and even assassination attempts. Here again, though, there's a sameness about them that belies their ostensible diversity. Take, for example, the edifice cards. Edifices represent buildings and institutions that either were, or could have been built, during this era, from various printing presses, to libraries, universities and even basilicas. However, except for the city in which they must be built, all edifices are, in games terms, exactly alike. They all take the same amount of time and money to build (or "mature") and they all produce the same amount of revenue in the same ways.
The other rounds of a season vary. In Spring players and non-player controlled empires build and refit their units and all ship units south of a Tempest Line printed on the map can move. In Summer taxes are collected, edifices, guilds and resources are matured and all units can move. In Fall trade route moneys are collected, ships north of the Tempest Line check for losses due to storms and land units south of the line move. The only other round in Winter is attrition.
As I mentioned, the primary source of income in the game is trade. Trade routes are created by occupying a contiguous line of duchies and/or seas from the proper source back to a bank, guild, resource or edifice with either a ship or caravan. Ships and caravans of any player can be used for this, provided the owner agrees (usually in exchange for a piece of the action). In addition, 1 Gold in customs must be paid for each duchy with a city or sea bordered by a port through which the trade route is traced. Since each route only brings 3 Gold, it at first seemed impossible to put together one that wouldn't cost more than it produced. A careful rereading of the rules revealed that the customs payments came from the treasury, not the players. Lord only knows what that's supposed to represent. Of course a lot of things about the trade route rules don't make much sense. Why, for instance, do edifices produce revenue if they're tied to a silk or sugar source? Why do resources (mines, etc.) need a route to a source of slaves? (As far as I know what slavery existed in this era was mostly convicts and prisoners of war, rather than Africans or Asians.)
And then there are the rules problems. Perhaps the best example of this concerns the simple question of how far units can move. The rules state quite specifically that units have a MA of 5, and that seas and lowland duchies have an MP cost of 1 with alpine duchies costing 4. Unfortunately they state equally specifically in an equal number places that units can enter 4 seas or lowland duchies or 1 alpine duchy per movement. Sometimes both statements are made at the same time. Consider, for instance, Rule 5.7.3: "An army with an escorting leader may, in its round, move into an adjacent alpine Duchy, or up to four lowland duchies... Armies thus have five ‘movement points’, and each alpine duchy costs 4 MPs to enter and each lowland duchy coats 1 MP to enter." Huh? We finally decided to use the higher MA, since even that is painfully slow (an overland journey from Paris to Rome takes 9 months spread over a year and a half of game time).
Even though the focus of Lords of the Renaissance is trade, whenever you get wargamers together you're going to have fighting. Combat in the game comes in three flavors: naval battles, land battles and sieges, with the third merely a less lethal form of the second. And make no mistake about it; battle in this game is incredibly bloody. Each combatant rolls one die for each step of units he has involved (full strength units have two steps) and each roll has a 50/50 chance of causing an enemy step loss (possession of the proper cards can raise this to 5/6!). After both players have taken casualties the winner of the battle is then decided using one of the most bizarre mechanics I've ever seen. Each leader in the game has a Stature rating, ranging from 1 to 4, which is used for a number of purposes. Anyway, after the killing is over both players multiply their leader's stature by the number of surviving armies they have and the higher total wins, with the loser being forced to retreat. Here's an example of what this can lead to: Henry VI of England (Stature 4) moves into York with 4 armies. Defending the duchy is Edward of York (Stature 2) with 2 armies. Edward rolls 4 dice and gets 4 hits, wiping out half of Henry's force. Henry rolls 8 dice and gets no hits. The winner? Henry, because 4 times 2 is more than 2 times 2. Not only is this truly loopy, but as an added bonus the rules say nothing about what happens when the totals are equal, something that happens frequently.
The amazing about L of R, though, is that, despite all of the above, the game is actually kind of fun to play. It starts off very slowly, since the players have almost no cash to work with, and, like Sierra Madre, Eklund would have better served his customers by giving everyone some sort of leg up. Once there, things move along swiftly, if somewhat generically looney. And the cards do add a nice element of randomness, especially since only 80 of the 199 pinkos will be used in any one game. As long as you can work through the rules problems and don't look too closely at the history you might enjoy Lords of the Renaissance. My guess, though, is that Lords of the Sierra Madre would be a better bet.
CAPSULE COMMENTS
Graphic Presentation: Don't get me started.
Playability: Worse than it needs to be. The quick start rules sheet does help, though. Solitaire is nearly impossible.
Replayability: The cards giveth replayability, the lack of variation in how to win taketh it away. Overall, not bad.
Historicity: Change the names and it could be set on Mars.
Creativity: Lords of the Sierra Madre in a poorly fitting bodkin.
Wristage: Minimal.
Comparisons: Reminds one of the old game, Mercenary. It will be interesting to see what AH does with its upcoming Son of Civilization, Renaissance.
Overall: I really enjoy empire-building games. Maybe that's why I was so disappointed with Lords of the Renaissance.
from SIERRA MADRE GAME CO.
One 18"x25" map, one Rules Booklet, one Quick start rules sheet, 12 playing mats, 316 counters, 236 cards. Sierra Madre Games Co., 3438 North Applewood Drive, Tucson, AZ 85712. $38.
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© Copyright 1994 by Richard Berg
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