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G@mebox author Ralf Togler writes about the game: Gangster from Amigo adopts the well-known theme of Chicago at the time of the prohibition. Several Gangster bosses fight with their mobs for the biggest influence and the best connections to the administrations. For this they send their gangsters to the different areas of Chicago to pedal the one or other person and to threaten and eliminate some of the other mob's gangsters. Every player adopts the role of one gangster boss and controls the gangsters of his mob. The game is set up by bringing the first seven gangsters from each mob to the gameboard. On the board you can find 10 districts of Chicago with spaces for the gangsters, and during the game the players move with a car from one district to another. Movement is done with the help of three cards that allow the player to do 1-3 steps. It costs exactly one step to move one district further. Thus, the active player chooses one of his cards (e.g. with a 2 step movement) and turns it over. Only when the player took his third card for his movement, he turns all cards over again and now has all three movement possibilities for the next turn. So the possible movements for each player are visible at all times. If the player does not want to move, he can load or unload one of his or one of his opponent's gangsters in the district where the car is located. In this way it is possible to move the gangsters from one district to another. While there is room enough for all own gangsters, a car can only transport one of the opponentsī gangsters, because this one has to lie in the boot. Opposing gangsters can also be unloaded at a special district called the Gold Coast or the Sicilian breakfast where those gangsters remain until the end of the game and do no longer participate in the fights and the struggles for influence. This of course is a popular way to get rid of them. The spaces for the gangsters in each district are always filled up from top to bottom. Gangsters who were removed from a district and are transported to another leave a hole on the tableau that is not filled up again until the bottom spaces were filled. Here it is important to notice that the order of the gangsters has influence in the scoring for a district when it comes to a draw. Every time a player has turned over his third movement card, a card from a district stack is drawn. If this card shows a policeman nothing happens, but if it shows a district a double token is placed in this district. This district will count double in the next scoring. A round of the game ends when the eighth double token is placed on a district. In the following scoring phase each district is scored separately. Then players can win different influences in every district. In a small field in the district is indicated how many influence points are rewarded for the present clans. In all districts there are 3-4 different influence points for the clan with the most, the second, third (and fourth) most gangsters. But it is not necessarily so that the clan with the most gangsters also gets the most influence. Sometimes the second or third place is more valuable, so that you have a lot of possibilities to play tactically and even a bit strategically in the game. Additionally, some influences for positions that are marked by an "?" on the district tableau are not determined until the scoring takes place. Then a 6-sided dice is rolled and determines the influence for all these spaces. The game ends after the third scoring with the gangster boss with the most influence as King of Chicago. This title is reached by participating well in as many scorings as possible, and thus by making good use of a player's mob members through a clever distribution between the districts. As a sideline is should also be mentioned that a player's car can be upgraded with 6 special equipments like a stronger motor, enabling the car to move one step further or a Tommy Gun that allows to load gangsters from an adjacent district too. The new Gangster from Amigo is a coherent game with a rather pleasant design. The illustrations are from Robert Nippoldt who has also written a book about the gangsters of Chicago and has done the design for the Gangster-game from LudoArt. The game is not very complex, but nevertheless it gives the players some possibilities for tactics. In my opinion there is a risk to treat the game too lightly and to just draw the car to the next district and distribute the gangsters. Then it will only be luck to get most influence points in a scoring and the game will be longsome. Only if you really look what possible movements your opponents still have, you will have a good chance to win the game. On first sight, this tactic direction also seems to make the game depending less on luck than the game King of Chicago which was published by TUSBAS in 2006, but the rolling of the dice to determine all "?"-influences shoots some of the tactical efforts down again, and to my mind this is a bit of an inconsistency. In further comparison to King of Chicago, Gangster offers not enough different possibilities to act for a boardgame of this size, and thus the game does not really enthuse me so that the average playing duration of 60 to 90 minutes is a little bit long. |
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