Players: 3-5
Time: 30-60 minutes
Difficulty: 3 (of 10)

China was previously published in a slightly different form as Kardinal & Konig and Web of Power; this new edition of the game was co-produced by Abacusspiele in Germany.

The Components

China comes with a large number of very pretty components. These include:

• 1 game board
• 62 cards
• Wood Bits:
  • 100 houses
  • 45 emissaries
  • 5 fortifications
  • 9 scoring markers
  • 1 emperor marker
• 1 rulebook

Game Board: A two-sided game board, appropriate for 3-4 players on one side, or 4-5 on the other. Each one depicts numerous villages throughout China, with regions color-coded in five different region colors. The Great Wall of China cleverly acts as a scoring track.

The board is a large 2-panel design printed with linen-texturing. It's high-quality and looks very nice (though some players find it too colorful).

Cards: All of the cards are printed on sturdy, full-color, linen-textured stock. The 57 region cards each show one of the five region colors and also list the one or two regions in that color. They're a bit plain, but easy to use. The other five cards are point cards, which each simply say, "50". They're used if you lap the scoring track, and really don't come up that often but are a really nice touch. I wish more games where you can lap the score track would include this sort of thing.

Wood Bits: The wood bits are all high-quality wooden pieces. In the 5 player colors (blue, purple, red, yellow, and green) you get 100 houses and 45 emissaries, each of which is very stylistically Oriental, which is a nice touch. In black you get: 5 fortifications, which are squares which go under houses; 9 scoring markers, which are circles which are dropped in regions when they're scored; and 1 emperor, which is a baroque pawn that marks the start player, and later helps out with emissary scoring.

All of the pieces are very nice, and the inclusion of the scoring markers and emperor are nice additions, because, though not strictly necessary, they make the game considerably easier to play.

Rulebook: A 4-page full-color glossy rulebook with plenty of pictures and examples, making the game easy to learn.

Box: The China box is worth noting because it's very thin--just barely thick enough to fit in a bag containing the the wood bits. After receiving so many very large boxes it's nice to finally meet one that's the appropriate size for its game.

Overall, China's components are very attractive, easy to use, and you get a lot of them. It earns top ratings as a result: "5" out of "5" for Style.

The Gameplay

In China your object is to gain majorities of houses in various regions, of emissaries in adjacent regions, and to lay out sets of your houses in rows; all of these gain you points.

Setup: The board is laid in the middle of the table. You play on the side of the board with fewer roads if you have 3 players and more roads if you have 5 players; 4 players get to pick.

Each player is given a set of 20 houses, 9 emissaries (1 of which is used to mark their score), and 1 fortress.

Each player is also given a hand of 3 cards and then 4 cards are placed face-up next to the draw pile. Each of these cards depicts one of the region colors. Four of the colors (yellow, orange, red, and green) list two region on each card, while the remaining color (purple) lists just one.

Play now begins.

Playing Cards: The core mechanic of the game is playing cards in order to play pieces (houses, emissaries or a fortress) into the various regions of the board.

To play a piece in a district you either play a card of the appropriate color, or two matched cards of any color.

If you are the first player to play a piece in the region you can only play one piece; if someone has already played into a region before you, you can play up to two pieces, assuming that you have two cards from that region (or, alternatively, one card of that region, then a matched pair of some other color).

The general rule for playing cards, after a region has been opened, is play up to 3 cards to play up to 2 pieces in up to 1 region. You can never play more than 2 pieces in a turn, nor may you play into more than 1 region.

Using your cards, you can play houses, emissaries, or fortresses.

Playing Houses. Houses go on the house spaces in a region, so there must be open spaces for them to be played. There are as few as 4 or as many as 8 house spaces in the different regions. Houses are also located along roads, and if you can get 4 or more houses in a row on a road, then you'll get bonus points in scoring.

Playing Emissaries. Emissaries are played into a special central space in each region. However, they are limited by the number of houses owned by the player who currently has the most houses in that region. (So, if Chu currently had 2 green houses, 1 red house, and 1 purple house, then there would be a maximum of 2 emissaries in that district. )

Clearly the number of emissaries allowed in a district increases as the player with the most houses in the district adds to his holdings. A fairly common move in China is for the player leading in a region to play two or three cards, allowing him to play two pieces into a region. He'll then play one house, increasing the maximum emissary number, followed by an emissary. (This presumes that there was previously the maximum number of emissaries in the region, thus requiring him to add that house to be able to play one himself.)

Playing Fortresses. Fortresses go on empty house spaces; a house can then be built on it, doubling that house's scoring. However, anyone can build on a fortress, so you'd only ever want to play one if you were playing two pieces to that region, first the fortress, then the house on top of it.

