Players: 2-4
Time: 30-45 minutes
Difficulty: 2 (of 10)
Although multilingual, this is a German import, and thus you'll need to order it from a store who imports titles from Europe.
The Components
As with all the Adlung Spiele card games, this one comes with a small set of cards (66) and a rule book in a small tuck box. Though produced in Germany, as with other, more recent Adlung Spiele games, this one is multilingual.
The Cards: The cards are all full-color, printed on medium-weight, glossy card stock.
49 cards form the main deck; these include 45 goods cards and 4 merchants. The goods cards are divided into 5 categories: fabric, wine, spices, jewels, and copper. Each one has a unique picture, as well as a clear, colored icon. 2 of each card type have "royal seals", which are also clearly marked. Altogether these cards are attractive and easy to use. The four merchants each have a couple of icons showing exactly what they do (even clearer than the rules as it happens).
9 cards make up the "price wheel".They're numbered 1-9, and you arrange them in a circle, then spin the goods value cards around them as prices increase and decrease. It's a little unecessary, but looks nice.
The 5 goods value cards are meant to be folded in two. Each depicts one of the goods types, with the matching illustration; unfortunately the matching icon is not shown on the goods value cards. They're still pretty easy to pick out, but they could have been better.
The last play card is "Jacob the Rich", who just sits to the side and collects a couple of goods.
Finally, there are two instruction cards, which just clarify how the game is setup; they're a nice addition.
The Rulebook: A tiny rulebook in three languages (German, English, French). It's not illustrated, though there are examples. It was a little bit obtuse. I had to look up a couple of times just how goods evaluation worked, and the rules for merchant cards are extremely unclear from the rules; I'm guessing that my interpretation (below) is right, mainly based on the icons on the cards.
Missing Components: As with most of the Adlung Spiele cards you have to supply your own way to keep score. A pencil and paper will do the job, though we used poker chips because they're more visceral. I've seen another player who keeps a stack of paper money with his Die Fugger.
More importantly, there's no way to keep track of which goods have been offered for trade in each round (which ultimately determines what sells for how much). We were constantly counting and recounting this, and I also always found the end-round scoring--where you had to figure out which three goods were the most common--a little awkward. Some type of racetrack showing how much of each good was out would have helped immensely, though that of course goes against the Adlung Spiele ideal of a whole game in a small tuckbox.
On the whole the cards in Die Fugger are attractive and relatively easy to use, but the game really needs a bit more in the way of components to support it well. Still, it earns a "4" out of "5" for Style: above average.
The Gameplay
The object of Die Fugger is to make the most money through the clever sale of goods.
Setup: The game begins with the price wheel being placed in the middle of the table and each of the five goods being placed at the "5" value. The rules suggest folding your goods value cards in half, so that you can stand them up; I did, but some players might be shocked by the idea.
Jakob is placed near the center of the table and given two face-up goods. Each player gets four cards, and now play can begin.
Order of Play: The actual gameplay is very simple. Each turn a player can: draw a card; or play a goods card face up; or play a goods card face down; or play a merchant.
Drawing Cards. There's one small rule here: you can't draw if you already have 5 or more cards.
Playing Goods Face Up. When you play goods face-up you are increasing the demand for that good (and, thus its price). As you'll recall, there are five different types of goods (copper, fabric, wine, spices, jewels). When five of the same good go face-up, including those that Jakob has, the current round of play ends and all goods are valued and sold.
Playing Goods Face Down. You can only play goods face-down in the first two rounds of play, and only one per round. Thus at the end of the game each player may (really, should) have two face-down goods. With less than 4 players, Jakob also gets an extra good when a good goes face-down.
Playing Merchants. While goods give you direct value in money (victory points) earned, merchants instead let you draw additional cards before after the end of a round of play. You're allowed to play a maximum of two merchants in a round.
Ending a Round: A round of play ends when the fifth card of the same type of good is played.
At this point, all the goods are valued. The top 3 demanded goods increase in value on the price wheel by the number of cards of that type in play. However, if a good goes above 9, it goes to 1, where it stops. (The market got oversaturated.) The 2 lesser-demanded goods meanwhile drop one value (to a minimum of 1).
As I commented above, this is all a bit of a pain to calculate. I always have a bit of trouble keeping the numbers of all those goods in my head so that I can rank them, much as I do in Queen's Necklace, another game of selling where quantities matter.
Now, each player earns money for all of his goods, equal to the value of each good as shown on the price wheel times the number of cards he has of that good type; in addition if a player played any cards with a "royal seal" on it, and there were 3 or less of that good type, then that royal goods card is doubled in value.
All the goods cards played are discarded.
Then, each player draws 2 cards from the draw deck, +2 if he had a merchant, +5 if he had two.
Merchants are then discarded too.
And a new round of play begins.
Ending the Game: The game ends at the end of a round where someone went over 100 points. At this point each player then reveals his secret, face-down goods and gets a bonus equal to twice their current value.
The player with the highest total wins.
Relationships to Other Games
Die Fugger (2003) is a pretty pure logistical game of supply and demand. I suppose you could see it as an abstract trading game too, similar to Serenissima (1996), the aforementioned Queen's Necklace (2003), or other games where you trade exclusively with the bank.
Its model of supply and demand is a pretty unique model of that economic concept, though I have a bit of trouble figuring out what's the supply and what's the demand since the cards you play seem to signify both how much people want the good, and how much of it you have available. Some people will see a connection to Reiner Knizia's Modern Art where players also play cards in specific sets to increase the value of those commodities.
Die Fugger was designed by Klaus-Jurgen Wrede, best known for his Carcassonne games, and other games using tiles (Der Untergang von Pompeji, Krone and Schwert). This is currently his only non-tile game, and thus a bit of a departure.
The Game Design
Die Fugger is a simple & quick economic game. Here's some of the good points:
Good Tactical Manipulation: The tactical manipulation in the game is quite good, with every play having meaning. In addition there are intresting possibilities for tactical collusion, wherein multiple players play out the same goods types for their joint benefit.
Interesting Brinkmanship: The game modeling overdemand by a severe drop in prices adds some interesting brinkmanship to the game, wherein you may be trying to have a good come in second, not first. This type of play is often tense and interesting. It also allows for some "spoiler" play by opponents.
Very Quick Play: The choice of one card play or one draw per turn is quite sucessful, and allows for rapid-fire play.
Here's some of the elements I didn't like:
Very Logistical: The logistical level of the game is very high, and you can never make a (good) play without calculating how it will affect the sum and value of each and every good. Some of this would be alleviated if there were ways to track goods levels better, but still you'd need to consider what those goods levels meant.
Very Chaotic: There's a lot of chaos in the game; because you can't control the random draw or what the other players do, you don't always have very good control over your destiny; we played 4 players, and I've been told this is better with 3.
On the whole Die Fugger has some surprising depth for its size and length; the math & analysis level can indeed be a bit high. Still it's an above average offering, and thus I've given it a low "4" out of "5" for Substance: a bit above average.
Conclusion
Die Fugger is a game of economic modeling, and to a certain extent it can be as dry and mathetical as that description implies. However, it's also a well-designed game which allows for meaningful choices and plays quickly. If you're looking for a heavier filler, and you like economic and logistical games, this is well worth the extremely cheap price.
