Battle card game 'Serviam' play review aiming for the best merchant house by sending gifts and threatening letters to the powers of the kingdom
Serviam | Domina Games
https://www.dominagames.com/serviam
The Serviam package looks something like this. The illustrator is sena and the game designer is Antony Wyatt .
The number of players is assumed to be 1 to 4, the play time is 20 to 60 minutes, and the target age is 12 years old or older.
The contents are 1 manual, 3 influence boards, and 1 summary card.
The world of Serviam is said to be ``a tyrant has fallen ill and a power struggle is taking place''. The three influence boards are the characters of the royal army (blue) with military power, the Midra cult (green), a new religion that threatens the existing church, and the royal assembly (red), which is composed of aristocrats who are in charge of national affairs. show its influence. Each faction has three powers, and the order of characters is determined as 3 stars, 2 stars, and 1 star in order from the top. Also, next to each character is a scale indicating the influence of '-3, 0, 0, 1, 1, 2, 2, 5'.
And there are 36 authority cards (upper left) and 36 tribute cards (lower left) used in the game, 4 devil cards (upper center), 4 bribe cards (lower center), and 4 victory point count cards ( Upper right), 5 enemy merchant cards (lower right).
Influence markers corresponding to the colors of the three factions, and white and black victory point markers.
Prepare the game to play with 4 people. First, place the influence marker corresponding to each color on the three influence boards on the left '0' on the scale.
Next, distribute victory point count cards and authority cards to each player. There are 9 power cards x 4 types, and the ones with the same color as the victory point count card are set.
Shuffle the 9 power cards well, place 5 face down and place the remaining cards to the right. Of the 5 cards arranged, turn the cards on both ends face up. These five cards are the 'personal connections' that your merchant family can rely on.
The 36 tribute cards are then shuffled into a draw pile, and each player draws 2 cards. However, if the card 'threatening letter' comes out, it will be drawn again.
In addition, receive one devil card and one bribe card, and make a total of four cards in your hand.
The game is now ready.
The purpose of Serviam is to earn victory points by sending tribute to the powerful for 7 turns, and finally earn more victory points than other players and win as the best merchant. The 'player who recently received money' becomes the starting player, and moves clockwise.
On your turn, you will process in the order of 'Dedication Phase', 'Conspiracy Phase', 'Network Expansion Phase', 'Reward Phase', and 'End of Turn Phase'.
In the ' presentation phase ', you will put out a gift card from your hand under the power card arranged in front of you. For example, the following is where I presented a 'fairy figurine' to Sir Victoria. The tribute card tells you how your influence on the powerful will change if you give the tribute. In the case of this 'fairy figurine', 'the influence of the person in power who gave it is +1, the influence of Sir Victoria is +1, and if there is Sir Victoria in the network, the influence of the person in power with a rank of 3 is reduced to - 2 has the effect of
Therefore, move 2 of the Influence markers of Lord Victoria on the Power board to the side.
It also reduces the influence of those in power with a 3-star rank. In turn, the De Medina family reduced the influence of Bishop Matthias of the Midra Church, a new religious group, while saying, 'Separation of church and state is important.'
After the presentation phase, the next step is the 'conspiracy phase', which will be
In the ' Reward Phase ', you can get victory points according to the influence of the powerful person to whom you have offered the tribute this turn. Looking at the influence board, Sir Victoria, who gave the tribute this time, can get 1 point, so add 1 point to the victory point count marker.
In the ' end of turn phase ', draw one card from the deck and end the turn.
The Bazzi-Betti family gave a 'bribe' to Kurt, the commander of the Imperial Guard Division, who was ranked 2 stars in the military, while spouting something vulgar, saying, 'It's best to give it to a soldier.' 'Bribe' can increase the influence of the person in power and the influence of any person in power by 1.
This time, I increased the influence of Kurt Imperial Guard Division Commander by 2.
And in the upper right corner of the 'bribery' card, a 'conspiracy icon' like a secret society was drawn. If you present a card with this conspiracy icon, you can execute the ' conspiracy phase '.
In the conspiracy phase, the 'EFFETTO ORDINE effect', which is the unique skill of the person in power who gave it, will be activated. Kurt Imperial Guard Division Commander's `` Concealment Work '' allows you to get victory points based on Kurt Imperial Guard Division Commander's influence after replacing your hand with one dedication card placed on the field.
The effect of this Kurt Imperial Guard Division Commander can also be exchanged for the tribute card in your hand for the 'bribe' you just issued. It is necessary to be careful because the effect of the newly issued gift card will not be activated, but basically the one that has been presented once will not return to the hand anymore, so it is quite powerful to be able to return the card once issued to the hand again. effect.
