|
Queen's Necklace is the newest game by Bruno Faidutti (and Bruno Cathala). Set in pre-Revolutionary France, this game of dueling jewelers requires solid memory and cunning strategy.
Players: 2-4
Playing Time: 30-45 minutes
Complexity: 4 (of 10)
This is a revision of a review originally published in June, 2003; mainly there's better organization and a bit more cohesive of a look at the online game.
The Components
This game comes with a small set of components:
- 110 Tarot-sized cards
- 12 Tiles
- 5 Golden Ring markers
- The Queen's Necklace
- Web Card
- Rulebook
Cards: The cards are slightly larger than normal playing cards, printed on very solid cardstock, with rounded corners. The majority of each card is taken up by nice, period-appropriate, full-color art; however, the fact that each piece of art is printed on a plain-white background which encompasses the rest of the card can make many of the cards look quite plain, especially the gem cards.
A color-coordinated title runs across the top of each card. The top left of each gem card also has one, two, or three gems displayed iconically, making it very easy to see how many of each gem type you have when you fan your cards. At the bottom of the card is an explanation of a card's power, along with an appropriate quote. Running the right side of each card are a set of four numbers listing the possible costs of the card.
Overall you have everything you need here to make sense of each card, and whenever possible icons and colors are used to make it all easier. Unfortunately, some of the text on the cards can be hard to read from across the table. The titles are in cursive, while some of the cost numbers have poor contrast against their backgrounds, particularly on the gray cards. These issues will disappear during additional games, as players become more familiar with the cards, but can be annoying the first time through.
The deck of cards include three blanks, which can be used to writeup the many new cards already appearing on the Queen's Necklace web site; there are also four player aid cards, which describe the game in a nutshell, list gem frequencies, and outline card powers. All very nice additions.
Tiles: The 12 tiles are printed on extremely solid cardstock (and I do mean extremely; they're an eighth of an inch thick). The are three sets of tiles, which: portray the four gems , the numbers 1-4 in red (for gem fashion value), and the numbers 1-4 in blue (for gem rarity value). They're well laid out, and resolve the all-white problem of the cards by having a textured white background, rather than a stark white.
Ring Markers: The golden ring markers are used to mark the current cost of each card for sale. Much to my surprise the first time I touched them, they're made of metal.
Queen's Necklace: The Queen's Necklace is a prop necklace, intended to be worn by the current holder of the same card. It's got a clear glassy "gem" at the end, hung from a thick black string, with various metal springy things and balls. I personally think it looks a little funny.
Rulebook: The rulebook is 12 pages long, printed on glossy paper in 4 colors. It's very well laid out, contains copious graphics and examples, and also has a complete list of card powers.
Box & Tray: The tray within the box is notable because it's been built especially with this game, with spaces for the cards, the tiles, the rings, and the necklace. The box is a sturdy rectangular box that's been used for Days of Wonder's larger cardboard.
Queen's Necklace clearly follows Days of Wonders' core ideal of producing games with beautiful components. However, I don't feel like this particular release lives up to that ideal as well as their previous releases have. The core of the game is the cards, and though they're physically superior, their layout is alternatively bland and hard to read. The rest of the components are top-notch, but the Necklace seems pretty unnecessary, and the quality of the rings and tiles was, if anything, excessive for what was required for the game. To a certain extent, I think Days of Wonder gave themselves a hard task here, producing what's essentially a card game with a variety of high-quality components. On the other hand, I feel like the game could have been improved by adding a missing component: pound coins to represent the earnings of each jeweler. A tradeoff of the very high quality of the rings and tiles for additional cardboard coins might have increased the play value of the game without increasing the cost.
Don't let my kvetching fool you, however: the components of Queen's Necklace (and their value to a player) are clearly up to the current standards of the industry, I'm just used to Days of Wonder going beyond those standards in leaps and bounds. I'd thus give the Style of Queen's Necklace an average rating of "3" out of "5".
The Game Play
In Queen's Necklace you're a jeweler, collecting gems and trying to produce the best jewels from them to sell to the King's Court. At the same time you must buy the influence of various members of the court, to help ensure your sales. You purchase gems (and a few other items) and influence ... by purchasing cards.
Setup: At game start you begin 4 cards in your hand. A set of 5 cards are then laid out for sale to the first player (who the rules suggests be the player with the nicest jewelry, a contest I was surprised to win on my first game of QN, given that I never wore any jewelry until I got married a couple of years ago).
The Cards. Each card is one of four types: a gem; a blue/influence character; a gray/sale character; or a purple/special character. Each card also has, running down its right side, a list of four decreasing costs, followed by an icon representing a discarded card. For example, for the three-rubies card, the right-side cost icons are: 10, 8, 6, 4, and discard. For the thief, one of the blue/influence character cards they are: 8, 6, 4, 2, and discard. On the first turn, one of the 5 gold rings is placed on the maximum cost for each card. This is its current cost, in ducats.
