Review of Fief / Fief: France 1429

Blurb from the publisher: 'Fief is a game of dynastic ambition where players assume the roles of nobles in the 15th century Kingdom of France. Each player strives to become the most powerful ruling force in the Kingdom by gaining control of Fief and Bishopric territories. In turn, they acquire Royal and Ecclesiastical (church) titles which give their families influence to elect the next Pope and King. Players strengthen their positions by negotiating marriage alliances between their families, setting the stage for love, treachery and deception!

The game board represents a portion of the Kingdom of France in the Middle Ages. Villages have square outlines that are connected by roads that allow Lord and Troop movement. The villages are grouped into eight colored background areas that represent individual Fiefs, which are domains given to Lords to preside over.

Each village also belongs to one of 5 church Bishoprics. Each Bishopric is outlined with a heavy border line and is numbered between 1-5 along the edge of the board inside a Bishop's Mitre. Each village is part of both a Fief and a Bishopric.

Each player controls up to four family members, comprised of male and female nobles. These family members will rise in power by gaining Royal and Ecclesiastic Titles.

A player may attempt to gain control of all the villages in a Fief to gain the Royal Title of Baron, Earl or Duke. For each Fief a player controls he gains 1VP. These Titled Lords may now take part in the election for the next King. They may even be a candidate to become King, thus bringing 1VP and more power to the family!

Other members of your family may follow the calling of the Church to gain the Ecclesiastic Titles of Bishop and then Cardinal. These titles allow you to Tithe Bishoprics, taking the Church's (in this case 'YOUR') fair share of income from other Fief Lords! The highest goal your clerical family member can attain is to be elected Pope, bringing 1VP and special privileges to your family!

You win the game as soon as you have 3VPs. This is easier said than done and you may need to form alliances with other players through diplomacy and marriage to obtain your goal. When one of your family members marries a noble of another family, the two of you become allied. You now win the game together with 4VPs and cannot win alone, unless your marriage is annulled by the Pope or your spouse is 'mysteriously' murdered or dies of some other foul means!

In addition to being wary of your fellow players, you may draw event cards that can quickly change your destiny. Bounty Event cards are beneficial to the Player and include ‘Good Harvest’, ‘Good Weather’ and ‘Added Taxes’ cards. But some cards are Disaster Cards that can randomly effect all players in specific Bishoprics. These include The Plague, Heavy Rain, Famine, and Peasant Uprisings!

Income can be increased by players imposing church tithes on their opponent’s villages or taxing their own fiefs. Players may purchase new Fief titles, improve their village incomes with mills, and fortify their cities. Players will also need to protect their land and castles. Men at Arms and Knights can be purchased, as well as Siege Engines.

If you feel that other players are not running their Fiefs as well as you can, you may try to invade their territories! But you must risk one of your family members to lead the troops into possible combat, where they might be killed or taken prisoner.If two opposing armies are in the same village square, a Battle may be initiated. The players assess the size and strength of their armies, which determine the number of Battle Dice each may roll.The number of 'f' rolled, determines how many hits you score. Men at Arms are defeated with one 'f', while Knights require three 'f' to be removed from the battle.

Fief is a highly interactive player game of diplomacy, alliances, open chivalry and dastardly deceit!'

What you get: Your EUR 55 or USD 75 will buy you Fief (Fief: France 1429 in the English-speaking world from Academy games), a three to six player game that lasts from two to three hours. Apart frorm the rulebook, the game also contains the following items: one mounted game board at 90 x 46 cm, six family boards, six player aids, 78 Man-at-Arms counters (13 per player), 48 Knight counters (8 per player), 12 Siege Engine counters (2 per player), 18 Lord tokens (6 female and 12 male) along with the needed bases, 18 Taxes markers (3 per player), 6 Marriage markers (1 per player), 12 Vote markers (2 per player), 18 Diplomacy markers (3 per player), 2 Assassin markers, 6 Capture markers, 1 Crown Prince marker, 1 Excommunication marker, 12 Stronghold/Fortified City counters, 15 Mill counters, 22 Lord cards, 25 Fortune cards, 20 Disaster cards, one First Player card, 5 Holy Relics counters, 4 white and 4 black Battle dice, one six-sided die, Money in values of 1, 2 and 5 deniers, 17 Title counters, one D'Arc counter.