Tsukkomi such as 'I gave a bribe to a person in power, but is it okay to take back that bribe again?'
In addition, there is also a card called 'threatening letter' among the tribute cards. The threatening letter card has a conspiracy icon on it, so if you send it to someone in power, you can start the conspiracy phase. Those in power have the disadvantage of not being able to offer tributes. No matter how merchants, it may be natural that they will lose their personal connections once they threaten a person in power.
The following scene is the scene where the La Fortina family finally sent a threatening letter to the three powers. The players around me were upset, saying, 'This guy... he's a merchant, but he keeps threatening people in power...' 'Isn't there anything scary?'
The EFFETTO ORDINE effect of General Wilhelm, who was sent a threatening letter, is to 'uniformly add 2 or -2 to the influence markers of all powers belonging to the specified organization'.
The La Fortina family gives +2 to all influences of the Parliament. Then, Sir Victoria's influence reaches the maximum value.
The aim of the La Fortina family was to maximize the influence of Sir Victoria and get 5 victory points.
However, the Bazzi-Betti family sent a threatening letter to Eleonora. Eleonora's EFFETTO ORDINE effect is to ``replace the influence of two people belonging to the same organization''.
'Of course, Sir Victoria should keep quiet!', the Bazzi-Betti family switched the influence of Chancellor Baltsar and Sir Victoria.
Yet another player sent Chancellor Baltsar a 'devil' with a conspiracy icon. Chancellor Baltosar had the EFFETTO ORDINE effect of ``removing the specified authority from all players' connections and redrawing a new authority card''.
Then, the Kerschbauni family said, 'It's too bad that Sir Victoria has been lost from the network.' In fact, knowing that the La Fortina family is increasing its influence, the Kerschbauni family seems to have been trying to keep it because they also had Sir Victoria in their personal connections.
Instead, it was Kurt Imperial Guard Commander who came to the Kerschbauni family's connections. Power and Tribute cards have icons based on the three power factions in the top left corner. In the score calculation at the end of the game, there is a `` demand match bonus '' that `` if there is a combination of the same icon on the tribute card and the card of the person in power who gave it, 2 points for each combination '', and the Kerschbauni family has a red icon I was aiming for a total of 6 additional points by offering 3 tribute cards, but I was supposed to get additional points because Sir Victoria with the red icon left and became Commander of the Imperial Guard Division with the blue icon. has disappeared.
Such a muddy power struggle continues, and the game ends when everyone finishes 7 turns. In addition, since one tribute card is always offered per turn, the number of turns can be grasped by counting the number of tribute cards in play.
Finally, in scoring, the current victory points plus the demand match bonus, the player with the highest score wins as the best merchant.
The La Fortina family, who had been sending threatening letters, had succeeded in giving tribute cards with conspiracy icons to all five people in power in their connections. If you can dedicate a tribute card with a conspiracy icon to all 5 people, you can get 10 points with the 'Dark Influence Bonus'.
It took about 1 hour and 30 minutes to play once because I understood the rules the first time. Next, I played with three people, but this time the number of people decreased and everyone's understanding of the rules advanced, so the play time was about 40 minutes.
Serviam is a game where you manipulate the influence of those in power to get the most out of yourself in the end. We often saw situations where increasing it would benefit other players as well, so of course the style of ``moving to your advantage and at the same time hindering the opponent'' is important, but it is also important to ``strike the opponent's movement'' At the same time, I felt that the style of 'let me suck the sweet juice together' is the key to winning more. It is a game where you can easily experience the muddyness of power struggles, ``use as much as you can and betray in the end''.
Each powerful person has a unique skill, EFFETTO ORDINE effect, and the development of the game changes greatly depending on how to cut bribes, demons, and threatening letters with conspiracy icons. Therefore, it is fun to think about which powers to support and which powers to demean. The personal connections that you can give gifts to will change each time you play, so it can be said that the replayability is high.
In addition to multi-player battles, there is also a solo play mode where you can fight against the Batsy-Betti family. Therefore, it is a nice point that you can play even if you can not find an opponent.
The game itself is simple, but it is necessary to grasp the rules, how to proceed with the phases, and the tricks of the game, so it is recommended that you play slowly the first time to understand the rules and the flow of the game.
Serviam is 3520 yen including tax and can be purchased at Amazon.co.jp.
Amazon | Domina Games Serviam (for 1-4 people 20-60 minutes for 12 years old and over) board game | board game | toy
You can also get Serviam from the following gift articles.
PS5, robot vacuum cleaner, liquid tab, etc. GIGAZINE winter gift large release project `` Please answer the questionnaire and bring them all! ''-GIGAZINE
Related Posts:
