Review Summary: You need be neither a criminal nor Cornish to play Cornish Smuggler. You need however to be ruthless against the lawless sons of bitches that dare bring the customs man at your landing site.
Blurb from the publisher: 'Cornish company Grublin Games brings you Cornish Smuggler, a strategic board game for 2-5 players based on smuggling and risk taking with a minimum of random event and a maximum of smart, tactical playing and cunning.
Smuggling in 18th Century Cornwall wasn’t necessarily seen as something that was illegal, but rather as something that was 'fair game' and as such was taken with an often light hearted view. Rarely performed by just one person; large swathes of the community were often involved in smuggling.
Cornish Smuggler challenges you to build the most successful smuggling network you can. You do this by buying and selling goods for gold while employing a network of local characters, secret knowledge, hidden locations, bribes, dirty tricks and a healthy dose of cunning to evade the attentions of the customs officers and the other players.'
What you get: Your GBP 34.95 / EUR 44.95 / USD 49.95 will buy you Cornish Smuggler, a two to five player boardgame about smuggling in the 18th century. The box contains the rulebook in English (the same rulebook as well as an addendum can also be found on the game's website), as well as the following items: 1 fully illustrated 600 mm x 540 mm game board depicting Cornwall, 60 secrets cards, 60 wooden influence counters, 58 gold counters, 52 reputation counters, 50 wooden player counters, 48 character cards, 25 customs bribe markers, 16 unique wooden goods shapes, 12 storehouse cards, 10 wooden customs counters, 10 ship cards, 5 wooden ship counters and 2 reference cards per player (10 in all).
There is heavy use of language on the game components; if you plan to play with a predominantly non-English speaking group you might have to wait until the licensed version for your language of choice comes out. Or have your friends learn English, and purchase the game anyway.
Gameplay: Ruleswise Cornish Smuggler is a not-so-hard mid-range game, even though it appears to fall within quite a few categories (pick-up-and-deliver, action point allowance and deck-building being the most prominent). After the board is set, each player starts with an amount of gold, influence and network counters. Ships and storehouse cards are then distributed (in a way that confers no advantage to anybody) and each players chooses two stacks from the character cards to draw a card from, from which, after careful examination, he will keep only one. That is the first contact in his smuggling ring. Reputation is then recalculated, ships and network counters are placed (in which cities one has smuggling contacts) and the game is ready to start. On any given turn, starting from the first player, each player takes one action. Play continues with players taking actions as long as they can, until all players have passed; at that point a new turn begins with the reset that it entails. The game ends at the end of the turn when either the customs counter reaches the end of the customs track, or when the last goods shape is purchased. The player with the highest sum of gold and reputation wins. As easy as that.
The point however is that actions need money, influence, reputation or a mixture thereof in order to implement, and players tend to have those in a limited supply. That, plus the fact that there are 14 available actions from which a player may choose from, makes things a lot more interesting. One can buy and sell goods, move his ship, move his goods or his network counters in the land, move customs officers, bribe customs officers, land goods, discover secrets etc.
At the beginning things are not as cut-throat as later on in the game, since players usually try to expand their network on the board and attract in their ring the type of unsavoury character they feel will help them the most. Characters can provide much needed gold, influence and reputation, while some have abilities that can be used once per turn or even permanently. The idea is for a player to use his limited resources in such a way that he will be able to exponentially increase his capacity for acting in the following turns, while also earning income from the sale of smuggled goods.
Player interaction is mostly indirect, through moving the customs officials when landings or other shoddy business is conducted. It can also however be direct, through the usage of secrets cards and the actions they allow. Isn't it fun to be both a smuggler and a pirate, stealing the goods of your opponents straight out from their ships? Or being a good Samaritan, giving away money to your opponents (and gaining the highly needed reputation while doing so)?
The strong points: One thing that this game guarantees is your engagement to it. Since it doesn't proceed on a player basis but on an action basis, there is no boredom or wasted time. A plan is needed, as is attention in order for the plan to be adjusted to the kind of treacherous actions undertaken by the other smugglers.
It is funny how two of my other Essen Spiel 2013 reviews, Shadows Over the Empire and Firefly, are about games similar to Cornish Smuggler but for very different reasons. The idea of setting up your actions so that added value is provided and geometrical progressions are created towards increasing your available actions is what Shadows and Smuggler have in common. On the other hand, Smuggler is a pick-up-and-deliver game at its core, as is Firefly. As much as the latter succeeds totally in presenting a grim, desperate existence in the borders of legality and morality, it would have quite a few lessons to learn from Cornish Smuggler when it comes to player interaction.