As much as I got a playtest copy of the French version, the game’s components are language neutral for all intents and purposes. Only the rulebook and the player aids are in French; the cards work with pictograms and so does the board and other items. If you don’t speak French and feel confident about not needing the player aids, you are good to go with any language version, seeing how the English rules can be found free on the net. The game is also sold in a combined Spanish, German and Italian version.

Gameplay: The blurb does a fantastic job of explaining the game. I will thus insist a bit more on what is not stated (and might have to repeat a few things that were).

Fief is a complex eurogame that utilizes a number of mechanics like area control, partnerships, production, trading, voting and negotiations/diplomacy. Each player heads a noble family that can count up to four members. They will try to obtain ecclesiastical or secular titles in order to increase their power and ultimately win the game by obtaining 3 victory points (if alone) or 4 victory point (if within an alliance) at the end of a round. VPs can only be gained through purchasing fief titles (1 VP per fief), being the king (1 VP) or being the pope (1VP). There are seven phases in a round.

In 'Hear Ye, Hear Ye' players announce marriage alliances, elect bishops, the pope and the king. As much as the bishops do not award VPs they do a swathe of useful things like adding votes when voting for other bishops and the king, being eligible to become cardinal or even pope, and trying to calm uprisings in their bishoprics which are very likely to be caused due to their tithing. Cardinal is a non-elected post which confers additional benefits. The pope and the king provide even more benefits, of course. The pope stacks up even more votes for bishops and the king, has a veto over who becomes cardinal, can annul marriages and tithe all bishoprics as well as excommunicate a lord per round for any reason. The king on the other hand can hand out free fiefs if he so wishes, tallage ungoverned fiefs etc. There are even more posts that provide benefits, like that of the Queen or the Crown Prince, these however are not voted upon. You need a male lord and a female lady to have a wedding, binding the fates of the two willing (or not so willing) players’ families... at least for the time being. D’Arc is a lord title card. It can be only given to a lady, increases her movement, provides her with an extra strength point and an additional battle die. Does it remind you of somebody?

When Drawing and Playing Cards, players may discard and draw new Lord and Fortune cards, resolve existing Calamities and then play Lord and Fortune Cards from their hands. The mechanic is clever in that the Fortune and the Calamity cards have different backs yet they are mixed in the same stack. A player has a limit of three cards on his hand, be them Lord or Fortune, yet to reach that Fortune card he will be obliged to first activate and then execute Calamities. There are only three types of the latter: Bad Weather, Famine and Plague. Depnding on the type they interfere with movement, battles, the productivity of the fiefs or the sheer survival of troops in a region. There are seven types of Fortune cards. Two are the Bountiful Harvest and the Taxes which can only be played at this phase, and five are opportunity cards (Uprising, Secret Passage, Assassination, Justice and Ambush). These can be played at any time during the game.

Under Collecting Income, the players collect money for their family's coffers. There are many ways to obtain money. Some do not have prerequisites (like controlling a village or being the Queen) and do not interfere with other player’s income. Others do, like playing the Bountiful Harvest or the Good Weather card, or having taxed areas via either tallage (by a fief lord or the king) or tithe (by a bishop, a cardinal and the pope). The latter not only adds income to the player that effectuated it, it also takes it away from the player who should have gotten it.

In Purchases players can first free their captured family members and purchase fief titles, improve fiefs by building mills, military units, strongholds or even a purchasable cardinal title. Your family’d better be fast: if counters run out, no more of that item can be built until it becomes available again (usually by being destroyed at another location).

Under Movement players move across the map. However a unit can only move when accompanied by a lord, and has a limit of two moves unless the lord is a female and has the D’Arc title; that lady is definitely motivated. The accord of already stationed units is required for units belonging to other players to pass through. If an accord is not given, the moving player can always chose to avoid battle. Only if he insists will a battle take place either through the form of a Cavalcade right now (should the army have additional moves) or through a battle at the next phase.

