{"id":3617,"date":"2005-10-26T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2005-10-26T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.westpark-gamers.de\/blog\/2005\/10\/26\/luccacitt\/"},"modified":"2005-10-26T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2005-10-26T10:00:00","slug":"luccacitt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.westpark-gamers.de\/blog\/2005\/10\/26\/luccacitt\/","title":{"rendered":"Lucca\nCitt\u00e1"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lucca
\nCitt\u00e1<\/a><\/h2>\n

reviewed by Aaron Haag<\/i><\/p>\n

The quiet Italian town of Lucca just north of Pisa sees an annual international
\nconvention called “Lucca Games & Comics”. Comic artists, illustrators and
\ngame designers present works here and every year the “Gioco Inedito Award” is
\ngiven to the best unpublished game of the year. This award includes the publication of
\nthe game sponsored by the city of Lucca. Last year’s award had the theme “Cities
\nand Walls” and the winner, “Lucca Citt\u00e1” by Alessandro Zucchini, has now
\nbeen published by daVinci Editrice.<\/p>\n

Because of the theme of the award it does not come as a surprise that “Lucca
\nCitt\u00e1” is mainly about cities and walls, or more precisely palazzos (palaces),
\ntowers and city walls. However, as with many card games this theme is only vaguely
\nvisible in this, in essence, abstract game.<\/p>\n

Players build “palazzos” by collecting cards of the same colour by selecting
\none of the rows of cards of an open display (there’s always one more row than the
\nnumber of players in the game). The player may then place them openly in front of him\/her
\nand as soon the correct amount of cards have been collected (e.g. three in a five-player
\ngame) the palazzo is completed and yields victory points. The victory points of a palazzo
\nare determined by the number of windows printed on the cards comprising the palazzo.<\/p>\n

There are six differently coloured sets of 16 palazzo cards and a player may only
\nbuild one palazzo of each colour per game. Each card besides its colour contains three
\ntypes of information: a number (0 to 3) of windows, a number of shields (0 to 3, always
\nmaking the sum of windows and shield equal to 3) and a street number of the palazzo. The
\nstreet numbers are unique and range from 1 to 16 for the brown cards up to 81 to 96 for
\nthe blue ones and are used as tiebreaker when determining the players’ sequence of a
\nround.<\/p>\n

Palazzos yield victory points for a second time when a player decides to
\n“open” an already completed palazzo. Opening palazzos is voluntarily and
\nhappens as the first action in a players turn. When a palazzo is opened the number of
\nvictory points is determined by the number of palazzos\/cards of the same colour of the
\nother players which are either being built or completed but not yet opened.<\/p>\n

At the end of the game victory points are awarded for “walls” and
\n“towers” built by each player. Whenever a player takes a row of cards from the
\nopen display s\/he may decide to play them as part of a palazzo (if that colour has not
\nyet been completed) or play them face down as a wall or discard it. The catch is that
\nwalls need support at the end of the game to yield VPs (other than the towers, which are
\nspecial cards in the deck). Wall support is provided by the shields of the palazzos still
\nunder construction and only if there are twice as many shields on the cards of these
\npalazzos does every wall and tower provide an extra 2 VPs for each opened palazzo. And
\nfinally, there is a bonus\/malus given to the players with the highest\/lowest street
\nnumber in their palazzo stack.<\/p>\n

\"cards\"\/<\/p>\n

The rules may sound more complicated than they really are. During their turn, players
\nhave a choice of opening completed palazzos, then take a card set from the open display,
\ndistribute them amongst their palazzos, wall stack and discard pile. The decisions to
\nmake however add a considerable complexity to the game as timing is the essence here:<\/p>\n

You want to have a good selection of cards in the open display, hence you want to be
\nfirst or second player in a round. However, your position is determined by the cards of
\nthe previous round forcing you to think one round ahead when selecting your card set.
\nAnother problem is the timing of palazzo completion. Here you want to complete palazzos
\nas quickly as possible as there are not too many rounds to do so (e.g. five in a five
\nplayer game). And the sooner you have completed palazzos the more options you have when
\nopening them. On the other hand, completed palazzos do not provide support for your
\nwalls, so keeping the correct amount of palazzos unfinished is vital, too.<\/p>\n

So again timing is important as opened palazzos will not provide VPs to other players
\nwho complete their palazzo of the same colour. At the same time they will provide VPs to
\nyou depending on the number of cards and completed palazzos of the same colour of the
\nother players, while possibly depriving you of VPs in the final calculation.<\/p>\n

“Lucca Citt\u00e1” for me has the problem that on the one hand if you want to
\nconsider all your options to make the best possible move at any given time there is a lot
\nof calculation and thinking ahead involved, causing the game to drag along. If you just
\nplay “as you please” using your “gut feeling” the game speed will
\nincrease considerably but so will the luck factor. Here, memories of the second game of
\nMr. Zucchini “Palatinus” come to mind, which suffers from a similar
\nproblem.<\/p>\n

Talking about luck: I found the element of luck a bit too high for my liking,
\nparticularly the dependency on playing order and the random card set display. And the
\nfinal VP calculation of supported walls and towers plays a too big a role in the final
\nresult and the fact that if you have insufficient support for ALL your walls results in
\nyour not getting ANY VPs (not even for the supported number of walls) adds to the
\n“being played” feeling. Played with the right group of people, either a group
\nof brooders or a group of gamblers, the game can be fun just as well.<\/p>\n

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

Lucca Citt\u00e1 reviewed by Aaron Haag The quiet Italian town of Lucca just north of Pisa sees an annual international convention called “Lucca Games & Comics”. Comic artists, illustrators and game designers present works here and every year the “Gioco Inedito Award” is given to the best unpublished game of the year. This award includes … Lucca
\nCitt\u00e1<\/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-3617","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-spieleabende"],"views":6,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.westpark-gamers.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3617","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=3617"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.westpark-gamers.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3617\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.westpark-gamers.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.westpark-gamers.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.westpark-gamers.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}