Cost: $20 From: TimJim/Prism Players: 2-6 Playing Time: 90 minutes Type of game: Card Complexity: 5 Skill level: 5 Reviewed by: Kris Gould, Issue 3.3, Summer 1995
TimJim has quite a variety of games in their stable. They have lighter stuff like Mystic War (a relatively simple card game with a unique system of spending and receiving points in three different categories) and Fast Food Franchise (sort of a blend of Monopoly and Acquire, but lighter and quicker than either). And they have heavier, longer, more rules-intensive games like Time Agent (a fascinating fight to change history so that your race ends up with the most points) and Age of Exploration (a detailed simulation of the exploration and exploitation of the New World). Suzerain at first looks like another simple card game along the lines of Mystic War, but don't be fooled. It has some of the complexity and detail of their heavier games. Yet it plays pretty smoothly and rapidly, for the most part. It's hard to categorize. I guess I would have to say it sits on the lighter side of their lineup. But just barely.
It comes in a "thin bookshelf" size box, like Mystic War. Included are a deck of cards, lots of die-cut king/queen, prince/princess, and active/inactive markers (with numbers), six Empire Mats, a rules booklet and a card summary sheet. Rules summaries are printed on the Empire Mats (making them look a bit busy and confusing), and each card has a description of what it can do. (This is good, since each card has at least two different uses.)
Each player starts with five cards and an Empire Mat. On this mat he places a king or queen in the position of a serf. This royal heir must work his way up through the ranks of serf, knight, noble, royal, and finally to the position of king (or queen) of the empire. The first one to become ruler of an empire wins the game. But it isn't always easy to move up in rank. Each new rank sits on top of the rank below it, forming a 1-2-3-4-5 pyramid. So in order to play a knight, both serf positions below it must be filled. And a noble sits on two knights, and a royal sits on two nobles, etc. You MUST be married in order to get to the top level. To place a serf in your serf row, you must play a serf card on your turn. Each card in the deck has a number (1 to 5). When playing a serf, an active token with the serf's number is placed in your serf row. To play a knight you must have a space on your knight row that is supported by two serfs. To move your royal heir up a level, you can either just move it up to an empty, supported space on the next row, or else "kick it upstairs" by playing another serf (or whatever) on top of it, and moving it up to the space that that serf (or whatever) is now supporting. A royal heir may never have another token on top of it; it may not be used to support a character.
Each card also has a second purpose: Instead of playing a serf card to add a serf, you may exchange it for a new card (handy if your serf row is full). A knight card may be saved to play during a war, a Noble card may be exchanged for two new cards, and a prince or princess may be added to your empire or married to someone else's prince or princess for a hefty dowry. Wild cards may be serfs, knights, nobles, or royals. There are adversity cards to do bad things to your opponents, and event cards to help your own empire. A lot of these cards will cause serfs, knights, or nobles to become inactive (flipped over) until the next round of play.
After each player has played all the cards he wants to, each player has one turn to go to war (if he wants to), and then draw cards. The first attack turn goes to the first person to pass when playing cards. The attacker may play one war card face down for each active knight he has. A war card is any card in the deck— you ignore its normal purpose and just use the number in the corner. Then he can play knight cards face up, without needing to have a knight token to play these cards. The defender plays war cards and knight cards. War cards are now revealed and each side's total is added up. Noble tokens add their value to defense only, and royals add to both attack and defence. The higher total wins. If the attacker wins, he may steal one of the defender's cards (played or unplayed) or a counter from the defender's empire mat. If the defender wins, he may take any one played card (his or the attacker's). All played cards are then discarded.
When a player draws cards, he counts up all his active serfs, and draws that many cards. After everybody has had one attack (if they want to) and drawn cards, all the inactive counters are turned active again, and the next round begins. There are more complex rules for marrying off a prince or princess, with one person receiving the extra royal counter, and the other receiving a dowry of cards from his opponent's hand. And these rules become even more complex when you want to marry off your heir and win the game.
The game plays pretty smoothly for the most part, with players building up their empires as they can, and hindering their opponents as much as possible. The numbers on the characters are quite important: You need a few high-numbered serfs to collect "Good Harvests" (entitling you to draw more cards), and you need at least as many high-numbered knights to handle the serfs during a "Peasant Revolt". High-point nobles help your defense, and high numbers on your royals add to both your attack and defense totals. Wars are very expensive, and should be avoided except in cases where you need to keep one player from winning, or when opportune play of event cards makes winning a war much easier. Otherwise, the players who benefit most from a war are the ones who aren't participating (I wonder if there is a little moral lesson here...).
The most complicated part of the game is courtship. The courtship rules are difficult to understand and are confusingly presented, so until you have played the game a few times, it is hard to get a handle on how they work. But courtship can provide some of the most subtle and devious moves in the game, as well as being the most effective way of stealing cards from another player, so it is well worth the effort to master these rules. And besides that, courtship is the only way to become emperor/empress and win the game.
TimJim comes up with some of the most interesting and unique game systems and concepts around, so it's a shame their rules presentation is so confusing. Their philosophy seems to be that you should get a brief, vague overview of the rules, then plunge into a game, not knowing completely what you are doing, and then read the more detailed rules whenever you get stuck. Suzerain's rules have the scattered, disjointed presentation created by their "plunge in" philosophy. I have read rules for hundreds of games, and I can almost always explain them to other people and start playing pretty confidently after just one reading. But TimJim rules usually leave me confused, even after the second reading. And Suzerain's rules are more difficult than most. Luckily they provide examples, but it will take some serious decrypting time (especially of the courtship rules) before you can be confident that you can play the game well.
The mechanics aren't too hard to get used to, and for the most part the game is forthright and easy to follow. But first time players will find it hard to figure out when they are strong enough to attack, when they have left themselves too poorly defended, and just what they can hope to win (or risk losing) from a war. For the first few games, the ending may come as a complete surprise, as somebody just plays a card and wins. After the steady buildup of your empire, with wars and events to keep things lively, and a few interesting intrigues at the courtship stage, the sudden ending of the game can be a letdown. I hate to say it, because this game has so many interesting aspects other than battle, and there are so many other games where the whole thrust of the game is to fight your way to a win, but the end would feel more satisfying if you had to win by a big battle with at least one other player. However, this kind of ending wouldn't fit well with the rest of the game, where war is downplayed as being costly and somewhat self-defeating.
In general, once you get past the confusing rules and get a good grasp of the courtship procedure, Suzerain is a satisfying game to play. It lasts long enough to allow some workable long-term strategies and recovery time from short-term setbacks, yet it is continually progressing toward a well-defined ending, so it never feels too dragged-out. The multi-use cards are well thought out, with very few cards feeling useless at any point of the game. Wars are sufficiently costly that they don't happen too often, but they are still useful when you prepare for them carefully. Event cards and adversity cards are powerful enough that you want to use them judiciously, yet none are so powerful as to unbalance the game. Suzerain has a good feel to its progression; with serfs providing more cards, leading to knights, which allow battles and keep the serfs under control. Then the nobles provide defensive protection as you prepare for the royalty, which provide a higher level of intrigue, as well as restoring some of the battle capability lost in the noble phase. All in all, the game has a thoroughly playtested feel, with nothing standing out as an area that needs more work.
To sum up; aside from the abrupt ending, Suzerain is very entertaining. There is plenty of player interaction (especially during courtship, since you can't marry someone from your own empire), and the empire mats make it easy to gage who is winning and how well you are doing. Playing Suzerain, you really get a good sense of building up an empire. Maybe it does belong on the more complex side of the TimJim lineup. I don't know. But when a game is this interesting and satisfying to play, who cares?