Opposing troops in the same village engage during the Battle phase. The units add their strength points (1 for the Man-at-Arms and each male lord of Titled Female lady, 3 for the Knight) and throw the necessary dice per side (1-6 SP: 1 battle die, 7-12: 2 die, 13+: 3 die, if owning the D’Arc title: +1 die). Fights are fought either to the bitter end, until a player surrenders, no units apart from lords are left or a truce is declared. When lords lose their armies in their battlefield they are taken hostage by the enemy. Rules also exist for sieges of the walled regions, introducing siege engines into the fray. Upon the end of the battle phase mills can be pillaged for cash.

The game includes additional rules for playing with five Holy Relics. These alter the rules straight out: the Holy Grail for example reduces an army’s damage against another, while the teeth of St Géronce (is there really such a relic in real life?!) can bring a Lord back from the dead. Players can also opt to use open diplomacy instead of the diplomacy marker (makes the game substnailly more versatile but causes drag unless time limits are enforced), fog of war (have units face down instead of face up) or make the game a tad more paranoid by having money secret instead of visible.

FInally, the End of Round is a sort of a clean up phase. Calamity cards are removed from the map, the players check if anybody won. If not a new round starts by the player to the left of the player who went first on the previous round.

The strong points: I have been itching to try Fief, or at least one of its previous iterations, since the 1990s when I first saw it in a game catalogue. The game is a French classic after all; its first edition came out in 1981 and Fief 2 (yes, it was called that) hit the market in 1989. Even though I cannot compare the game I have in front of me to the old versions, it clearly does not dissapoint.

A big part of what makes Fief addictive is its multilayered and nuanced approach to practically everything. The five bishoprics do not coincide with the eight fiefs. On the contrary, each of them includes parts of either three or four fiefs. Each village is connected to either two, three or four other villages, not necessarily from the same fief and definitely not with all the villages of the same fief directly. The prerequisites for a lord becoming a member of the priesthood immediately eliminate him from becoming a king (even though another member of the family can try). The lady that gets the D’Arc title can no longer get married; she will never become the queen. It’s great to be the king, happily married (and allied!) to the queen’s family, until the next male in that family, not yours, becomes Crown Prince and has every reason to see the king dead. If it sounds complicated, it is not, or at least not that much. Fief is partially exception-based, oriented towards playing not only the rules but also the players.

The gaming experience is deep, complex and extremely satisfying. My games were filled with tense negotiations and minimal downtime. You cannot possibly hold all titles so do not waste your time trying or feeling bad about it. There is neither time nor point to be constantly against at someone. Apart from marriages (or should I say even within marriages) things will be changing fast. Approaching the game on a case by case basis (‘I will support you for this title but don’t you dare bring those troops there’) is most effective. Luck plays a role not only through the dice but also through the available cards and corresponding actions. One cannot win only through sheer brainpower and calculating, machinating, ruthlessness; the plague might take out half your troops in under a second. Some games might become the epic showdowns they build towards, others however will end abruptly (and for some anticlimactically), with a family snatching victory when least expected. I however count these strongly on the positives. Were the game less luck-driven it might have been substantially more predictable and entrenched.

I also enjoyed the complications brought by the five relics. It’s probably a good idea to omit them from your first couple of games, but they add great flavour afterwards.

Speaking of flavour, the mechanics are fantastically tuned to the theme; it definitely gains a place in the top 5 themed games I have ever played. The map is practically alive (even though there are times you might find it very busy), while I personally get an energy spike every time I see the gothic stylized f being rolled. It is not the art only mind you, which is good, to say the least; it’s everything. The male nobles are double the female, and for a good reason; no political correctness is needed for a game about the middle ages. Even though you can’t control every aspect, you will trully feel like a mastermind plotting to better position his family in fortune and power. Do not forget your ultimate goal however: money is to be sent and the VPs are the only things that count.

