Players: 2-4
Time: 2-3 hours
Difficulty: 4 (of 10)
The Components
Candamir comes with:
- 1 game board
- 4 character boards
- Wood Bits:
- 4 figures
- 40 victory point cubes
- 4 round discs
- 1 wooden die
- Cardboard Bits:
- 48 exploration tiles
- 12 potion tiles
- 16 experience markers
- 8 equipment markers
- 4 stamina markers
- Cards:
- 90 resource and ingredient cards
- 29 movement cards
- 22 adventure cards
- 9 character cards
- 1 shuffle cards board
- 1 rulebook
Game Board: a small two-panel board, printed full-color on linen-textured cardboard. The right two-thirds of the board is a 7x10 grid depicting the village of Catan and nearby areas, while the left one-third shows the village close-up, with lots of spaces to place victory points upon. It's all very colorful, and the victory-point area is quite intuitively designed for easy play.
Character Boards: Each of the four player boards is printed full color on thick, linen-textured cardboard. The main purpose of each board is to provide spaces for recording everything about a character: stats, items, and health. Each board also very helpfully includes information on the core types of encounters and on what the potion items do.
Wood Bits: The wood bits are all high-quality German manufacture. Each player gets 1 silly-looking wood figure, 10 victory point cubes, and one round destination disc, in one of the 4 player colors (white, red, orange, blue). There's also a nice wooden die, though as with most wooden dice, I'm suspicious of its bias.
Cardboard Bits: The cardboard bits are all printed full-color on thick, linen-textured cardboard. They include: 48 exploration hexes, which show a terrain type on the top and a reward on the back; 12 potion tiles which show 1 of the potion on the front and 2 on the back; 16 experience markers marked 1/2 or 3/4; 8 equipment markers each marked "2"; and 4 hearts used to mark a character's health.
The exploration hexes go on the game board, while all the others go on individual player boards. They're all intuitive and generally make the game easier to play.
Cards: The resource and ingredient cards are half height. The movement, adventure, and character cards are full height. Surprisingly, the cards are not linen textured, and are slightly flimsier than Î'd like.
Overall, the cards are all attractive, with lots of colorful original art. They're also filled with various icons that make them easy to use. You can glance at a resource card and see what it provides, and quickly look at an adventure card to see what it requires and offers.
The movement cards are particularly neat because they form the basis of an innovative movement system which depicts different obstacles and rewards depending on the direction in which you decide to travel. Beyond that, they're easy to use.
Rulebook: A very well-produced 8-page full color rulebook. The rules are filled with illos and easy to follow. Particularly notable is the back page which has a half-page table of contents and a half-page listing of the distribution of all the exploration tiles.
Box & Tray: A square box with a well-designed tray with plenty of space for the different components. Of note are the inset trays for the resource and ingredient cards which lift out of the main tray, allowing you to keep the cards organized right next to your game board.
Overall, the components for Candamir are high quality, very attractive, and extremely usable. It thus earns a full "5" out of "5" for Style.
The Gameplay
The object of Candamir is to collect livestock and manufacture goods desired by the founders of the village of Catan. This is accomplished through adventuring through the wilds of the island.
Setup: Each player is given a character board. He also chooses a character card which depicts his initial stats. Each character has stats in Charisma, Prowess, Agility and Strength valued between 0 and 2. Each character also has a couple of special skills, such as the ability to move faster along the river, the ability to trade goods, and a bonus for catching snakes. Each player also marks his initial stamina at 4 and that he starts with one of Brigitta's potion. Finally each player takes 4 experience markers, one marked 3/4 and three marked 1/2. These will be used to increase his stats during the game.
Each player also takes one adventurer marker (placed in the village of Catan) ten victory point markers, and one destination marker.
The main game board is set in the middle of the table. Up to 48 exploration hexes are placed on the mountains, grasses, and forests, face-down. They depict various rewards that players will gain for exploring Catan.
Trays of resources (fur, wood, ore) and ingredients (honey, herbs, mushrooms) are placed to the side of the table, with each player getting a wood to start.