I particularly enjoyed how players are pitted against one another without having total war declared. Everybody tries to advance his own goals while creating setbacks for his opponents. It's subtle; yet don't mistake it for nice and cuddly.
Subtlety is also evident in that what makes the game roll is also needed to win the game. Gold and reputation are the game's absolute goals, what one needs to be pronounced the victor. During the game however, he is obliged to spend his gold and reputation as well as his influence (not an absolute goal), in order to advance his cause. The balance is not that obvious to find. Spend that much and you might be doing great until the game is lost. Be thrifty and you might be shooting yourself in the leg, missing out on the opportunities.
I had the pleasure of meeting the crew behind the game in Essen Spiel 2013; open, friendly game designers are always good fun to talk to. Even more so because their support for the game and the quality of their service is at the same level if not better than what the big boys in the industry would offer. Apparently there was a minor problem with one of the pieces which they are fixing by shipping free of charge what is necessary to everybody who purchased a copy there (while of course rectifying the situation for the items sold afterwards). Good job for this too. I don't know whether other companies compile free soundtracks for their games; I do know though that it really sets the mood.
The weak points: As much as luck is present in the draw of secrets cards, Cornish Smuggler depends on planning. In that sense, it can be quite unforgiving to the player who acts on a whim without carefully considering his options. In the presence of slow players the game can drag, seeing how it's played action by action; it's not that one player finishes his turn before the others start. Re-evaluating what is going on on the board is imperative; analysis-paralysis, for some at least, is an existing danger.
Should the game drag, instead of a duration of one to two hours as it claims, you might end up with around two hours and a half for one play only. If one or two of your players have practically zero chances of winning due to poor performance or some devastating combo-card play, the experience might be far from ideal.
For a game that shuns luck in the form of dice, I am not fully convinced about the strength and balance of the secrets cards. These bring a welcome element of chance in the game, however at times they felt rather heavy-handed and disruptive. If a couple of well-timed card plays ruin a plan that was going on for a large chunk of the game, it means that some balance issues might need to be addressed. Additionally, somebody who knows the cards and has an idea of what he is aiming for, has probably more chances of winning the game than somebody who plays it for the first time. This however is valid for the majority of games out there; thankfully Cornish Smuggler is not as unforgiving to the starting player as Puerto Rico or AH's Civilization, to cite two well-known examples.
The theme is well done and the game can become aggressive, especially in the last stages of the game, the smuggling part however is not particularly convincing. Even with the new rules concerning honest work (yes, a smuggler can do that, taking hits at his reputation), the game could have easily been about setting up an honest sales network with mostly cosmetic alterations. In other words, Smuggler might have a few things to learn from Firefly about how grit should feel in a game.
The rulebook as it is now has a few issues and typos: no mention of all the elements of the game (mysteriously enough, they are mentioned in the box), some annoying layering, one typo, as well as a rule improvement which is posted on a different document; most importantly however, it has an actions and costs table which, while being quintessential to the running of the game and is factually correct, it is written in a non-intuitive form, both in the order the actions are presented, as well as the way that the costs are listed. This last thing is unfortunately also the case for the reference cards. Worrying as this may sound, I know for a fact that the guys at Grublin are taking care of these issues as we speak and will have a new comprehensive version uploaded in their site the soonest possible, if they haven't done so already. A clear, concise and intuitive rulebook goes a long way towards making a game more accessible, more loved, and thus more desirable as a potential purchase.
When it comes to being fiddly, Smuggler barely succeeds in order not to get the dubious distinction. It doesn't take up too much space, nor is the board too cluttered. The areas in front of the players tend to become busy however; if your players are messy things can turn sour, seeing how knowing what the others can do and where they stand is an integral part of the game.
Conclusion: Cornish Smuggler is a solid game; it deserves to succeed. The rules are clever, the cut-throat feel is there, and the few (temporary) mishaps can be surely forgiven for this company of enthusiasts that took its plunge in the gaming industry. Thanks for the treat lads, keep on smuggling!
For more info on Cornish Smuggler and Grublin Games Publishing visit their website at http://grublin.com/.
