St. Petersburg seems to be one of the mostly discussed games nowadays, among Goa and Raja. The box says that the designer's name is Michael Tummelhofer, but the truth is, Bernd Brunnhofer of Hans Im Gluck did not wanted his name to appear as both the publisher and the designer, so made up this name. He borrowed from Jay Tummelson(Rio Grande Games) and Michael Bruinsma (999 Games). The theme of this game is about re-building the city of St. Petersburg, but the game is about collecting items in front of you. Each Item is made of a card, and the game is composed of 4 kinds of cards : tradesmen, buildings, nobles and upgrade cards. There is also a game board which has score track as well as spaces for displaying cards for sale, along with turn markers which show the starting player for each phases. A round is composed of 4 phases, in order of tradesmen-buildings-nobles-upgrade cards. In each phase, the specific kind of cards are sold to the players. The displaying track is made of two rows; the first one shows the cards for sale from this phase, while the second one shows the cards remaining from the last phase. But the total number of cards must always be 8. The starting player for the current phase starts his actions. There are 4 possible actions. 1. Purchasing a card from the board : pay the price shown on the card, then take the card in front of you. If you already own the same kind of card(s), the price is reduced by 1 gold per each card you have. Also, some of the special cards give you the discount if you already have them. 2. Taking a card from the board to your hand : if you don't have enough money for the card you really want, you can take that card to your hand. But the hand limit is 3. 3. Putting down a card from your hand : you can put down one card from your hand (acquired by action 2), by paying the price shown on the card. You can put down any card from your hand, regardless of the type of current phase. 4. Pass : you can pass. If all players pass consecutively, the phase ends. Once the action round is over, you score the cards belonging to the current phase. Usually tradesmen give you money, buildings give you VP and nobles give you both. The important thing is that you only score the cards for the current phase. So if you put down a card which does not belong to current phase from your hand, it will not score at the end of the phase, which is inefficient. One exception: while tradesmen, buildings and nobles score right away at the end of their phases, upgrade cards do not score by themselves. When you buy an upgrade card, you put down the card on other card of the same type in order to improve its functionality, then pay the difference in their prices. After scoring, replenish the cards on the board. At the end of tradesmen/buildings/nobles phases, move every card in the first row to the right and draw new cards into the empty spaces. At the end of the upgrade card phase, discard cards in the second row then move the remaining cards in the first row to the second row. Then draw new tradesmen cards, from the left spot, so that there will be 8 cards total. Now pass the starting player marker to the left player, and start a new round. Once any type of cards are gone, that round is finished before the game ends. There is an additional scoring at the end of the game. You get points for the different noble cards you have - this score is quite big, so the nobles are two times more important than other cards. You get points for the money you have, but lose points for the cards you're still holding in your hand. This is an easy-to-approach, but very well made resource management game. There's almost nothing to explain other than the way cards are purchased, so it's easy to teach. The slightly exaggerated Russian illustrations from Doris Matthaus add to the fun and atmosphere. Sure, there's the luck of draw, but if you can accept it and enjoy the tactical play of resource management, this game is perfect for you. But the game progress is only linear and incremental, which lacks something to me. There is no dramatic element in this game. If you had a good start, chances are you will do well for the rest of the game. There's nothing to incur ups and downs in this game. Also, not that it's a bad thing, but it's worth to mention that this game lacks any player interaction. Personally I think this game is a little bit monotonous, although it does contain some interesting ideas. Still, for gamers with certain taste, this will be a great addition. Back to Table of Contents -- Game! # 8 To Game! List of Issues To MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 2004 by George Phillies. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com