Redrawing Cards: After playing you then redraw to a hand size of 3. You can take your cards from the face-up cards or the face-down pile or some combination thereof.

Continuing the Game: The game continues on like this, with each player playing cards and drawing pieces until the deck has been gone through twice. After the last card is drawn from the deck the second time, the current round of play is finished out, so that the player to the right of the start player ends the game.

During the game the houses in a region are scored if all the house spaces in that region are scored, but this is mainly a matter of convenience so that you can sort of see who's doing well and who isn't. After the last card is drawn, all remaining regions are scored, as well as all emissaries and all roads.

Scoring the Pieces: Most of the scoring in China is done via majority-based area control with friendly ties (meaning, that if multiple players tie for a place, each gets the complete benefits of that place).

Scoring Regions. Houses in regions are scored based on majority of houses in that region. Whoever has the most houses in a region gets points equal to all of the houses in that region. Whoever has the second most gets points equal to the first player's count of houses. Whoever has the third most gets points equal to the second player's count of houses. Etc.

If one of a player's houses in a region is on a fortress, his total point score for that region is doubled.

Scoring Alliances. Emissaries in adjacent regions are scored based on majority of emissarise in both of the adjacent regions. So, for example, if a player had the majority of emissaries in Yan (say, 2, compared to 1 from another player) and the majority of emissaries in adjacent Qi (say, 1, compared to 1 each from two other players) he would score for an alliance between those two regions. This scoring is equal to the sum of emissaries in the two allied regions (6 in this case, because there were 3 emissaries in each region).

Each region is adjacent to 2-5 other regions, and an emissary can thus score for a player multiple times, giving the previous edition of this game its English name, Web of Power.

Scoring Roads. If a player has 4 or more houses in an uninterrupted row on a road, not counting branches, he scores points equal to the number of houses.

The value of a road is doubled if one of those houses in on a fortress.

Winning the Game: Whomever has the most points after everything is scored wins.

Relationships to Other Games

China is a fairly pure majority-based area control game. The epitome of this genre is El Grande. China has several new and unique features, including: the ability to place two different types of pieces; three different methods of scoring; placement restrictions based on pieces already present; and variable scoring based upon piece placement. I've seen some folks call China (or its predecessor) "El Grande-lite", but I don't find China in any way lesser, except for in its play length, which is between a third and a half as long as El Grande.

China is also one of Michael Schacht's many games. As with many of his other designs, this one integrates networks onto the board, here via the roads. Uberplay and Abacusspiele have copublished one other Schacht game, Hansa, one of the better games of 2004. (It incorporated networks through a directed path that a boat has to follow while traversing the Hanseatic League.)

China was previously produced as Kardinal & Konig or Web of Power. The original game was set in Medieval Europe rather than China. The newer game is also more polished and slightly more strategic than the original. The scoring has been slightly modified (to get rid of a mostly useless mid-game scoring round) as has the card draw (now offering more face-up cards to choose from), while the two-sided board and the fortifications are entirely new innovations.

The Game Design

China is a rare game; it's just a bit longer than your average filler, running from 30 minutes for experienced players to 45 or 50 for new players. However, it's also a surprisingly deep game with some very solid gameplay.

Here's some of the other good points of the design:

Great Tactics: The tactics are the heart of the game, and they're very well developed. You have intricate decisions to think about each round, including hosue majority, emissary majority, adjacent alliances, and trying to block other players. You also have some limited ability to think longer term strategy based on what cards you take each round.

Great Interdependicies: The way that the various pieces are interrelated is innovative, and adds a lot additional complexity to your tactical thinking.

Fortifications are a Good Addition: Finally, the fortifications add a good additional level of strategy. They're not necessary to win, but they're yet another tactical toy that you can consider using, and they can make a big difference if played well.

Good Control of Randomness: With 4 face-up cards you have pretty good ability to control the randomness of the card draws, but still sometimes have to reconsider what you're going to do if you can't get quite the cards you want.

I have very little to say negative about China. It doesn't necessarily have a lot of variability, and can get a little repetitive through continued play, but given the game length that shouldn't be a problem.

Overall, China offers a pretty great combination of superb gameplay with short length, perhaps one of the best ratios on the market, and also includes a pretty amazing combination of simple rules and complex actions. Thus I give it a full "5" out of "5" for Style.

Conclusion

The original Web of Power was already a great game; this new edition only improves upon it, with various aspects which improve replayability, better control randomness, and give additional strategic variety. On the whole China offers one of the best ratios of deep gameplay to short length, and thus should be on just about every gamer's shelf.