The game is very well supported. A thematic expansion pack containg 5 (!) different expansions relating to tactics, politics, the Crusades, the Teutonic Knights and the Templars is already out. Give me some time to playtest it; I hope to have the review out within two months from now.

The weak points: Great and enjoyable as Fief might be, it unfortunately does not get all the details right. Starting from the price, it would have been fairer below the EUR 50 and more around the EUR 45 mark. Seeing how many shops sell under the suggested retail price, a fast search can fix that.

One page in the rulebook is taken by the FAQ. What is the point in this when many of the instructions could have been isnerted in the relevant chapters with relative ease? Overall the rulebook is not ideal. It provides the necessary information yet it lacks the sorely needed legalistic precision for a game that does not follow cleaner contemporary designs and insists on some older-style rules. The introduction gives an overview of the game, but the first time the victory conditions are stated in a fully unambiguous way is in page 14. It is harder to understand a game when you are uncertain of what you are striving for.

The rulebook and the player aids use slightly different phrases to describe the exact same thing. Ambiguity is a problem that is exacerbated by the non-ideal format of the rulebook. The chosen layout lacks breathing space and is highly counterintuitive. The index helps, but not in a spectacular way. It looks as if the rulebook should be read along with the player aids which give a more concise picture of how the game flowsy, yet as stated, the writing is not perfect. I get this constant feeling of understanding what the designer means; what the rulebook/player aids state however is not precisely that. The rules can be misconstrued, especially when spirits are flared and a fast decision is needed.

In a rather peculiar ommission, the rulebook does not state the contents of the game properly. There is no mention of the normal six-sided die nor of the six player-aids in the components section. Even more weirdly, discrepancies exist on the box. For no reason whatsoever the game is described as either lasting 2+ hours or 2-3, depending on where you look (think 3 for your first few games and you will be fine). Some of the material is different to what the rules describe. The six-sided battle dice are described as having one side blank, one f side, two ff sides and one fff side. In reality there are two sides each of f, ff and fff. Searching a bit on the net while writing this review I understand it was a last minute change to speed up the game. I respect that, however it strongly affects, if not practically eliminates, one of the possibilities of ending a battle and is not reflected in the rules.

As a result of all the aforementioned as well as the nature of the game, do not expect to properly teach Fief in anything less than half an hour. This is definitely not a game where you will learn as you go. Explain everything and meticulously at the beginning; you might not be finding the fules as fast when you need them during the game.

The titles each noble has only appear in front of the owning player; they are not depicted on the board tokens. Even worse, there is no colour coding for those same board tokens, seeing how by design each noble can belong to anybody. The bases that keep the tokens standing are transparent when they should have obviously been colour-coded, four bases in each family’s colours, so that everybody knows who belongs where. Additionally, there should have been tokens or clips indicating titles. None of these exist. Expect questions rather often about who is whose and who does what.

As much as I cannot insist due to lack of more plays, I am not convinced about a few other things. Balance is one of them. Is every option balanced and equally desirable? Ten plays could never tell me that. Even if this sounds paranoid seeing how I just talked about balance, I would have enjoyed a bigger variety of Calamity and Fortune cards in the basic game. I am also not convinced about how well the game scales down with three or even four players only. It shines with five and six, how easy is it though to find that many dedicated co-players?

Taking the size of the board into account as well as the Family Boards and the player aids, the game needs tons of space. Invest in a dice tower in order not to ruin the board every time you roll. The e-Raptor Castle Dice Tower with it’s church-like arches is a perfect thematic fit for the occasion.

As I am slowly getting into nitpicking land, I will once again voice my personal dislike for plastic trays inside game boxes that have nothing to do with the game’s components. This can’t possibly be hard to get right, can it?

Conclusion: Fieif is a great, involving, engrossing multilayered game. It fails some details yet it has a very strong character that few games possess. Having it reissued is as exciting as it is gratifying. Don’t miss out; when was the last time your brother was the pope and your cousin the king of France?

For more info on Fief, visit Asyncron Games at http://www.asyncron.fr or, if you only speak English, Academy Games at http://academygames.com.

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