Review of Fagin's Gang
Games that have a basis in classical literature often catch my attention, and Fagin’s Gang (Ludorum Games, 2007 – Dean Conrad) is certainly in that mix, named after the infamous character from Dickens’s Oliver Twist. The game consists of players controlling a band of five of Fagin’s street urchins, attempting to avoid the police and steal valuable items. Opening the box, I was assaulted by the sight of piles of wooden cubes and pawns, which I wasn’t sure represented the theme well; but I was still excited to try out this new theme.
Fagin’s Gang is an interesting game, with unique mechanics and a nice economic system. I’m not sure that I think it’s anything other than merely an okay game; however, because the theme is very thin, it lasts a little too long and sometimes feels like we are doing the same thing, over and over. I wouldn’t turn down a game if someone wanted to play; but I wouldn’t often suggest it, because there wasn’t any real spark that kept me interested while playing.
The board, which depicts London Town in 1838, is made up of six streets, each a different color – representing a type of good (blue = books, purple = jewelry, green = fruit, yellow = pocket watches, black = silverware, and red = handkerchiefs). Each street is made up of many spaces, each which has a corresponding reward of money or goods. A constable token is randomly placed on one of the spaces of each street and makes one initial move, following a circular pattern up and down the street. A warehouse next to each street is filled with cubes that match the color, and several cubes are placed in a market place in the middle of the board. A circular price wheel is placed on the market and rotates during the game, changing the prices on the goods there. Players place a disc of their color on the “20” space of a money (shilling) track, and receive one more disc and five pawns of their color, and one of each goods cube. One player is chosen to go first, and then the game begins!
Each round of the game consists of four phases. In the first phase, players take one action in turn order. The actions they may take are:Move urchins: Players may bring an urchin into a street (on the middle starting space), or move one up or down the street. When moving a pawn on a street, the player must pay the amount of cubes of that street’s color shown on the board. For example, at River Thames, the blue street, players need only pay one blue cube for each space moved. At St. Paul’s Cathedral, however, players must pay four purple cubes for each space moved, and the rest of the streets are somewhere in between. When a player brings an urchin onto a street for the first time (they may only have one per street), they must pay as if they moved the urchin one space. Players can also move their pawns off the street – at either the top or the bottom space. If the player moves the urchin off the street at the top, they can pay Fagin 15 shillings and place the pawn on the Fagin symbol. That player may not use that location again. When moving, only one pawn may be on the same location; so if they land on another urchin, they bump it one space in either direction, which can possibly cause a chain reaction or force it off the board. If a player lands on a constable, the moving pawn itself is bumped instead!
Steal goods: A player may steal goods at up to three different locations where they have urchin pawns. For example, a pawn at the fourth highest level on Bow Street (green) can take two yellow cubes and two purple cubes. Some spots allow players to take a cube(s) of their choice. Players can give up stealing goods at one or more locations to swap three cubes in their hand for any one good of their choice.
Steal shillings: A player can steal money at up to three locations where they have urchin pawns. They simply take the amount of shillings shown at that location, moving their disc on the money track accordingly.
Go to Smithfield Market: When a player chooses this option, they take the market token, and then all players will have an opportunity to buy and sell goods, placing their colored disc on the market. Starting with the player who has the market token, each player may buy or sell one cube to the market (the player with the market token may buy or sell two cubes). Players buy and sell the cubes for the price shown on the wheel for each item (two, four, six, eight, ten, or twelve shillings). Players cannot sell cubes if the market for that type of good is full. When a player decides to do neither, they take back their disc and are out of the market for that round.
Players then spend a phase moving the constables using two dice to determine direction and spaces moved. Constables may land on a pawn, causing them to move (again, possibly starting a chain reaction). After this, players must “balance the books”, meaning that they must discard down to fifteen cubes, refill the market if empty, and roll a die and rotate the price wheel that many spaces. The turn marker moves to the next player, and another round begins. The game continues until one player gets three of their urchins to Fagin, at which point they immediately win!
Some comments on the game…
1.) Components: The flattish, square box is full of wooden bits, from the player pawns to the piles of wooden cubes and discs, giving the game a certain “Eurogame” feel. The board and box are covered with an older map of London, which is nice, but looks a bit drab (perhaps like that period). The board is much more colorful with all the cubes all over it and looks rather interesting, although not quite thematic.
2.) Theme: Players are acting as if they are running urchin gangs, stealing items and money as they go up and down the streets. That part works okay, but it’s really doesn’t make sense thematically that the urchins must pay to move up and down the streets. And while the “bumping” mechanic is fun and sometimes deadly to the other players, having constables land on you isn’t as dangerous as it sounds – merely inconvenient. And would urchins really buy and sell at the local market? Okay, perhaps I’m nitpicking here; but I really was looking forward to a game that captured Dickens’s London, and this one doesn’t seem to do it very well.
