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Players: 3-5
Playing Time: 2-3 hours
Difficulty: 5 (of 10)
The Components
Grand Tribunal comes with:
- 1 gameboard
- 110 cards
- Plastic Bits:
- 24 voting tokens
- 60 vis tokens
- 2 tracker tokens
- 1 Praeco pawn
- 12 award tokens
- 1 die
- 1 rulebook
Gameboard: A 2-panel board with some elegant Medieval designs. It's entirely used to hold the different tokens. To the left of the board are ten spaces for voting. They're actually a little small, which makes it hard to make out the various categories when they're covered with pieces, but otherwise they're well-designed with simple color-coding (and iconography for the 4 spells) which makes it easy to see what's what.
The righ side of the board contain tracks for gathering vis, which changes in value throughout the game.
The rest of the board just contains spaces for all the other game elements.
Also on the board are tons of rules, reminding you what the various actions do and how much they cost. I don't think I ever actually referred to them, because the base system is simple, but it's great that all this info is here if you need it.
Cards: There are 110 cards total, divided into three decks--spells, items, and resources--plus 5 reference cards. They're all printed on slightly lightweight cardstock with a good gloss on them.
There's a limited amount of art amidst the cards: one picture for each of the types of spells, one for each type of item, and one for the resources. It's all attractive, and has been colored to distinctively mark the different types of cards.
Iconography is used to good effect on the cards. Each item has an advance cost and each spell has an install cost, all marked by bullets. Each item can also hold certain types of spells, which are marked by icons which match those shown on the spells themselves. The only problem with the iconography is that it's way, way too small. The installable spell icons turn into muddy little dots from across the table, and likewise the install/advance bullets are hard to count. This notably detracts from your ability to make any sense of cards from far away.
Other than this issue, the cards are attractive and usable.
Plastic Bits: Among the plastic bits are: 24 voting tokens, which are small white discs; 60 vis tokens, which are small black discs;2 tracker tokens, which are small clear discs (which look quite cool); 12 large Poker chips, with 4 blue for first place, 4 red for second and 4 yellow for third; and 1 Praeco pawn, which is a black pawn.
There's just one problem with the plastic bits: there aren't nearly enough vis tokens, since in a 5-player game you'll give all 60 out at the start of the game. You'll want to use something for "5"s. The errata suggests using extra voting tokens for the purpose. Personally, I've scavenged the now-replaced coins from my first edition of Caylus.
Die: A white plastic die with black inked pips.
Rulebook: A 4-page black-and-white rulebook with a couple of illustrations. The rulebook is so-so. I figured out the rules but there are some clarity problems, like some info only appearing in illustrations and there not being enough differentiation between "votes", "base score", and "score". The lack of a card reference is also always a problem of a game of this type.
Worse is the fact that the rules flat-out fail to explain some rules and explain other things incorrectly or contradicterly. The three biggest problems are: the concept of "cards in hand" is never explained; the rules incorrectly say to give out vis before each later Tribunal; and the rules contradict whether it costs 1 or 2 vis to get uncontested vis. This has been cleaned through errata, but as it stands the game is badly broken if played using the rulebook included in the game, which is really unacceptable. Nonetheless, get the errata and you'll be fine.
On the other hand, the theming in the game is terrific. I'm an old-time Ars Magica fan who's played six different sagas since 1989, when we were playing with First Edition. I love the background, and this felt dead on. It's full of Mythic terminology and familiar spells, and this will be a joy to any Ars Magica player.
On the whole the components for Grand Tribunal are attractive and of average quality. However they have numerous usability problems, from the small card icons to the insufficient vis tokens and the broken rulebook. On the other hand the game is really helped by its great theming. As such as I've let it eke in a "4" out of "5" for Substance. If you're not a fan of the background that might drop to an average rating of "3" because you won't get to appreciate the Ars Magica references.
The Gameplay
The object of Grand Tribunal is to become a new Archmage by gaining the most prestige through three Tribunals.
