The Tao of Gaming

Played a copy of Leonardo tonight -- seemed fine. Nice, even. I'm not composing poetry (or a zillion page strategy guide) yet, but that's a high hurdle.

I think Leonardo is, at the lowest level, just a resource management game with 'timing auctions.' I thought it may be an area control, with areas given special benefits .... but to be an Area Control game, in my book, you have to have lots of workers. Here you have 3-10 (or so), so you often tie at low numbers. In my mind, that doesn't count. I'm going to mull this over during my business trip.

Anyway, you have workers (and one Master, who basically counts like a double worker), and one or two labs. If you have the right ingredients to start an invention (from the face up possibilities) you can put them under your lab. Other players will know you are working on something, but may be in the dark. Then you go around the table placing workers. These can go in your lab, to provide labor, or in the city, or council. Once all the workers are placed, you resolve the special space in order. Whoever put the most workers in each space gets the first action, etc, with ties going to whoever placed first. In the council, all actions are free, but there are four different ones, and each can only be selected once. Everywhere else ("The City"), it's the same action (or choice) four times, but the first player gets it for free, then the next player has to pay $2, then $3, then $4. Since you only start with $3, that's a chunk of cash. In the city spaces, a player can win multiple actions (paying all costs). Spaces let you upgrade your lab, get more workers, or get resources (that are necessary for inventions). We played with the optional (or v1.1 patch, I suppose) trading space.

Pieces set in the lab provide labor, and each invention needs 1-4 resource cards and 4-15 labor. Labor can also be provided by labor saving inventions ("Mechanical Men"), which are earned in the city. When you make an invention you earn money. If only one player finishes in a turn, he gets the card. Cards have a symbol and each card you've gotten gives a discount on matching symbols. If two (or more players) finish at the same time they auction the card off. Players who were working on that invention can finish it later, at a reduced payout (and no card).

There's also a bonus at the end for having different symbols. Play seven full turns, and two abbreviated turns (just operating the labs) and count up cash. Most money wins.

From my first play, it seemed fine. Leonardo is one of those convoluted resource management games I like. You have money, items, workers, time pressure (in that you can get locked out). In the setup each player gets to pick three 'advances' (improving money, # workers, resources or cash; taking each advance no more than twice), so you have some initial divergences. It may be that one combination is better (way too early to tell that) but diverging from groupthink would probably beat being the 3rd player to do X/Y/Z. (I was the only player to load up on early money, which seemed to work out just fine ... if I lost an early round and came in second, I could afford the $2).

So I'm looking forward to trying this again. Like Caylus, it handles 2-5 and I imagine it changes with each value. There may be the usual problems:

• One best path to victory
• Postive feedback
• Some take that

I'm most worried about the feedback ... one early play to cut someone out (or make them spend $2 instead of $0) could carry over painfully. I got off to a rollicking start and never looked back ... in fact, if I had guessed correctly and picked an uncontested invention on turn 2, I probably would have doubled the 2nd place score. [In fact, I had to win an invention at auction, which cost me the cash and a bit of resources.]

The take that appears to be a suggested advanced variant Council action ... not sure I like it yet; it seemed reasonable. More play needed.

The game may fall to the inevitable scrutiny; but that's a good problem. More investigation is warranted.

Two more games, some thoughts. My gut feelings:

• There's no instant path. Reaction and 'path not taken' matters. (As "Frunk" pointed out).
• I like the expert setup, but I prefer that the council 'move' action should only move yourself. In my last game I got pushed out of an area (that I was second in) so that the winner could buy multiple times.
• As per Chris Farrell's comments, winning unopposed (vs opposed) matters. There's some psychology (and card counting) involved, but sometimes its basically a guess.
• And the luck of the invention order matters a fair amount.

I'm keeping the rating a seven, but I think that the combination of the last two points makes that a ceiling, and I could easily see dropping this to a six after a few more plays. So far all my games have been with four, I wouldn't mind trying another number.

I've seen a number of strategies (setups) work, and I've seen reasonable looking positions lose. The winner in our last game took a worker, lab and cards and then started manually running two factories on the first turn. Given my "Build infrastructure early, points later" bias, I thought it would fail, but it didn't. He got two early inventions which helped him diversify and provided reasonable cash flow.

One item that has turned up is that in the council we're often fighting to look and order the deck, which we ignored the first few games. (The council on the 7th turn really matters for tiebreaks and setting the deck for the final two turns.

Anyway, I've played it three times. It will certainly hit 5+, but 10 plays? Perhaps.

I also played Ave Caesar, and managed to come in 3rd place in several races! Woo! (Of course, we had a robot chariot come in last all four races).

And Frank's Zoo was nice enough, for a climbing game.