A deck of adventurer cards is shuffled in a slightly ordered fashion (with the cards having three increasing levels of complexity) and then the first three are flipped up to mark the initial adventures.
The game is now ready to begin.
Special Characters. there are actually some additional rules, not included with the game, which allow you to create your own characters using a point-based system. This really proves that the game is a true adventure game, and is pretty neat beyond. These rules haven't made it onto any English-language web sites yet, but I presume they will be the full release of the game.
Order of Play: During the game each player can undertake the following action during his turn:
- Trade
- Explore; or Build and Brew
Trading: As with most Catan games, players can trade. In this case they can trade the resources and ingredients in their hands. The active player can trade with others players as he sees fit. He can also trade with the bank at a 3:1 ratio: three of the same resource for one resource, or three of the same ingredient for one ingredient.
Except when a player is sitting in the village there is a hand limit of 5 resources and 5 ingredients. Unfortunately this, and the breadth of items needed for most building, limits trading so that it's less frequent than in many other Catan games.
Exploring: Any game of Candamir begins in the village. While in the village you may choose to explore. To do this you secretly look at two of the face-down exploration tiles on the board, then place your destination disc on one of the face-down tiles (not necessarily one you looked at).
Afterward you begin movement. To do this you flip the top movement card and face it toward the board. The card shows what happens in each direction of movement. These may include: facing tests or adventures or gathering ingredients. You get to decide which direction to move in after seeing what you'll encounter in each direction. Sometimes there's a conflict here: there may be a safe direction to move in, but it could be away from the direction in which your destination disc lies.
Encountering Tests. There are four types of tests: fighting bears, cutting lumber, catching snakes, and hunting wolves. Each test is against a certain stat (prowess, strength, or agility) and each has a certain target number. For example you might see that moving up results in Fighting a Bear for a Prowess test of 6.
Whenever you face a test you take your base stat, possibly adding experience and equipment, and then add a 1-6 die roll. If your total is equal to or greater than the encounter value you suceed. If you fail these tests you lose one or two stamina. if you succeed you gain one or two hides (for fighting wolves and bears) or one lumber (for cutting lumber).
Whether you succeed at a test or not, you get to move into the space.
Encountering Adventures. Adventures are represented by cards to the side of the board. When you move into an adventure space, you choose one of the three current adventures to face. These are colorful happenings, but they ultimately result in a test. Many are Charisma tests. If you succeed at the test you conquer the adventure and usually get some resource as a reward (often ore). You also take the adventure card as a souvenir and a new one goes out. If you fail at the test you usually lose stamina and the adventure remains out.
Encountering Ingredients. Sometimes you get a free ingredient when you move into a space.
Ending Your Turn. The first way to end your exploration is to land on the space with your destination disc. You then flip over the exploration tile and take what's on the other side. These could be 1 or 2 of a resource (ore in the mountains, fur in the fields or wood in the forests) or it could be experience points or items, both of which improve your character. It could also be a mountain goat or a casttle, which are worth immediate victory points; you place a VP marker on one of the appropriate spaces in the VP display (more on that momentarily).
However your max number of moves in a turn is equal to your current stamina. If you hit that limit you're done for the turn and will have to continue exploring next turn. You won't get to look at more exploration tiles or move your disc; instead you have to keep moving toward the goal you already set.
There's also a limit of 5 resources and 5 ingredients when you're out exploring. You can't get any more, except when you flip that exploration tile, ending your turn.
Building and Brewing: If you start the turn in the village you may alternatively spend your whole turn building and brewing.
Building. Building is how you get victory points. It's controlled by a large chart of VPs which covers the left third of the board.
Four different settlers of Catan each want a variety of items: swords, chests, window coverings, cattle, and goats. Each of the settlers has one or more columns listing their wants. At any time you may fufill their top want in a column.
