Owen picked up a game called Colonia during the last few moments of this year’s Gen Con. He got this $65 game for $15. (BTW, there is a deluxe version that sells for $99.) Colonia comes in a big box with lots of gaming bits inside. The bits are all high quality card stock and wood. The board is good size and fits together much like a giant jigsaw puzzle. The game itself follows the familiar concept of buying raw materials, using the raw materials to produce goods, shipping those goods to earn money, and then using the money to buy artifacts. It’s the artifacts that give you your victory points and he with the most victory points at the end of the game wins. The game is played over six weeks, each week having seven days and each day has it’s on task to be done. Each player also has a limited number of family members (38) that can be assigned to tasks on each day during the week. Managing your family is essential, as we will see later.
The game also uses four different currencies: Pound Sterling, Grivna, Mark, and Gulden. All of the artifacts fall into the same four currency categories. You can only buy an artifact with its matching currency.
Colonia has a few fun game mechanics. Everyone has bid cards with the values of 3 through 8 on them. Each turn the players select a bid card to signify their turn order during the coming week. You can only use a specific card once during the game. You also have to dedicate the same number of family members as the number on the card. If you don’t have enough family members, you card number is 0 and you do not vote on any special occurrences during the days of that week. During each day of the week you assign your family members to their various tasks. It’s after you do this for a day that you get back the family members you assigned last week. So, as I said earlier, managing your family is critical.
Our game ran about three hours. Normal playing time is 120 minutes, but you end up spending a lot of time deliberating over how to manage your family. We liked the game. The rules are easy, but there is a lot of strategy in what you do during each day of the week that finally earns you that much needed money. Going first is good. You get first choice during each of the day’s tasks.
So what happened during our game? The game seemed to run pretty smoothly for everyone. Some weeks you did well and some weeks you faltered. Shipping goods became paramount. Only one player can fill a cargo hold with goods, so any other players who had those goods were left keeping goods they would have rather shipped. On the fifth week, I ran out of family members during turn order selection. That meant I was going last. It wasn’t a good week for me at all, but on the up side I had lots of family members for the last week—the week where all of the ships in the harbor would pay off with money. Through no planning on my own, I got to go first. This happened because both Mike and Ben didn’t have enough family members left to cover their turn order card, so they went last. Owen and I tied, but since I was after him on the previous turn, I got to go before him on this turn. This simple turn of the events gave me a huge boost–just what I needed to win the game. Of course, I didn’t realize it at the time. I thought Ben was going to win. At the end of the game I had 24 points which was enough to win. Owen had 19 points. Ben had 18 and Mike came in last with 14.
Over the years me winning the first time we play a game has come to be known as “The First Game Syndrome.†I think Ben, Owen, and Mike did this to ease the shame of losing to me. It doesn’t happen as much as it used to, but then I’m playing against the best. But they are just a few guys you kno… I said they are the best!
Chaos Steve