Order of Play: Each player takes his turn in turn, and engages in the following three actions:
- Influence
- Card Purchase
- Devaluation
Influence: During the influence phase the active player may play any blue/influence character cards that he had previously purchased. These allow the player to do things like: look at other hands; have extra ducats for the current sale only (Courtier); force a player to discard a card (Forger); change the gem fashion (Favorite); and steal cards from opponents (Thief).
Card Purchase: Next the active player gets to purchase cards. He has 10 ducats to spend each turn and uses them to pay the current costs of the cards he wants to buy, provided that their total cost does not exceed 10. So, for example, if that three-ruby card were at its maximum value of "10" a player could buy that and nothing else. If the three-ruby were at its "6" value and the thief were at its "4" value the player could buy both. It's very possible, indeed common, to not spend all of your 10 ducats each turn--and the excess is lost.
As already noted the players can buy four different types of cards. The blue cards are those influence cards whose usage we just discussed. Gems and gray cards are used during jewelry sales, which will be discussed in a bit. Purple cards are special, each one being usable at a specific time during the game. Some allow you to secretly draw cards or takes cards, others let you delay jewel sales or changes gem types after the fact.
Devaulation: At the end of a player's turn, all of the gold rings are moved down, decreasing the cost of each card for sale. In addition any holes are filled with new cards at maximum value. Now, the next player's turn begins ... unless a merchant is turned up.
Starting a Jewel Sale: At the start of the game three special merchant cards are also mixed into the deck. One is about 1/3rd of the way down, one 2/3rd of the way down, and one near the bottom. When a merchant is drawn a jewel sale immediately occurs.
At this point each player secretly decides which gems he's going to turn into jewels. He has four different types of gems to pick between: rubies, emeralds, diamonds, and amber. He'll secretly select a certain number of each type of gem.
When everyone has selected how much of each gem they'll use, all of the gems are revealed. The player who offers the most of an individual gem type (which is to say, has produced the most ostentatious jewel of that gem's type) sells his jewel, collecting pound coins for his trouble. All jewelers, including the ones who didn't sell their jewels, must discard all the cards they used during the jewel sale.
There are a few complications: fashion, rarity, and gray/sale cards.
Fashion & Rarity.These elements directly affect the value of each gem type. Based on these two factors a jewel made from a specific gem can be worth as little as 0 pounds or as much as 60.
The four gem types are laid out in a random order of fashion (with the four ranks valued 30, 20, 10, and 0 pounds) at the start of the game, though some blue/influence characters (Favorites) allow this order to be rearranged during the game.
 Meanwhile, rarity value is determined by how many of each gem were offered, total, of that type during the current sale; again the ranks are valued at 30, 20, 10, and 0 pounds. So, for example if all added together 11 emeralds were offered, 8 diamonds, 5 amber, and only 2 rubies, then emeralds would be the least rare (value: 0) and rubies the most rare (value: 30). (And it should be noted that this calculations is mildly complex to do in-game, since you have to keep 4 numbers in your head, or alternatively write them down.)
Once a victorious player is determined for the sale, the value of his jewel is determined by adding the rarity value and the fashion value.
Gray/Sale Cards. The other complication are the gray/sale character cards. These are cards that are put together with specific gem types when you're preparing a sale. The cards do things like: cancel all sales of a specific gem type (King); increase the value of a gem sale (Banker); and allow for additional gem sales (Ring). The named Queen's Necklace card cancels the King card and forces the player of the King to give you 50 pounds; it's a great object for bluffing and threatening once you've gotten a hold of it.
Starting the Next Round: Once a sale is done and all calculated out, all the cards used in the sale are discarded, as already noted, but players will continue play with those cards they retained in their hand (opted not to turn into jewels for sale, this time).
Winning the Game: Once all three jewel sales have occurred, the game ends, and the player with the most pounds is awarded a title of nobility and a place in the King's Court.
The Online Game Play
 Days of Wonder has also made several of their games available online; Queen's Necklace is one of them. You get a web card with the tabletop game, and you can use that to sign up to play the online game.
Interface: As with other Days of Wonder games, you start off play of Queen's Necklace in a lobby. You can see who's waiting around, see what games are going on, and start up a game of your own. It's very plain and utilitarian.
Once you get into the game proper, you find an interface that's surprisingly compact. On a single screen you see: your cards; a pile of cards for each of your opponents; the five cards available for sale, with prices; the current fashion ratings; and a listing of how many cards are left. Despite the large amount of info on the screen, it's all very readable. In addition, I think the relatively plain cards look a little better on the screen because they're smaller.
Beyond that, all the main cards are easy to read, and you can magnify the cards in your hand.
