Players: 3-5
Playing Time: 1-2 hours
The Components
Giants comes with a set of beautiful components:
Game Board: A massive four-panel linen-textured board depicting Easter Island in vibrant colors. There's also quite a bit of iconography on the board, depicting the powers for certain special locations and the values of ahu (where Moai can be built).
Plastic Bits: There are numerous attractive plastic bits in this game. Each player gets 6 workers, 1 chief, and 1 sorcerer; each of these three categories of people has a different mold, but cleverly each one also has a base of a different shape, so it's really easy to see what is what. There are also some circular plastic bits for each player: 6 tribe markers and 1 score counter, all of which look nice as well.
The centerpiece of the game, however, is the 35 Moais, which are really neat renditions of Easter Island heads. They come in three different sizes, differentiated by color. There are also 14 headdresses to go on the Moai
All of these plastic bits are good looking and really add to the feel of the game.
Cardboard Bits: There are many different sorts of cardboard bits, all sturdy linen-textured cardboard. They're all pretty simple, but good looking nonetheless.
Each player gets up to 7 square bases (marked with their color, used as foundations for Moais) and 1 banner (pretty unnecessary, but used to mark that you've "passed", if you so wish).
There are also some "Rongo Half-Tablets", which are a minor resource in the game.
Then we come to the strictly unnecessary cardboard bits. There's a neat "receptacle", which is sort of a bowl that you build out of three cardboard pieces, and which you use to hold all the plastic bits not currently in use (and thus make it hard to count them). There are also "quarries" for both the Moais and the headdresses, which really could have been put on the board instead.
Wood: These are teeny wooden logs. I think they're too small, but they're also evocative, as they demonstrate how the massive Moais were really moved around the island.
Player Screens: Each player gets a cardstock screen which hides their resources, and also has pretty good iconography reminding you of what everything does in the game.
Dice: A set of 5 plastic dice showing Moai.
Overall, the components of Giants are entirely beautiful, good quality, and pretty easy to use. As such, they earn a full "5" out of "5" for Style.
The Gameplay
The object of Giants is to score the most points by building Moais and headdresses on Easter Island--and by positioning your peoples to help your fellows.
Setup: Each player is given 5-7 Moai bases (depending on number of players), 2 tribe markers, 1 worker, 1 sorcerer, and 1 chief. They're all hidden behind the players' screens.
The rest of the tribe markers and workers are mixed up in the cardboard receptacle, so that other players can't count how many each player has.
The board is laid out, with the seven forests hexes played on the appropriate spaces and the wood and headdresses placed appropriately.
3-5 dice are laid out, depending on the number of players.
Order of Play: Each round of play consists of 5 phases:
- Moai Draw
- Auction
- Figure Placement
- Transportation
- End of Turn
Moai Draw: The dice are rolled and each one reveals a value from 0-3. 0 means no Moai is drawn from that dice, while 1-3 mean that a Moai of the appropriate size is drawn.These selected Moais are made available for auction.
Auction: Now the players simultaneously auction for the Moais using a double-fisted closed auction.
That means that each player puts a number of tribe markers (which are the auction currency) in one hand, and a number of people, including workers, sorcerers, or chiefs (which are the resources needed to make use of a purchased Moai) in the other hand.
All bids are revealed simultaneously. All tribe markers and people spent are placed in front of the player's screen afterward, marking that they've been used for this turn.
So what do you do with the things you bid?
Using the Markers. Players select Moais in decreasing count of markers bid. Ties are broken first by number of half-tablets held (not bid) and second by orientation from the first player. Because you're bidding a very small number of resources, both of these tie breakers are always relevant.
Using the Workers. However, you can only take a Moai if you've bid enough workers to carve it. A chief can carve any size Moai, but otherwise you must have one person per size, which is to say 1-3 people total. Your people count could restrict what Moais you can choose--or it could keep you from choosing one at all, if you don't have enough workers to carve what's left when it gets around to you.
Any Moais that are taken are placed in front of your player screen for use later in the round.
Figure Placement: Now players take turns placing 1 person at a time on the board. You usually just place a person on any hex, to later help in moving Moais, but there are a few special things you can do in this round:
Placing with Logs. When placing a worker or a sorcerer you can optionally place 1 or 2 logs on that space too, which will help move Moais.
Sorcerer Actions. If you place the sorcerer on certain spaces on the board, he can give you certain actions. You can: take a worker (at the Village); take a tribe marker (at the Sorcerers Hut); take 2-4 wood (at the Forest, expending the hex); place a base on an Ahu space (at the Ahu-adjacent space); or take a headdress and place it in front of your screen (at the headdress Quarry).
