Stake the Bunny,
Open the Box

Princes of the Renaissance:
Euro With History

Reviewed by Charles Vasey

Martin Wallace for Warfrog

This is a Euro-game (so is fast and full of interaction) but with an interesting degree of history sneaked into the game. Its subject is the condottiere of the Renaissance era. Each player represents a Condottiere family which serves the great cities of Italy. Each family has a slightly different ability (one may pay less for one kind of unit than another). The five cities (Venice, Milan, Florence, Rome and Naples) constitute the sources of influence over which our players will strive. The basic drivers of victory are as follows:

  1. Control of city factions (depending on how important each city is)
  2. Any event tiles with victory points
  3. The player controlling the Pope
  4. The Gold and Influence scores
  5. Any victories in battle.

In short it is the old Svea Rike principles in Italian. A rather neat twist though is that you cannot have a finger in every city pie, and the actions of players will lift (or depress) the VP value of your city. So investing heavily in Naples is great but too much of an investment can leave Naples with problems as other players depress its value.

Each play has a round of activity in which he can:

  • buy a tile (these are troops – used in battle, and treachery – used everywhere).
  • Auction a city, event or Pope tile
  • Start a war, or
  • pass

There is a lot of bidding in this game but it is not just in gold, in some cases you bid influence. These two resources are ingeniously worked into the game.

City factions (each city has six) may also give you gold or influence. In some cases they improve the value of your troops. Each city has a different bundle of factions which add to the historical patina. Venice, for example, had five, gold-producing, merchants and the Doge (who produces gold and influence). Milan has a Merchant, Genoese Crossbows and Swiss Mercenaries (which will improve the value of your crossbow and pike tiles), and armourer who improves Cavalry values and two of the Sforza family with useful abilities. Florence has two Medicis, the Soderini and Pazzi families (influence mines) and two bankers that allow you to swap influence and gold. Rome has four Borgias with suitably amusing powers, and the Orsini and Colonna families. Finally Naples has Ferrante and Alfonso of aragon, three Merchants and a Spanish troops tile to buff up your sword and buckler men. So although you do not have Swiss Pike blocks as such you see them in the Milano factions and so it is else where – history is hidden like sixpences in the Christmas Pudding.

There are three turns to the game (and the event cards come in three era blocks) but any number of rounds in each era until all its Event Tiles are bought. Only between turns do we get the reinforcements of gold and influence. So as the rounds continue funds and influence can get very tight leaving bargains on the table.

However the real damage is done by wars. As condottiere we are invulnerable but our masters the great cities can suffer. Whenever a war starts the various families bid for two of them to be appointed commander for the two cities that are selected to be at war. Each condottiere receives gold for this (but cannot use it until the next turn). The two sides compare armies and throw dice. The losing state reduces its status and the winner increases its. As you might expect if your opponent has a large investment in one state and you have a poor army it would be tempting to try to become the condottiere of his state – and then lose! There is a lot of this sort of lateral thinking and the various strategies will take some time to shake out. What players must avoid is too great a spend on early bidding leaving one player to control later rounds (if the others do not go for the events early to close the turn).

Although the strategy is undoubtedly intellectually challenging I usually find myself unable to care for too long but the tightness of play and feel for some history tempted me and its short (but intense) playing time – about two/three hours – meant I stayed interested to the last. Princes remains a Euro game first but is reasonably near the cross-over point to historical gaming.

Open the Box, Stake the Bunny

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© Copyright 2004 by Charles and Teresa Vasey.
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