My copy of Victory Point Games' Mound
Builders arrived a short while ago, and having just dug my way
out of a pile of editing I thought I would give my readers my initial
impressions of the game before working on a more detailed review or
session report.
Victory Point Games' motto is “The
Play's the Thing,” which refers to their production of games with
interesting rules or settings and inexpensive components. Mound
Builders, however, represents a significant improvement in the
physical quality of VPG's products. The event cards (“history
cards”) are sturdy, trading-card sized, and well-illustrated; the
counters are nearly twice as thick as those in previous VPG titles;
the rule book has a glossy cover and is formatted like an actual
book; and the board is large – 11 by 17 inches – and adorned with
images and icons that immediately set the tone for the game. I can't
imagine what the deluxe boxed edition must be like, though I suspect
the counters are of gold-pressed latinum.
As in other States of Siege games, the
game board of Mound Builders features a central city, Cahokia,
that the player must defend from adversaries who advance against it
on numbered tracks, or warpaths. These adversaries are the Shawnees,
Cherokees, Natchez, Caddos, Ho-Chunks, and, eventually, the Spanish.
One might quibble with some of the names here: the Shawnees were
actually the Fort Ancient culture in the pre-Columbian era (they
didn't acquire their historic name till later), the Natchez didn't
coalesce as a nation until the seventeenth century, and the Cherokees
were a pretty minor nation until the eighteenth century (though the
designers note that they use the word as a catch-all for the
southeastern Indians). There's something to be said, though, for
using historic tribal names, which remind players of the
continuity between pre- and post-Columbian Indian cultures.
The game tokens include six markers
representing hostile armies, each of which has a
stand to keep it upright on the board, indicating that VPG is
moving away from its strict devotion to flat cardboard counters. Most
of the other game counters represent the chiefdoms that the player
can exploit or conquer during the game, chiefdoms identified by an
exotic trade good they produce – copper, mica, feathers, seashells
– and a numeric battle value. Once the second phase of the game,
the Mississippian era, begins, the player can flip the chiefdom
counters to the side displaying a mound, indicating they've been
incorporated into one's civilization. As a whole, the counters
indicate that Mound Builders is an unusual offering for VPG,
with both military and resource-management elements. We will see
whether or not these make for a rewarding game; I suspect they do.
Gamers identify those elements of a
game that establish it in a particular setting or historic era as
“chrome,” and Mound Builders has lots of it, particularly on its
event or History cards. In the States of Siege game series, these
indicate how many actions the player may perform on a given turn and
which enemies' armies move up (and, in MB, which chiefdoms might
revolt). In Mound Builders, all of the cards are beautifully
illustrated with color images or photographs, displaying the Aztalan
palisade, Hopewell pottery, an artist's reconstruction of Cahokia,
and the like. Each also contains a paragraph of text describing the
archaeological site or culture or development featured on the card,
and I think they contain a fair amount of information that would be
news even to seasoned American historians. Were I to use MB as a
teaching tool, these History cards would be one of the principal
reasons.
The only thing discouraging me from
using Mound Builders in the classroom is the rulebook, which
is very complex – less so than for a game like Advanced Squad
Leader, but more than other States of Siege titles or “gateway”
games like Ticket to Ride. MB covers three historic periods,
or eras, and is almost a different game in each. In the Hopewell
period, the player focuses on exploring and trading; in the
Mississippian era, the emphasis is on empire building and defense; in
the Spanish era, the player will be struggling just to survive.
Players also need to keep track of a large number of action options:
building mounds, improving Cahokia's palisades, powwowing with the
Great Sun, engaging in diplomacy to acquire chiefdoms, and attacking
hostile armies, and that's not including the additional options in
the advanced game. I suspect, though, that it is easier to keep track
of these options once one has actually playtested the game, which I
plan to do shortly.
