Search
Review of Banco Banco
Blurb from the publisher: Banco Banco is a colourful, abstract and tactical card game. Every player has four banks and four vaults that they will try to manage as good as possible. The object of the game is to fill the vaults as good as you can, but be aware! Only when the banks are closed the points will count. Other players are able to close the banks as well and prevent you from filling the vaults. Steal the precious, save them in your vault, build your banks and take the win!
Banco Banco is a decision making card game that can be played over and over again!'
What you get: Your EUR 15 will buy you Banco Banco, a card game for two to four players, lasting approximately half an hour per play. The box contains the rulebook in four languages (Dutch, German, English, French) and 208 cards. The cards are split in the following three categories: 132 point cards (38 cards per colour, the colours being blue, red, yellow and green, with the following number distribution per colour: one 8, two 7s, three 6s, four 5s, six 4s, six 3s, eight 2s, eight 1s); 24 banco cards (6 per colour, all different within the same colour, but overall all identical throughout the colours); and 32 playing field cards (8 per colour). The rulebooks can also be found in the four available languages on the game's website, should one wish to check the game in advance.
Gameplay: The goal of the game is to fill one's vaults with as many points as possible and secure them by closing the banks. The game ends either when all banks are closed or when the draw pile is empty.
First, each player's personal playing field is laid out, consisting of four banks and four vaults (one per colour). Each player gets five cards in his hand.
Each turn consists of three phases. In the optional first phase, a player may decide to ask one of his fellow players for a card. He can ask for a specific colour, value or both. When the answer is affirmative (in that the player asked actually has such a card), the player needs to hand over one card that matches the description. The other players don’t get to see the card. A player may also ask for a banco card. In the mandatory second phase, a player needs to take two actions from the following list, be them the same action twice or two different ones: put a card in the bank, put a card in the vault, discard a card openly and draw another one, put a card in the personal vault and discard all cards in hand and pick up the personal vault.
To feed and clause a vault, one plays point cards only. After the first card, which can be of any colour or value, the following cards must be of an equal or higher value, with the colour of each card matching the colour or one of the symbols of the previous card. Once a bank closes, the vaults of this bank are flipped.
To place cards on the banks so that they close, one must observe the following rules must be observed. A bank can accept four point cards of which the last has to have the same colour as the bank. The cards must each have a higher value than the previous one. Finally, a banco card of the same colour as the bank must be added above the four point cards, even though that card can effectively be changed in the future.
The banco cards are effectively bonus cards double the points in a vault or add additional points, allow to pick up a vault without using an action, allow a double question of sorts when asking for a card, etc.
The personal vault is a safe storage area of sorts, holding up to five cards one believes he might need later.
The strong points: Banco Banco is extremely easy to explain. I appreciated the approach of the guys behind it during Essen Spiel 2013; they started playing the game quite fast, the way experienced players would approach it, while a colleague of theirs explained in real time how the game works and why each player reacted in a particular way. The rules are four pages long. They raise a couple of questions, yet in the end they are not that hard to figure out.
As much as it's not a heavy game, it delivers well in terms of content as well as speed. There are different tactics and strategies to be followed depending on the number of players and what is going on. Aggressive play is a must. The website lists 'high revenge rate' as a positive aspect, and I actually agree. It's extremely important to have your eyes open and try to remember what has and hasn't been played. Cards on your personal vault cannot be stolen from the other players, yet one must use it carefully.
The game is very colourful yet not fiddly, due to the fact that it contains cards only. It can be easily carried around and played in gamer unfriendly environments like the beach. And don’t ask me why I thought of the beach first; it probably has to do with how colourful and summery the cards are, reminding me of times where our group would get stuck for days and days with a nice little abstract filler like this ('6 Nimmt' or even Uno come to mind).
The weak points: Some might be put off by the game lacking a theme. In order to pump up its abstractness to eleven, the producers opted for aesthetically pleasing cards which, however, have nothing to do with banks or vaults. It doesn't bother me in the least; there are numerous masterpieces amongst abstract games to berate one for this reason alone.
I actually had to count the cards one by one in order to write the 'what you get' section of the review. I don't know why a designer would not number the game's contents for reference, but it's not helping. Mistakes in packaging can happen; I am aware of situations where people were playing defective games for years since they did not know that something was missing. Even more so, numbering the contents facilitates players to easily break down and understand the mechanics of the game. Were we playing with a standard deck of cards, we would all have known how many kings, jacks and aces exist. Here however? This is an easy omission to fix though in an update online version of the rulebook, as well as its next printed iteration.
Conclusion: This is a good, shortish little filler, especially for those who like the mathematical thinking of card games using a usual deck of cards. It could be a starting point to gently steer your non-gamer, card-loving friends towards our hobby.
To find out more about Banco Banco, take a look at http://www.bancobanco.nl.
