{"id":3879,"date":"2003-09-11T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2003-09-11T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.westpark-gamers.de\/blog\/2003\/09\/11\/session-report-review-11-09-2003\/"},"modified":"2003-09-11T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2003-09-11T10:00:00","slug":"session-report-review-11-09-2003","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.westpark-gamers.de\/blog\/2003\/09\/11\/session-report-review-11-09-2003\/","title":{"rendered":"Session Report & Review 11.09.2003"},"content":{"rendered":"

Session Report & Review 11.09.2003<\/h2>\n

Author<\/b>: Aaron<\/p>\n

at the table<\/b>: Loredana, Hans, Peter, Aaron<\/p>\n

on the table<\/b>: Titan – The Arena, Maestro, Ra, Traumfabrik<\/p>\n

This has been one of our few 4 player evenings and with the exception of Maestro we
\nmade it a “Knizia only” game session. Interestingly, because unplanned, and
\nbesides the fact that three games had Knizia as the author we found that this was an
\nevening where all games played had some commonality either in theme or game
\nmechanics.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. <\/a>Titan – The Arena<\/a><\/b>\n

    We have already publish a review<\/a> of this unfortunately
    \nout-of-print game some time ago.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n

  2. <\/a>Maestro<\/a><\/b>\"Maestro\n

    Just a few short word about Maestro, a Rudi Hoffmann attempt that has been one of the
    \nnominees of “Spiel des Jahres” in the year 1989. Each player owns an agency of
    \nmusicians. A maximum of 10 artist tiles can be placed in the agency (up to 3 per turn
    \ndrawn randomly from a sack). Each musician plays a instrument and its the players’
    \ntask to place their musicians on one of the 10 pieces (from Darius Milhaud’s duo
    \nScaramouche to Rudolf Kummerer’s septet Alpenj\u00e4germarsch) that require these
    \nmusicians.<\/p>\n

    Once the hiring of musicians for a piece has been started by placing a Maestro on one of
    \nthe available musician slots a player may place any number of musician on that piece per
    \nturn as long as he plays the required instrument and the tiles are placed in sequence
    \nnext to the Maestro. Each such played artist yields 5 victory points. If a player is able
    \nto place all artists including the Maestro in one single turn, thereby completing the
    \npiece, each artist placed yields 10 VPs. A player completing a piece receives the
    \n“critic” which yields 10 VPs to that player each turn, forcing the other
    \nplayers to start and finish pieces themself quickly. The game ends when a total of 14
    \n“applause” tiles have been drawn from the musician tile sack.<\/p>\n

    \"MaestroSounds simple enough and not very challenging in terms of tactics
    \nbut there are a few things which make the game more demanding than one first thinks.
    \nFirst of all, the agencies are split into a public and a private section, allowing
    \nplayers to hire artists from the public parts of all other players’ agencies. This
    \nmakes filling the slots a little tactical (and risky) as players want to place important
    \n(i.e. rare) musicians in the private slot of their agency. On the other hand these slots
    \nyield a lot more negative VPs when still filled with artists at the end of the game.<\/p>\n

    The second thing to watch is the placement of the Maestro himself. Since the Maestro tile
    \ncovers a musician slot in a piece players like to cover exactly those musicians that are
    \nplaced in the private area of the other players’ agencies, rendering them more or
    \nless useless and a likely candidate for providing negative VPs at the end of the game.<\/p>\n\n\n
    view\/add comments\"\"\/