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DIE BAUMEISTER DES KRIMSUTEP

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Author: Mark Sienholz

Publisher:
KRIMSUS KRIMSKRAMS
KISTE 2005

Awards: none

EVALUATION

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Set back in the time of ancient Egypt plays Die Baumeister des Krimsutep, a game about building temples and avenues of obelisks at the borders of the river Nile. Thus, at the beginning of the game a playing area is prepared by forming a landscape with the included river and desert cards, and each player receives an identical set of building cards consisting of smaller and major palace parts, obelisks and an oasis.

The game itself then is played in six to eight rounds, with the number of rounds depending on the number of participating players. Each round is subdivided into two phases. At the beginning of the first phase the players secretly put down one of their building cards which they want to build later that turn, and then a game of trump using a cardset of sklaves and building materials of different card-values and several special trump-characters is played. The players can score some victory points in this phase, with special points being awarded for some special trum combinations or being alble to get most building materials of one colour. However, when the game of trum is over, each player also will have to add up the roman numbers given on the cards which he could gather, and the player with the highest result here will become the Pharao`s favoured architect for that turn.

In the now following second phase of the round, the players first turn over the building cards which they have placed face-down in front of them at the beginning of the round. Now the architect player gets to decide in which order the players are allowed to place their building cards at the playing area, and here once again the players can score victory points by building larger palaces or long rows of obelisks. Once all building cards in the players` stockpiles have been used up, the game comes to its end and the player with most victory points will have won.

Especially the first phase of the rounds, the game of trump, somehow reminded me of Mark Sienholz`s first game Beutelschneider which was released back in 1997, and here my impression was not wrong since Mark told me that the trump-mechanism in Beutelschneider actually still fascinated him so that he again wanted to do a game with a trump-mechanism. With Die Baumeister des Krimsutep Mark actually succeeded in creating a new game which takes up a trump mechnism, but which also offers quite more stretagical elements and a bit of a risk factor due to the building phase which comes second in each round. Overall, the game`s nice design and its smooth and enteraining cardplay left me with a good impression, so what remains for me to say is that owners of the game should not miss the free gameboard available at the KRIMSUS Website!


Looking for this game? Visit Funagain Games!


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Copyright © 2006 Frank Schulte-Kulkmann, Essen, Germany