Lowenherz

From: Gold Sieber (available from Rio Grande Games) Cost: $29 ($40 retail) Players: 2-4 Playing Time: 60-90 minutes Type of game: Family Strategy Complexity: 5 Skill level: 8 Reviewed by: Greg Aleknevicus, Issue 4.4 (16), Fall 1997

As the King lies dying his trusted princes jockey to position themselves to become his successor. Lowenherz (Lionheart) depicts the struggle as each prince builds walls and knights in order to establish the largest domain.

The gameboard is made up of 6 large tiles (each with a 5x5 grid) that can be laid out in a variety of combinations to form a 15x10 playing surface. Each square shows a city, mountain, forest or plains. Cities add value to your territories, mountains contain valuable mines and forests are expensive to deploy knights in. At the start of the game each player places 3 castles (and an adjoining knight) on the board. After receiving a starting income the game begins. The top action card is turned over, which usually shows 3 distinct actions. The players in turn select which of the three they wish to perform. It is possible that more than one player will select a particular action and in this case they will negotiate and/or duel to see who gets to perform it. Actions include building walls, collecting money, placing a knight, expanding a territory or drawing a political card.

Building a wall lets you place 1-3 little plastic borders between 2 squares on the board. Once an area has been completely enclosed (and contains only 1 castle) it becomes a territory.

Placing a knight allows you to expand your army. Each one must be adjacent to a castle or to a chain of knights adjacent to a castle. They're very important as you can only expand into a neighbouring territory if you have the greater number of knights.

Collecting money lets you draw the specified number of ducats from the bank. Money can be crucial as it is used to resolve duels and negotiations.

Political cards have special abilities: steal a knight from another player, declare an alliance between 2 territories, etc. The clever thing is that you get to select which political card you want from either of two piles. I consider this a great mechanism as it removes the randomness without making it a total crap shoot.

The ultimate objective is to have the most points at the game's end, which is largely a factor of how much territory you control. The real trick to the game is balancing your selection of actions. Collecting money provides a deferred benefit, making it possible to win disputes. Building walls is a necessary step although you often help an opponent out as much as yourself. Choosing between expanding a territory or placing a knight (part of the same action) can be difficult. Expanding gains you points but can leave you vulnerable if you have insufficient knights. There's definitely some heavy thinking going on when you make your decision. You might want to perform a certain action but be forced to select another in order to prevent an opponent from doing it.

Sometimes you'll choose an action so that you can extort money from the player that really wants it. Add to this the fact that the deck is set up so that certain actions are more abundant at different points in the game.

The components are, like most German games, top notch. The boundaries are nice little battlements with much fine detail. The castles and knights are molded plastic and fairly attractive. The board graphics are very pleasant and appealing. Unfortunately, the cards are smallish (2"x3"). Also, it would have been nice if actual coins could have been used instead of cards to represent money. I suppose it is easier to keep your holdings secret with cards but I would have preferred it nonetheless. Another minor nit pick is the size of the box, it could easily be half the thickness.

One of the biggest problems I see with Lowenherz is the high learning curve. It's not that the rules are complex or confusing, it's in finding the proper balance between the various actions you can perform. In the first couple of games I played, one player was able to take a commanding (and insurmountable) lead. The problem is that it's easy to get into a situation where the lead player cannot be attacked by anyone. After having played several games it you can start to spot when this situation is happening and prepare for it but its definitely not obvious. This can be especially troublesome with newcomers to the game. They might not realize that letting Bob build that fourth knight will essentially hand him the game.

The situation was this: one player had a fairly large territory in the corner. In the middle of the board several smaller territories of the other players were established. While various little border skirmishes went on in the middle of the board the player in the corner placed enough knights to make the area unassailable. He then quickly started gobbling up territory, making it even harder to attack him. The problem is that expanding into another player's territory can very easily prevent that player from placing any more knights. In this situation the only thing you could hope for is an alliance card and a truce. In every game I played at least one of each players territories would be thus "stalemated". That is a castle with a single Knight, no room for another and surrounded by territories with more than 2 Knights.

I think the game would work better if there was some way that such "super territories" could be controlled. Perhaps allied territories (2 territories with an alliance) could be treated as one when considering the number of knights? That way 2 players could actively team up to protect themselves from being from being gobbled up piecemeal.

Another related problem is the scoring system. You receive points whenever a territory is established based on its size with a 5 point bonus for each city. Whenever you increase a territory's size you gain 1 point for each square conquered (with the aforementioned 5 point city bonus). You also gain 1 point for each mountain square you control whenever a Silver Mine card is turned over. You lose points when your territories are taken over (1 per space, again, with the 5 point "bonus" for cities) or neutral zones (belonging to no one) are carved out of your own (using the table for founding new territories).

I don't see the reason for having 2 different methods of scoring (the table when establishing territories and 1 point per space when expanding). Basing the score solely on your holdings at games end would be simpler without altering play. The only real difference would be the Silver Mines, instead of receiving 1 point per mine you could receive 1 ducat (which makes more sense anyway). A bigger (albeit easily solved) problem is that cities are worth too much. What often happens is that player A will take over 2 of player B's squares including a city. This means that A gains 7 points while B loses 7, a swing of 14 points! Considering that a winning score is usually around 50 points it's too large a factor. I'd suggest that cities be worth 1 or 2 points instead. That's still enough that you'd try to take over them whenever possible but it wouldn't be overly important.

The game is best with 4 players but still plays well with 2 or 3. With fewer players there are some subtle strategy changes necessary and the "runaway leader" effect is more pronounced but it is still a satisfactory game.

Overall, I have mixed feelings about the game. On the plus side there are a fair number of meaningful decisions to be made. On the downside is the inability to attack the leader. Some may view that as a positive, in the games I played it just meant that you knew who was going to win several turns before the end. Rather anticlimactic I'd say. The mechanics are interesting enough that a real nailbiter finish would greatly improve my impressions of the game. Still, it'll easily be on my 5+ list, whether it achieves 10+ status is another matter.

[Lowenherz won the 1997 German Spiele Preis for best game, as voted by the German gaming community. Ed.]