Players: 3-5
Time: 1-2 hours
Difficulty: 3 (of 10)

The Components

Succession comes with a set of well-produced components, including:

• 1 game board
• 5 player boards
• 55 cards
• 112 cardboard chips
• pencils & paper
• 1 rulebook

Game Board: The game board is a small, two-panel board which shows the standing of the five contenders for the throne, with their starting standings clearly marked in green. Each contender is illustrated with attractive, full-color Phil Foglio artwork, and also lists special rules for the candidate.

The special rules are unfortunately too small to read for most players sitting around a table; on the good side they're pretty easy to remember. I knew what 4 of the 5 were without problem by my second game.

Player Boards: These boards are printed full-color on very thick cardboard. Each one shows a unique Foglio picture for the character, lists their special power (in much larger type than the contenders) and then lists that character's standing with the five contenders for the throne; again, starting standing is marked in green. There's also some very clear gold coins marked on the standing charts which show how much patronage you receive based on your level support for each candidate.

Overall the game board and player board are both well laid out and generally quite attractive, thanks to the work of Studio Foglio.

Cards: The cards are all slightly flimsy, but printed full color on glossy stock. There are three types of cards--Events, Intrigue, and Influence. Each of those three types of cards has a unique piece of artwork, but more importantly a unique border color, so it's really easy to tell them apart. There's funny & appropriate color text on all of the cards which adds nicely to the atmosphere of the game. The Intrigue cards also carefully separate out rule text in bold to make it easier to see. The cards are largely easy to use, though the amount of text can be a bit intimidating when you pick them up.

Cardboard Chips: Like the player boards, these are very thick cardboard, printed full color. There are a slew of different chips.

10 gain/loss chips (in green and red, respectively) are placed on the main board during Intrigues to remind everyone of who stands to gain and who to lose.

30 character chips are used on the main board and the player boards to mark everyone's standing(s). They're each printed with a picture of the appropriate character, which is pretty cool.

The last 72 chips are gold, 50 of them "1"s and 22 "5"s. The artwork is easy to distinguish, but it would have been slightly better if they were different sizes, or else printed double-sided, as some players got confused on the denominations a couple of times.

Pencil and Papers: Auction bidding is done with pencil and paper, so the game helpfully includes a pack of 5 pencils and a small pad of paper.

Rulebook: As with all the other graphical elements the rulebook is full color, beautifully laid out, and filled with nice illustrations. It read well enough, but was actually a little hard to reference during the game because so much attention was spent on all those graphiacl elements.

Box & Tray: The box is a medium-sized bookshelf box. It's got a simple tray in it, split into five compartments. The only slight flaw in the tray design is that the card slot doesn't have finger holes that go down far enough, and thus it's hard to get all the cards out at once.

Overall, the game is beautifully produced. The components are high quality, and actually are even a little overproduced. The usability is above average. I think there's a bit too much text on the cards without enough to break that text up, and I already mentioned the fact that the candidate special powers are hard to read, but those are relatively minor.

Unfortunately, with all that really high quality production you have an auction system that uses pencil and paper and seems pretty primitive, especially in relationship with everything else. It bugged both of the groups I played this game with. Personally, I would have done it all with cards, by turning the money into cards; Amun-Re is a game that does this very effectively. Another player suggested a spinner, which probably would have worked too. The auction method as stands doesn't hurt the game notably in any sense but the aesthetic one, but it is a shame there.

I'd originally dinged the game a point for that auction system, but looking at the pictures of all the beautiful components, I can't justify that, so I've given the game a low "5" out of "5" for Style; it's not quite perfect, but it's very nicely done.

The Gameplay

The object of Succesion is to have the highest standing with the contender who is eventually elected to the throne.

Setup: The game of Succession starts with the main board being placed in the middle of the table. Then each player gets a player board, as well as initial patronage and four cards. Play begins.

The Main Board. This board shows the five contenders for the throne (Galahad, a knight; Ulysses, the son; Arianna, the daughter, Archie, the bishop; and Venetia, the merchant). Each character has a standing with the king, from 1 to 10. Each character also has a special power: Galahad helps out on votes beneficial to him and opposes voes opposed to him; Ulysses goes down in standing faster and up slower; Arianna goes up in standing faster and down slower; Archie doesn't go down in standing; and Venetia gives out money to people who she credits with helping her out.

The Player Board. The player boards, meanwhile, each show a character (Wizard; Ambassador; Royalist; Taxman; and Squire). Each of these characters has a standing with each of the five contenders for the throne, from 1 to 5. Each of the player-characters also has a special power: the Wizard can buy extra cards; the Ambassador never loses standing; the Royalist can buy extra increases in standing; the Taxman gets extra patronage; and the Squire gets free votes.

Patronage. Each of the five contenders to the throne also gives out patronage. The higher standing spaces for each of the contenders (on the player boards) list gold piece rewards. Whenever a player collects patronage (at the start of the game, then at the start of each turn) he adds up the value of the patronage for all the characters, based on his current standing with each of them, and takes that much gold.

Cards. Finally, there are three types of cards. Events let players do various powerful things. Intrigue lets players call votes (and also supply a couple of votes) and Influence gives players additional votes to use.

Order of Play: During a turn a player does the follower things:

• Take a Card
• Collect Patronage
• Play Cards

Take a Card: A player either draws one card, or else discards all of his cards, draws up to four, and then ends his turn.

Collect Patronage: A player collects gold based on his standing with the five contenders.

Play Cards: Finally, a player plays cards. he may play as many Events as he wants, but only one Intrigue.