Gameplay: The gameplay of Queen's Necklace is fairly identical to that of the tabletop game, except a few things are easier. First, I find it a mild bonus that you actually get to select cards for sale in secret, something that's never 100% possible in a tabletop game. A second minor bonus is that the computer automatically does the devaluation for you each round (which you can sometimes miss in tabletop play).
Much more importantly, however, the pricing of gems via rarity and fashion is much, much easier, because the computer does all the otherwise tedious calculations. There are some screens that explain exactly how much of each gem type each player offered, and I find that I have to stare at them for a while sometimes to understand all of the info, but it's still great to have them.
Other Issues: The online Queen's Necklace only supports 3-player games, which is mildly disappointing since the tabletop game supports 2-4. In addition, the game has some critical mass problems: there often aren't enough people around to play, though I've found that Saturday and Sunday mornings are times that I can get a game if I really want.
Clearly most of us would prefer a tabletop game to an online game most of the time. However, just looking at it within its own medium, I think Queen's Necklace Online is slightly more attractive and slightly better to play than its tabletop version. Thus, while I'll give the tabletop game a rating of "3/4", I'd give the online version a rating of "3.5/4.5": slightly better Style, slightly better Substance. This doesn't include the fact that it's often a bit hard to find a game.
Big Caveat: Though I don't have an affiliation with the tabletop game that I'm reviewing here, Skotos offers the online version for play through its game channel, and RPGnet offers the game for play by its members. Thus, take what I say about the online game with the appropriately sized grain of salt.
Relationships to Other Games
Although it might not immediately be obvious, Queen's Necklace is an auction game. To be specific, there are two types of auctions a constrained Dutch auction with open turn-based continuous bids (that's the gem purchases) and an unconstrained English auction with simultaneous one-time blind bids (that's the jewel sales). The latter looks a lot like a majority-control contest as well, and that's not a big surprise, because majority-control and auctions are mostly the same thing.
This game also features many common aspects of other Bruno Faidutti designs.
Many of Bruno Faidutti's games tend to have some random elements which add some chaos to the game so that it's not solely hardcore strategy. Here we have the ability to steal cards from other players, make them discard them, and change the fashion of the court.
Faidutti also seems to like to have cards representing characters. I've previously reviewed Citadels and Fist of Dragonstones which take this same tact (and see my review of Citadels for some fun notes on how that relates to other games by other authors).
The Game Design
Overall, Queen's Necklace is an enjoyable game that runs smoothly. Here's some of the better game design elements:
Balanced Strategy: The design of Queen's Necklace allows for a surprisingly varied and balanced strategy, given the core simplicity of the game. When buying cards, you can make purchases in order to get yourself useful cards, or to keep them from other players. You can choose to buy high-cost cards that you really need, or just to pick up whatever's being offered for cut-rate costs. When you get to the jewel sales you can choose to try and outsell another player for a specific gem type, or to keep cards in your hand for use in the future. You can choose to play high numbers of gems to make sure you win, or you can can play a game of brinkmanship, trying to keep the total gem count low enough to up the rarity, while making sure to ensure your victory at the same time.
Good Control of Randomness: Overall, the design of the card distribution in the game seems well done. There are just enough chaotic events, such as the aforementioned thieves and fashion changes, to keep things interesting, but not enough to throw off the balance of the whole game. It looks like quite a bit of thought and tuning went into getting the card counts just right (and the fact that the player-aid cards list the frequency of ever card makes it that much easier for each player to make plans).
Well Integrated Background: The background of the French King's Court really feels like an integral part of this game.
Neither good nor bad, the following bears mentioning:
Strong Memory Element: One core of the gameplay of Queen's Necklace is very definitely memory. I often mark strategy games down for that, because it's usually a poorly conceived afterthought, but here memory is a central aspect of the game. In order to be able to make good decisions about what to offer for sale, you must have paid attention to what each player purchased and sell accordingly. Personally, that requires more cognition than I like for a game, but if you don't mind, Queen's Necklace builds upon this gameplay is a fine manner.
My only negative comment on the game design are these:
Player Interaction Limited: The interaction with other players is somewhat limited. You do have some cards which can affect other players, but for the most part you're busy trying to build up your own card reserves, and carefully counting what every other player is picking up.
Calculations a Pain: As already mentioned, the calculations can be a pain in tabletop play, particularly the calculations to figure out the rarity of each gem type, and thus the value.
Overall, I think the design of Queen's Necklace is well above average, and I'd rate its Substance "4" out of "5". Without some of the fiddly scoring and some of the high cognitive elements, I think it could have been a better game, but it's skill quite enjoyable to play.
Conclusion
Queen's Necklace is a game of bluffing and figuring out what the other players are going to do. It requires a considerable amount of thought and strategy as well as some card counting and a good memory, but if you don't mind that aspect, this is a very good strategic game, that's sort of an auction game, but not exactly.
|