As is already noted you place VPs in cattle or goat spots as soon as you discover those items. The other three items must instead be constructed. A sword takes 1 wood and 2 ore; a chest takes 1 of each resource; and a window covering takes 1 wood and 2 fur. In order to build one of these items you turn in the appropriate resources, then place your cube on the appropriate box, which must currently be the topmost uncovered space in a column.
There are also four bonus VPs, which are: grain fields, awarded to whomever has made the most things for settler Jared; a nice house, awarded to whomever has made the most things for settler Candamir; sheep pastures, awarded to whomever has made the most things for settler Osmund; and Hero of Catan, awarded to whomever has completed the most adventures. These are very similar to the traditional Catan bonus VPs "longest road" and "largest army". If someone passes you on one of these, you get your VP cube back and they place theirs.
There is some strategy in building because you can't make everything for any character at any time because of the columnar restrictions. So you have to trade off holding on to resources (which can be a problem because of the tight hand limits) with getting cubes into locations where you're trying to fight for majorities. In addition the fourth character, Brigitta, gives potions to people who make her things, rather than the chance at more VPs, so that's another strategic choice you must make.
Brewing. You can also turn ingredients into potions when you're building and brewing. Every character can have up to 2 of each of the three types of potions at any time.
Brigitta's Potion (mushroom + herb) gives you a +2 on any one stat test. You use it before you roll.
The Healing Potion (mushroom + honey) increases your stamina by 2.
The Mead (honey + herb) decreases the stamina of everyone with the same or more VPs than you by 1.
Winning the Game: The game ends when a player has placed his last Victory Point cube. That player wins.
Relationships to Other Games
Candamir is undoubtedly a new member of the Settlers of Catan franchise, perhaps by way of recent exploration game Anno 1503. You'll see a lot of the familiar elements, most notably: the collection of resources which are then used to create various items; the slow accrual of 10 victory points; and the introduction of various competitive victory points to create interaction.
However, Candamir also differs greatly from its Catan roots in that it's an "adventure board game", more like Runebound (or if you prefer, classics Talisman and HeroQuest) than its Settlers brethren. In fact, Teuber has done a fairly amazing job of adapting Catan-like mechanics to this very different area of game design.
The Game Design
On the whole this is a game that I want to love.
As I already noted, the adaptation of the Catan mechanics is amazing: a great use of proven ideas.
The characters, adventures, and even the idea of exploration are all very evocative and colorful. (So much so that I immediately wanted to see a Gloranthan-based Orlanthi game using these mechanics.)
The exploration system, with its movement cards, is entirely innovative.
There are some real tactical decisions in how you move each turn. In addition there appears to be strategy, mainly as you decide what resources to go for, what characters to build for, and whether to improve your character or not. After two games I'm honestly not convinced if it's real strategy or not, since it felt a little hard to control your destiny with relationship to other players, but if it's largely random, I still felt like I had some control.
However the game has two notable downsides: downtime and total length.
The problem with downtime is that it might be 5 or more minutes between your turns, and what the other players do doesn't have a lot of effect on you, so you zone out. This is an issue with any game that's fairly tactical and which involves a player making a lot of different decisions on his turn, and Candamir faces both issues.
Beyond that the game takes about two hours, even in our second game where two of the three players were fairly experienced. This seems to exceed the length that would be best supported based on the variability implicit in the game by at least 30 minutes, maybe more. Those last few VPs just seem to drag.
If the turns and the game were quicker I might easily have given this game a "5" for Substance; players coming in from other adventure games still might, because these slowdown issues are pretty endemic for this genre of games. However, despite the innovation, color, and other exciting elements in the game, after two plays I can only give it a high "3" out of "5" for Substance: above average, but not something I'm going to play very frequently due to length.
Conclusion
Candamir is a game full of great ideas, adapting Catan-like mechanics to the adventure game genre and creating a whole that's evocative, colorful, and interesting. Unfortunately it has downtime and game length problems that ultimately limit its playability. More patient gamers, and players coming in from other adventure games, may still find this to be an outstanding game; the rest will probably find it more average, with superb mechanics and excessive length balancing each other out.