Voting for Intrigues. Intrigues are cards that initiate votes. They have specific effects (e.g., "two contenders lose one standing each", or "any number of contenders gain one standing"), but usually allow the player to select which contenders are affected. Once a player has made his selection, a vote is now held.

When you vote you get to vote with three items: money, intrigue cards, and influence cards. They're all equivalent, so you make your initial vote just by writing down either "Pass" or "Fail" and a total number, which you'll have to pay out however you want when the vote is revealed.

Some intrigues are special, and either disallow gold or else make gold double value. These are clearly marked on the intrigue cards.

After the votes are revealed, the contenders then either go up and down on the standing chart (as appropriate), if the vote succeeded, or else stay put, if the vote failed. Everyone has to pay all of the resources they committed, no matter what happened.

Now, credit and blame are assessed.

Assigning Credit and Blame. The player who committed the most resources to the vote (whether it succeeded or not; whether they were on the winning side or not) now gets to assign credit and blame. Every contender who could have gone up in standing as a result of the vote (if they did or not; if it succeeded or not) assigns credit to one player; every contender who could have gone down (again, if they did or not) assigns blame to one player.

When the auction high-bidder assigns credit to a player, that player goes up in standing one point for the appropriate contender; when a player is assigned blame, he goes down by one point.

The Art of Negotiation: Something that might not be obvious from all of the above is the importance of negotiation in the game. In short, everything is negotiable. You can exchange cards or money or future promises for other players doing what you want.

Negotiation primarily turns up in the credit & blame sequence of the game. Usually a high-bidder will take credit for himself, but good bribes could cause him to give it to another player (especially if he's already maxed out). Likewise, bribes might keep you from getting dinged with blame.

Negotiation is also possible in other parts of the game, such as if you want to keep a player from playing a specific Event card (or just keep him from playing it on you).

The gamebox says this game lasts 1-3 hours playing time. Both games I've played have run about 1 hour, and I expect the other two hours come from very negotiation heavy groups.

Winning the Game: The game ends when one of the candidates for the throne reaches a standing of 10; whichever player has the most standing with that candidate now wins.

Relationships with Other Games

Succession is a negotiation and auction game with unique victory conditions.

A friend in online game design sometimes says that "every game is a negotiation game" and to a certain extent he's correct; in any game which allows for interaction between players there will be back and forth, give and take. However, game systems that explicitly force players to negotiate with each other are a definite subset of games. Traders of Genoa is one of the more renown negotiation games, while another is Sid Sackson's I'm the Boss. Like the Sackson game, this one has very freeform negotiations, without structure, restrictions, or even the need to keep promises.

(Negotiation games are, of course, closely related to trading games too, though in negotiation games you tend to trade services, rather than goods.)

As an auction game, Succession features a very simple unconstrained English auction with simultaneous one-time blind bids. As I've played more and more auction games I've grown increasingly wary of blind bidding games, because it seems there's a lot more opportunity for all or nothing brinkmanship which defeats some of the strategy of the game. A game like Amun-Re, with its sacrifice auction, manages to avoid this by offering rewards for a variety of levels of blind bidding; here the auction is a bit too freeform.

The victory conditions are worth noting because there aren't a lot of games like that. With a one-step removed victory system, where you manage the standings of contenders for the throne and your relations with those contenders there's a lot of originality here. I have seen a few other games that use a level of indirection like this--Leo Colovini's Carolus Magnus does this in a very different manner--but they're rare.

The Game Design

Here's what I generally liked about the game:

Victory Condition Interesting & Unique: As just discussed, the victory conditions are well done.

Negotiation System Solid: They're aren't a lot of mechanics to the negotiation element of the game, but there's enough infrastructure, in what you can do with various cards and in the credit/blame system, to give players plenty to argue about.

Characters Colorful: The ten characters, with their ten different special abilities, are colorful and add a lot of the color and interest to the game.

Here's what I didn't like:

Random Event Cards Powerful: The event cards are quite random and very powerful. They seem out-of-whack with the general game system because of how much chaos they introduce to an otherwise thoughtful & intellectual game.

Blame/Credit System Confusing: I think every player I've seen play this game has been confused to some extent by the blame/credit system, at least for a little bit. It's just not intuitive that it doesn't matter if a vote succeeds or how each person voted. This problem passes quickly.

Auction System At Least Somewhat Arbitrary: The auction system does work, but it feels a bit arbitrary--like you often don't have enough control. Because a player gets gold on his turn, he can often pass one vote on his turn if he throws all his money in. When a vote fails in this instance it's often a surprise, because someone was hoarding a big card in their hand. This problem does seem to alleviate a little if people start hoarding money, but even then the passage of a vote often feels like a crapshoot. Of course, this sort of thing is pretty common in blind bids (and even closed single-voter votes, like Bruno Faidutti's Democrazy).

Overall, Succession is a fine game. I've played it twice, and I've enjoyed myself both times. The colorful theming is a lot of what makes the game fun, but the game system still does have a solid core. However I think that core is slightly spoiled by a simplistic auction system that doesn't give a lot of room for strategy and by overly powerful event cards which also remove strategic depth--neither of which seems a good match for the game length or mechanics. On whole I've given Succession a high "3" out of "5" for Style; a player more fond of randomness in a game of this length and depth would doubtless rate it a "4" instead.

Conclusion

Succession: Intrigue in the Royal Court is a negotiation and auction game by American company, Your Move Games. On the one hand it definitely points to how much a game can gain from the sort of solid (and fun!) theming that you don't see in a lot of foreign designs; on the other hand it also includes a heavier level of randomness and a more simplistic auction design than many would like in a game of this depth, and with this much attention spent on genuine game mechanics.