{"id":3602,"date":"2004-10-31T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2004-10-31T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.westpark-gamers.de\/blog\/2004\/10\/31\/insinnere-afrikas\/"},"modified":"2004-10-31T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2004-10-31T11:00:00","slug":"insinnere-afrikas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.westpark-gamers.de\/blog\/2004\/10\/31\/insinnere-afrikas\/","title":{"rendered":"Ins\nInnere Afrikas"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ins
\nInnere Afrikas<\/a><\/h2>\n

by Peter Riedlberger<\/i><\/p>\n

“Ins Innere Afrikas” (“Heart Of Africa”) is an eclectic piece of
\ngame design meaning that it combines rather different gaming mechanisms. There are
\npurists who dislike eclectic designs per se. I definitely don’t belong to them as my
\nfondness for “Maya” shows.<\/p>\n

A turn of “Ins Innere Afrikas” starts by auctioning off the right to use the
\nturn. The money paid by the high bidder is evenly distributed to the other players. Yes,
\nit’s the “Traumfabrik\/Fabrik der Tr\u00e4ume” mechanism. But there is one
\ndifference: You can also bid with victory points if those little wooden cubes which are
\nused as money aren’t sufficient.<\/p>\n

\"Ins<\/p>\n

Then the high bidder moves his army, oops…, trader counters on a map of Africa. He
\nengages in combat, oops…, palavers with natives and other players. The whole trading
\nbackground seems to be made up in order to calm German pacifist feelings. In fact, this
\npart of the game feels like any typical wargame. Just one point to support the case: if a
\nplayer loses a “palaver” his counters must leave the area. If no escape path is
\navailable all counters disappear (in wargames, you’d call this: annihilated).<\/p>\n

So, how’s the “palaver” fought? Against natives (or neutrals, as the
\nrules call them) you draw a chit by random. This chit decrees what you have to swallow if
\nyou want to win the palaver. If you outnumber the natives you can draw several times in
\nthe hope to get an easier chit.<\/p>\n

Against other players, you use a modified “Kuhhandel” system: secret
\nbidding; both players open their hands at the same time. If both take their stand, the
\nhighest bidder wins and everything that was used to bid is distributed to the other
\nplayers (well, to be exact: to everyone except the active player). If one player chooses
\nto flee, he gets all the counters of the other player’s bet.<\/p>\n

\"HeartAfter having resolved all
\n“palavers” the active player (and only he) counts victory points. This is one
\nof several “Vinci” aspects: first, during the initial auction, you not only get
\nthe right to take your turn but also two “activity chits” which allow for
\none-time special abilities. The second is that you can (also) bid with victory points.
\nThe third is this victory point counting at the end of turn, and the fourth is the
\ncorollary of all this and constitutes the main problem of “Vinci”. This mars
\n“Vinci” as it does “Ins Innere Africas”: The complete calculability
\nof the end game.<\/p>\n

I owe to Moritz the wonderful expression “analysis paralysis”: You can
\ncalculate exactly how many victory points you are able to obtain. So every player will
\nbet exactly as much as he can in order to get 42 victory points (the victory condition).
\nThat means LOTS of calculations for everyone, LOTS of downtime. This also means that the
\nfinal winning order hasn’t much to do with the course of the game.<\/p>\n

“Ins Innere Afrikas” isn’t a bad game. But it isn’t very good
\neither. Actually, I wouldn’t know for whom I should recommend it. It’s much too
\ncomplicated for a family environment. Think only about those many different mechanisms.
\nPlaying it with hardcore games will result in “analysis paralysis” like in our
\ncase: the box said 90 minutes, we played more than 3 hours.<\/p>\n

A note on the gaming material: On the one hand it is well done (beautiful artwork,
\nmaterial in “Kosmos quality”). However, the symbols are annoyingly confusing.
\nSome cases in point: One<\/b> rainbow coloured counter means: One VP for every two
\ntraders<\/i>. However, two<\/b> rainbow coloured counters mean: Active player gets
\ntwo traders for free<\/i>. One<\/b> grey counter means: Move all neutrals from one
\narea to an adjacent area<\/i>. Two<\/b> grey counters with an arrow mean: Move all
\nyour own traders from one area to an adjacent area<\/i>. That’s not what I call
\nintuitive.<\/p>\n

Worse still, they even mixed up one symbol. Several “palaver” chits (those
\nyou draw if you wage “palaver” against natives) make you lose
\n“reputation”. However, they don’t show the “reputation” symbol
\nbut the “goods” symbol.<\/p>\n

Westpark Gamers ranking: 5.8 (out of 10 points)<\/p>\n

Players were: Loredana, Andrea, Hans, Moritz, Peter<\/p>\n

\n
<\/form>\n<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ins Innere Afrikas by Peter Riedlberger “Ins Innere Afrikas” (“Heart Of Africa”) is an eclectic piece of game design meaning that it combines rather different gaming mechanisms. There are purists who dislike eclectic designs per se. I definitely don’t belong to them as my fondness for “Maya” shows. A turn of “Ins Innere Afrikas” starts … Ins
\nInnere Afrikas<\/span> weiterlesen →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3602","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-spieleabende"],"views":2,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.westpark-gamers.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3602","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.westpark-gamers.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.westpark-gamers.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.westpark-gamers.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.westpark-gamers.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3602"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.westpark-gamers.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3602\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.westpark-gamers.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3602"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.westpark-gamers.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3602"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.westpark-gamers.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3602"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}