Setup: Each player chooses five cards amidst the resource, item, and spell decks. Each player is also given 12 initial vis. A starting Praeco is chosen.
Three items and three spells are placed face-up next to the appropriate draw decks.
The Cards. There are three types of cards: resources, items, and spells. The resource cards give you various bonuses throughout the game. They're usually costly to draw ... except during setup (which I think is an imbalance). The item cards let you enchant items, and the spell cards let you create spells (to later place in those items). Each of the spells and items has a type (6 item categories, 4 spell categories), and each has a vis cost (a varying amount for items, 2 for spells).
Your Hand. Having a hand of cards at the start of the game is a bit of a fluke. The only other time that cards can enter your hand is when you draw resources.
Your hand is sort of a protected area that other players can't mess with. At any time you can take cards from your hand and put them into your Sanctum, but once there they can never go back to your hand.
Your Sanctum. This is a fancy phrase for the cards on the table in front of you. Some are face-up and some are face-down. Besides the spells and items you're working on, you'll also have "active" items which you've completed and "prize-winning" cards which are still in play, but don't generate any further points.
Order of Play: The game is played out over a series of three Tribunals, during each of which there are a number of rounds equal to the number of players. Each player gets to be the Praeco, and start a round of play, once per Tribunal. On his turn a player may do the following actions:
- Take Praeco Action
- Take Two Normal Actions
- Discard
Take Praeco Action: The first player in each round of play is the Praeco and he gets a special action. he takes three of the Voting tokens (which come from a angeral supply) and places them on three of the voting spaces.
These voting spaces correspond to the four spell types (alchemical, elemental, runic, thaumaturgical) and the six item types (orbs, potions, scrolls, staves, talismans, and wands). These votes essentially determine value for the appropriate item types at the end of the round.
Afterward the Praeco gets to take a normal set of actions.
Take Two Normal Actions: On his turn a player gets to take two different actions from the following list:
Place a Voting Token. Put one voting token on one of the ten vote spaces.
Draw an Item or Spell. Draw a face-up card and add it to your Sanctum face-up, or a face-down card and add it to your Sanctum face-down.
Advance Items or Spells. Take 3 vis from your personal stores and place 1 each on 3 different items/spells in your Sanctum, or take 2 vis from your personal stores and place them on a single item/spell in your Sanctum.
Each item has an "advance" level from 2-6 or so and each spell has an "instill" level of 2. This is the number of vis that is required before the item/spell can be activated.
Activate Item/Instill Spell. This is a free action and can be done any time on your turn after you've paid an item or spell's vis cost. When you activate an item, you just place it in front of you; it's now available to have spells instilled into it. When you instill a spell you place it in an active item. The item must allow this type of spell and must still have room for it (all of which is noted on the item).
Cast a Spell. You can cast a spell which has been instilled in an item. This removes the spell from the item, though you can pay 2 vis to place it back into your Sanctum; else it's discarded.
Spells do various different, generally powerful things, including letting you grab vis, change votes, steal items, etc.
(Some spells, alas, do nothing.)
Draw a Resource. This is a double action. Take a resource card.
Play a Resouce. Play a resource card from your hand.
Extract Vis. Take 1 vis token, or 2 during the third and final Tribunal.
Gather Vis. This is a double action, and the exact effects on depicted on the board, and depend on which tribunal it is, and how many times vis has already been gathered.
If you choose an uncontested gathering you take a set amount of vis and every other player takes a lesser amount. (The ratio goes from 3:1 to 6:3.)
If you choose an uncontested gathering you roll a die (with modifiers later on) and then each other player has the same option, but must pay you vis for the privilege. (Whether the cost is 1 or 2 is contradictory in the rules.)
Ending a Tribunal: A tribunal ends after each player has been Praeco once. Now the best (prize-winning) items are determined.
Each active item receives a number of votes based upon the number of votes on its item type plus the number of votes on each spell type for which 1 or more of that spell type are instilled in the item. The top three items are determined. (There's also a base score on each item, which is somewhat related to its vis cost, and that's used as a tie breaker.)
