Spiel 2013 Update: Seasons: Path of Destiny, 7 Wonders: Babel & The Builders: Middle Ages

Friday morning at Spiel 2013 — sellouts from the first day of the fair seem to be fewer than normal. As Heiko Günther pointed out in yesterday's BGGN post, Japon Brand probably leads the pack, selling out of Machi Koro, Sukimono, Lost Legacy, Say Bye to the Villain, and a couple of other titles, sometimes before the fair opened and sometimes a few hours later. While AEG will release Sail to India — another sellout from JB — in 2014, many other titles appear to have no future. Ideally someone will Make Things Happen™ in the months and years ahead.

Lautapelit.fi's Nations was another sellout, with both English and German copies disappearing from Asmodee, but Asmodee plans to bring in more stock for Friday. We'll see whether that's enough to quell demand before the tide of potential buyers.

• On Thursday I got a closer look at Libellud's Seasons: Path of Destiny, the second expansion for Régis Bonnessée's Seasons due out in March 2014. Naturally the expansion adds new spell and familiar cards to the game, including:

-----• A magical object that lets you sacrifice it to gain two of four listed benefits.
-----• A familiar that prevents its owner from gaining crystals.
-----• A spell that lets you reroll the final die of the season.
-----• An object that can create replicas of itself.
-----• A spell that allows you to spend elements in order to play a mystery card for free.

This expansion includes more enchantments, an addition to the game from the first expansion, Seasons: Enchanted Kingdom, but it also includes a destiny die that one player each round can choose to roll instead of one of the available dice. This die might give you an element, crystals or extra spell space, but it also gives you destiny points — and whoever holds the most destiny points at the end of the game receives a significant crystal bonus.

I played a two-player game with Bonnessée, and unsurprisingly he drafted a deck of cards that fit together into an efficient Eric-crushing machine. He noted that while you can play solely with the new cards from Path of Destiny — as we did — they're intended to be mixed with the cards from the base game as some cards are underpowered without the possible support of those original cards. If you're drafting (and *ahem* have some idea of what you're doing), I imagine that you can use just the Path of Destiny cards and make the best of what's on offer, but for those breaking out the expansion for the first time, mix it up.

• Word of the next 7 Wonders expansion is now out — well, some words anyway. Repos Production plans to release 7 Wonders: Babel in 2014, and unlike past expansions this one contains two separate elements that can be used separately or together or in combination with any other expansion.

First, players now work together to build the legendary Tower of Babel. Okay, work together is a bit strong as you're not necessarily trying to help another; in fact, as you build the tower ideally you're hurting others at the same time that you help yourself. At the start of play, players are dealt a hand of tower quadrants, then (since this is 7 Wonders) they draft quadrants: pick one, pass your hand, pick another, etc. During the game that follows, you now have a fourth possible action: Discard a card to build a quadrant, scoring 2 VP for the first you play, 4 VP for the second and 6 VP for the third. Each quadrant has a law on it, for example, each player has access to a particular resource each round, or certain resource cards don't work, or military victories pay out differently; this law affects all players until it's covered by another quadrant, but (since it's a quadrant) it can't be covered until three additional quadrants have completed the bottom level of the tower and it's time to play higher up. If a quadrant hurts your normal style of play, be sure to draft it and sit on it!

The second half of 7 Wonders: Babel consists of, if I recall the right word for it, agreements between various groups: trade agreements, military agreements, etc. What this means in game terms is that at the start of each age, you draw one card from the appropriate age agreement deck and reveal. A certain type of cards (commerce, military, etc.) now has an additional cost to be played. If you pay the cost, you take a marker from the agreement card, with the number of markers being one less than the number of players. If at the end of the age, all of the markers have been claimed, each player with a marker gains a bonus for each marker owned; if at least one marker is still on the card, then each player without a marker is punished in some manner.

I've played 7 Wonders: Babel once, and it's a great twist on the game for experienced players as you need to reevaluate everything to find out anew what's best to do with what you're grabbing from the ages. Knowing which quadrants you have in hand lets you plan for how to use them best, but then you need to spend a turn activating that quadrant and can you really spare the time to do so when you want to do so much else?!

• I did manage to play one game actually available at Spiel 2013 (and not due out in the future), that game being Frédéric Henry's Les Bâtisseurs: Moyen-Âge from Bombyx, which should appear under the name The Builders: Middle Ages in the U.S. Les Bâtisseurs is a card drafting/building game in which you need workers to complete buildings. Workers come in four skill levels, with each workers costing 2-5 coins each time that you commit him to a job. Each player starts with an apprentice that supplies one unit of work in two of four categories, while a master supplies five units of work. Buildings come in lots of different types, and they require various levels of work in different categories in order to complete them. On a turn, you take three actions, which can consist of:

-----• Drafting a worker from the five available.
-----• Drafting a building from the five available.
-----• Applying a worker or tool to a building under construction. (Applying a second worker to the same project on the same time takes two actions.)

You can buy additional actions if needed, with the first extra one costing 5, the second extra one costing 10, etc. As you complete a building, you reclaim the workers, then you receive either coins or a tool from the building; tools can work on future building projects, while money lets you send more workers out to do their thing. If you must, you can skip actions in order to take money from the bank. Most buildings and tools have victory points on them, and you play until someone has 17 VPs. You then complete the round and tally points, with each ten coins now being worth 1 VP (whereas previously the coins had no VP value).

Les Bâtisseurs is a quick game totally in my wheelhouse, with you playing tactically each turn based on what's available (and secretly crossing your fingers during other turns in the hope that certain cards will be available), and you try to cut corners and apply everyone to the right jobs as quickly as you can in order to get them back to work.

Speaking of which, time to hit the convention floor once again...