Chief Actions. If you expend two half-tablets, you can have a chief take a sorcerer action when he's placed.
Playing Tribe Markers. Instead of placing a figure, you can play a tribe marker, putting it in front of your screen. This gives you a half-tablet from the supply, and also lets you stall while other players put down figures.
Passing. When you're done, you pass; you'll be out of the rest of the phase.
Transportation: Now you have to move your Moais to ahus so that they can be erected. Players take turns, each time either moving or marking a Moai.
Moving a Moai. To move a Moai you start if from the Moai quarry and move it as far as you want, preferably to a space adjacent to an ahu. You can only move your own Moai--or one that another player has abandoned.
To move a Moai, each space it moves through must either have a chieftain or else a number of workers, sorcerers, and/or wood equal to the size of a Moai (1, 2, or 3).
Ideally, you use your own workers, but if you've forced to use other players' workers, those players earn 1 VP per worker used.
If you get a Moai adjacent to a space with an ahu that's either unreserved or else has your base on it, then you can erect the Moai, as long as you have at least one worker there. This will earn you 1 or more points at the end of the game (based on the distance of the ahu from the Moai quarry).
Marking a Moai. If you didn't erect a Moai after moving it you must mark it with one of your tribe markers on your next turn, or else give your opponents the opportunity to use it.
About the Headdresses. Headdresses work just like size 1 Moais. They come from a different quarry and must be placed atop one of your Moais.
Passing. When you're done moving Moais you can pass. At this point you must place any remaining Moai or headdresses that you didn't erect in their appropriate quarries, marking them if you don't want to give your opponents the opportunity to take them.
End of Turn: At the end of the turn the board is cleared of wood and people. Wood is lost. All people and tribe markers (other than those marking things on the board) are put back behind the players' screens for the next turn.
Ending the Game: The game ends at the end of a turn when a player erected Moais on all of his bases. Players now add their points for Moais and headdresses to the points they'd already earned for Moai movement. The highest score wins.
(The rules say to also score half-tablets, but the designer has removed this in his newest errata.)
Relations to Other Games
I find Giants a pretty unique game. There's some blind bidding there, sure, but simultaneously blind bidding two resources (whether you do it with one hand or two) is something that I haven't seen before. Meanwhile, moving the Moais is clearly connection building, but between the fact that you can share with other people and that you have to rebuild networks every turn, it's also of a sort that I haven't seen before.
This is designer Fabrice Besson's only game to date. The original publisher, Matagot, has published a few other entirely beautiful big-box games, such as Utopia and Khronos.
The Game Design
Giants is an interesting game design. Here's some of the things I liked about it:
First, the originality of it, which I've already discussed.
Second, the tightness of the game. With the requirement to use people and markers in both an auction and during the movement phase, it feels like your resources are very limited, and that you never have quite enough of them.
Third, there's a nice set of multiple paths to victory. Players concentrated on numerous different things during my playtest, including markers, wood, and tablets during the game, and each of those proved to be somewhat useful.
More generally, all of this connects up into a largely coherent whole, which provided nice interconnections between all the systems, and offered good opportunities for both strategy and tactics.
On the downside, various elements of the game felt "fiddly".
First, the way that you have to count up points for your entire connection path each turn gets a bit old. It also could be confusing, as you don't have to control all the spaces on your path, but you do have to have someone on the final space, to erect your Moai or headdress.
I think this was also hurt by the fact that you can only erect Moais onto specific ahus from certain spaces. Multiple spaces look adjacent to those ahu, and you don't see when you're not adjacent unless you remember to look closely at how the ahu is laid out on the board.
Finally, we also had players get confused about some of the elements, because there are so many interconnected rules. In particular, I think the use of two different bidding elements caused problems for some players.
Generally, Giants is a light-to-medium weight game, with plenty of tactics and strategy to support it, but the complexity of the rules sometimes overcame the weight of the game.
Overall, there's far more good than bad, and if you're interested in a game of this weight, you should give it a try; I've let it eke in a low "4" out of "5" for Substance, which is above average.
Conclusion
Giants is a beautifully produced game with some interesting and unique gameplay elements. The sharp edges of the design remind me of indie board games, and as a result I wouldn't suggest it for newcomers or families, but for more sophisticated players who still enjoy a light-to-medium weight game, Giants is a fun new option.