Then each player scores prestige for all his items. (The rules say he score points, which is just begging to be confused with voting points; so we'll call it prestige instead.) Each item scores its base cost plus one per spell instilled in it. That's multiplied by 2x for the third-place per the voting points, 3x for second place, and 4x for first place. The prize-winners will generate the vast majority of the score during a game.
However, any items that won prizes are set aside. You can still use spells out of them and instill spells in them, but they aren't counted in any future tribunals for either prizes or for scoring.
Ending the Game: The third tribunal is a Grand Tribunal, and after that the player with the most points is the winner.
Relationships to Other Games
First and foremost, Grand Tribunal is a board game based on Atlas Game's RPG, Ars Magica. As I've said already, it feels authentic to Mythic Europe.
Beyond that, Grand Tribunal is a resource management game where you're juggling a couple of different resources: votes, vis, and cards. The interrelations of these systems, and particularly the user-controlled valuation vis-a-vis the votes is pretty original.
In many ways Grand Tribunal reminds me of Princes of Florence, in that you're trying to devote resources to create the "best works" and in doing so score bonus points. They feel very different as games, but the core idea is similar. Queen's Necklace is another game where you try and compete with players to make the "best works", though again it's another very different game.
One of the ways in which Grand Tribunal differentiates itself from these other games is in its American stylings. You're somewhat discouraged from casting your spells, because then you can't score them, but when you do use them you generate very American take-that play. I find the tension somewhat interesting.
The Game Design
At its heart Grand Tribunal is a fairy deep game of resource management. You can make important, strategic moves, and can easily plan several turns ahead in a meaningful manner. This good strategy puts Grand Tribunal up there with many good European game designs in turns of thoughtfulness and planning.
Some of the game design elements are also quite interesting and innovative. The voting system where players cooperatively decide on the final value of items is neat, for example, because it introduces bluffing, brinkmanship, and other types of play.
The way in which the items are constructed also offers strategy. Do you take good spells or spells that will match more valuable spell types? Do you take items you can construct quickly or items that can hold lots of spells? There's lot of different options.
This deep strategy is contrasted with more random gameplay elements. There are many "take that" card effects in the spells which add a lot of chaos to the game, and have a detrimental effect on strategic planning. This isn't necessarily a fault in the game, simply a different style of play.
However, what I don't like about the game is that the cards are fairly unbalanced. There are some spells that literally don't do anything, while others can have notable effects on where votes are allocated (Aura of Rightful Authority) or can even wipe out a constructed item (Wind of Mundane Silence). Likewise some items can hold more spells or more, different types of spells than others with no balancing deficit. Some of this may go to strategy, as sometimes you have a choice between a good idea and an appropriate item, but there's enough imbalance that luck of the draw can be quite meaningful in the game.
I also thought that some of the game's design and development was sloppy. Some of this relates to the errors in the rulebook, which I have to assume were a result of the game changing a lot in development. However I also found, for example, the fact that you could draw resource cards for (effectively) half-price at setup to be a design blunder. Likewise collecting uncontested vis seemed dramatically less powerful than collecting contested vis, and thus not worth two actions.
With more attention to card balance and more time spent on polishing up the game system, I think Grand Tribunal could have been an absolutely top rate game. As it is, it's still very interesting, as long as you don't mind some randomness in your strategy game, and thus I've given it an above-average "4" out of "5" for Substance despite various design issues.
I suppose it's also worth mentioning that Grand Tribunal packs quite a lot of punch into a small, $24.95 package.
Conclusion
To start with, Grand Tribunal is a card game based upon the Ars Magica roleplaying game, and it shows its pedigree well: its plays and feels like an Ars Magica-based card game.
Beyond that Grand Tribunal falls into the European style of play (meaning it has elegant, relatively simple mechanics) with American stylings (meaning that you can cause real chaos to your opponents with certain cards). The game could have been great if it'd received a bit more development, but as is, it's quite good.
Think Princes of Florence with less polish and more opportunities to upset the other players.
