There were seven of us this week so we split into groups of four and three, with the larger group choosing to play the new Hans im Gluck game, The Voyages of Marco Polo. This is a dice worker placement game by the designers of Tzolkin, Simone Luciani and Daniele Tascini, and is based around the travels of Marco Polo to the Far East. Over five rounds, players are trying to generate victory points with the two main ways being fulfilling contracts and travelling through various cities. To fulfil the former, you need to collect the right resources and cash them in for both the VPs and one other benefit (such as coins or further resources). Each player has certain secret objectives to visit up to four cities around the map and how well you meet these objectives will give you a certain number of VPs. Also, if you reach Beijing, you get VPs depending on the player order that you visit that city. The most interesting element is that each player has a particular character which gives them a certain advantage throughout the game, but these benefits are hugely powerful, so much so that you think they must unbalance the game. However, that doesn't appear to be the case as they tend to yield a similar level of benefit, just in different areas of the game. So, my ability to set the dice to whatever value I wanted when I played them seemed strong initially but Nicky's benefit of an extra die and a free contract each round was just as beneficial and Guy's merchant power of getting a free resource every time another player obtained resources was just as strong.

In our game, Nicky concentrated on fulfilling as many contracts as she could (which is the way her character's benefit naturally points you) and she seemed to be running towards an insurmountable lead. Guy was performing a good trick of always taking the action I wanted before I could do so, which led to me having to revamp my plans several times and with greater cost in coins (which I wasn't generating very quickly so my progress seemed a lot slower than it should have been). Andrew's ability to play the same action as someone previously without paying the coin cost helped him in being the last to travel each round so that he kept being start player each round. However, it was Guy's travels that won him the game with a huge point bonus at the end, allowing him to overtake Nicky, much to her surprise. I liked the game but didn't love it although I'm interested in playing again with the different characters. The reason I wasn't thrilled was I found it very frustrating with the coin cost of playing in a spot where someone had already been meaning that you often had to take a much lower level of benefit than you really needed. This is particularly so with four players and it might not be as big an issue with three or certainly two players. However, there is a lot to explore here and variety in the game set-up means each game is likely to play differently.