3.) Fiddly: I know some people despise this term, but there were parts of this game that occasionally just got wearisome, and the one that springs to mind is the movement of the constables. EVERY turn we have to roll two dice and laboriously move all six constables, and it just got tiresome after a while. Also, a little bump to a constable, and we would forget which direction they had been traveling. Perhaps if they moved less often, it would be more interesting.
4.) Rules: The full color rulebook carefully and thoroughly explains the rules to the game with illustrations and examples, although I was a bit distracted by the busy background. I was able to pick them up easily, although a few rules could bear repeating or bold, because with all the extra stuff and examples, sometimes things were a bit easy to miss. Teaching the game wasn’t too difficult, although the abstract nature and odd constable/bumping rules often have to be shown to be understood. The game kicks in after a few turns, as players only do an option or so at a time, so the game is easily learned while played.
5.) Money and Resources: A player has to pay Fagin fifteen coins to get one of their pawns off the board, but honestly – by the time that happens, most players are rolling in so much money that they don’t even think twice. The cube resource system is fascinating (if thematically jarring), and I like how certain streets have different resources available, and how the more expensive streets give better resources. Also fascinating is how the streets are set up; as you go up, the goods get better, but the money is worse, and the opposite on the way down. Yet even still, when you steal goods only a couple times, you are pretty much set for the rest of the game.
6.) Market: Players with a lot of money can blow it away during the market phase by buying expensive goods, but that’s rarely necessary or possible. I will say that I’m absolutely pleased with the market phase, as it offers some of the most interesting decisions of the game. A player who chooses to open the market gets a BIG advantage in selling and buying but gives up money or cubes from other places. The market does seem to go down in value as the game goes on, especially when players start raking in tons of cubes from other sources, but it’s very interesting to see what cubes others are selling and/or buying. The only thing I don’t like is how the market is only filled when it is completely empty. Perhaps we play incorrectly, but I have yet to see this occur in one of our games. Fortunately, the spinning price wheel will tempt someone to sell some of their goods back for others to buy.
7.) Strategy: At first, the game seems to follow a linear path, because you can really only afford to go down the blue street first. In fact, you can quickly have your urchin on the blue street escape during the game, because it’s easiest to move on that street. At the same time, perhaps it’s best to save that urchin for later on in the game? I have yet to find any optimal strategy, and the way the goods build on each other and are needed really make this more of a complicated resource game than anything else.
8.) Fun Factor: The game is a bit long for my tastes, lasting about thirty minutes per player. Actually, this makes it a nice three-player game (two makes the market rather boring) but really stretches it out when six players are involved. I think I enjoy it most with three to the point where that is the only way I will play, but perhaps some won’t mind the three hours a full game takes, which really makes moving those constables a pain! I think everything in the game works, but the lack of theme makes this just “another resource game”, and therefore fell a little flat for me.
I can see some people enjoying the abstract, resource management style of Fagin’s gang, and I will admit that the movement/resource/market system did work rather nice in conjunction one with another, although I did find them a bit cumbersome at times. Don’t go looking for Oliver Twist: the boardgame, however, because it’s simply not here; and that, coupled with the long time and occasional repetitiveness of the game kept me from playing it more often. Certainly a game you should try before buying, Fagin’s game is almost too robotic for enjoyment – at least for me.
Tom Vasel
“Real men play board games”
www.thedicetower.com
Fagin’s Gang is an interesting game, with unique mechanics and a nice economic system. I’m not sure that I think it’s anything other than merely an okay game; however, because the theme is very thin, it lasts a little too long and sometimes feels like we are doing the same thing, over and over. I wouldn’t turn down a game if someone wanted to play; but I wouldn’t often suggest it, because there wasn’t any real spark that kept me interested while playing.
The board, which depicts London Town in 1838, is made up of six streets, each a different color – representing a type of good (blue = books, purple = jewelry, green = fruit, yellow = pocket watches, black = silverware, and red = handkerchiefs). Each street is made up of many spaces, each which has a corresponding reward of money or goods. A constable token is randomly placed on one of the spaces of each street and makes one initial move, following a circular pattern up and down the street. A warehouse next to each street is filled with cubes that match the color, and several cubes are placed in a market place in the middle of the board. A circular price wheel is placed on the market and rotates during the game, changing the prices on the goods there. Players place a disc of their color on the “20” space of a money (shilling) track, and receive one more disc and five pawns of their color, and one of each goods cube. One player is chosen to go first, and then the game begins!
Each round of the game consists of four phases. In the first phase, players take one action in turn order. The actions they may take are:
Players then spend a phase moving the constables using two dice to determine direction and spaces moved. Constables may land on a pawn, causing them to move (again, possibly starting a chain reaction). After this, players must “balance the books”, meaning that they must discard down to fifteen cubes, refill the market if empty, and roll a die and rotate the price wheel that many spaces. The turn marker moves to the next player, and another round begins. The game continues until one player gets three of their urchins to Fagin, at which point they immediately win!
Some comments on the game…
1.) Components: The flattish, square box is full of wooden bits, from the player pawns to the piles of wooden cubes and discs, giving the game a certain “Eurogame” feel. The board and box are covered with an older map of London, which is nice, but looks a bit drab (perhaps like that period). The board is much more colorful with all the cubes all over it and looks rather interesting, although not quite thematic.
2.) Theme: Players are acting as if they are running urchin gangs, stealing items and money as they go up and down the streets. That part works okay, but it’s really doesn’t make sense thematically that the urchins must pay to move up and down the streets. And while the “bumping” mechanic is fun and sometimes deadly to the other players, having constables land on you isn’t as dangerous as it sounds – merely inconvenient. And would urchins really buy and sell at the local market? Okay, perhaps I’m nitpicking here; but I really was looking forward to a game that captured Dickens’s London, and this one doesn’t seem to do it very well.
3.) Fiddly: I know some people despise this term, but there were parts of this game that occasionally just got wearisome, and the one that springs to mind is the movement of the constables. EVERY turn we have to roll two dice and laboriously move all six constables, and it just got tiresome after a while. Also, a little bump to a constable, and we would forget which direction they had been traveling. Perhaps if they moved less often, it would be more interesting.
4.) Rules: The full color rulebook carefully and thoroughly explains the rules to the game with illustrations and examples, although I was a bit distracted by the busy background. I was able to pick them up easily, although a few rules could bear repeating or bold, because with all the extra stuff and examples, sometimes things were a bit easy to miss. Teaching the game wasn’t too difficult, although the abstract nature and odd constable/bumping rules often have to be shown to be understood. The game kicks in after a few turns, as players only do an option or so at a time, so the game is easily learned while played.
5.) Money and Resources: A player has to pay Fagin fifteen coins to get one of their pawns off the board, but honestly – by the time that happens, most players are rolling in so much money that they don’t even think twice. The cube resource system is fascinating (if thematically jarring), and I like how certain streets have different resources available, and how the more expensive streets give better resources. Also fascinating is how the streets are set up; as you go up, the goods get better, but the money is worse, and the opposite on the way down. Yet even still, when you steal goods only a couple times, you are pretty much set for the rest of the game.
6.) Market: Players with a lot of money can blow it away during the market phase by buying expensive goods, but that’s rarely necessary or possible. I will say that I’m absolutely pleased with the market phase, as it offers some of the most interesting decisions of the game. A player who chooses to open the market gets a BIG advantage in selling and buying but gives up money or cubes from other places. The market does seem to go down in value as the game goes on, especially when players start raking in tons of cubes from other sources, but it’s very interesting to see what cubes others are selling and/or buying. The only thing I don’t like is how the market is only filled when it is completely empty. Perhaps we play incorrectly, but I have yet to see this occur in one of our games. Fortunately, the spinning price wheel will tempt someone to sell some of their goods back for others to buy.
7.) Strategy: At first, the game seems to follow a linear path, because you can really only afford to go down the blue street first. In fact, you can quickly have your urchin on the blue street escape during the game, because it’s easiest to move on that street. At the same time, perhaps it’s best to save that urchin for later on in the game? I have yet to find any optimal strategy, and the way the goods build on each other and are needed really make this more of a complicated resource game than anything else.
8.) Fun Factor: The game is a bit long for my tastes, lasting about thirty minutes per player. Actually, this makes it a nice three-player game (two makes the market rather boring) but really stretches it out when six players are involved. I think I enjoy it most with three to the point where that is the only way I will play, but perhaps some won’t mind the three hours a full game takes, which really makes moving those constables a pain! I think everything in the game works, but the lack of theme makes this just “another resource game”, and therefore fell a little flat for me.
I can see some people enjoying the abstract, resource management style of Fagin’s gang, and I will admit that the movement/resource/market system did work rather nice in conjunction one with another, although I did find them a bit cumbersome at times. Don’t go looking for Oliver Twist: the boardgame, however, because it’s simply not here; and that, coupled with the long time and occasional repetitiveness of the game kept me from playing it more often. Certainly a game you should try before buying, Fagin’s game is almost too robotic for enjoyment – at least for me.
Tom Vasel
“Real men play board games”
www.thedicetower.com
