Game Designers – 1. Stefan Feld

Diana

A few years back, when I started playing board games, my interest was initially focused on the theme and artwork. Gradually, I became familiar with the mechanics and started to be curious about the names behind the designs that I love. Friedemann Friese and Uwe Rosenberg are amongst the first game designers that I came to know at the time. Today, despite so many reviews of individual games being posted everyday, designer-related articles are still relatively rare. To fill this gap, our blog will include a series of articles on the designers we like. We'll start with Stefan Feld, whose games we are both familiar with. We haven't played all of his games, so we will only write about the ones we know.

Notre Dame is one of the earliest works from Stefan Feld but still a favourite of many nowadays. I like the card passing mechanic – it guarantees interaction between people, but avoids too much confrontation.  Whilst Notre Dame is perhaps not as well-known as 7 Wonders and Sushi Go among new board game lovers (I also played these two a long time before I knew about Notre Dame), this mechanic was used in Notre Dame a few years earlier than those two. 

The Castles of Burgundy is the first Feld game I played and owned. The element of luck in game design is very tricky. To me, a game is not good if luck is simply the determining factor, which is why I own very few dice games. However, if there's less luck involved, then there's less room for mistake. One single mistake could blow your chance of winning. I just want to play games for fun, rather than making every move like my life depended on it! So in my opinion, the best part of The Castles of Burgundy is its use of dice – it not only introduces randomness to the game, like any other dice game – it also feels good that you can use it to your advantage, unlike most dice games. The use of dice in this game has also contributed to its high replay value. It has received a lot of criticism in terms of the artwork though; I didn't mind the artwork so much, it's the flimsiness of the components that put me off.  I was excited to hear about the upcoming new edition and immediately parted with the old edition.

Forum Trajanum and Carpe Diem are two recent tile placement games of his. I have only played them once, but really enjoyed both. The double tile placement on the player board and main board in Forum Trajanum makes it possible to win by different strategies. The focus in Carpe Diem is slightly different - getting the tile you want before others becomes more important. In Forum Trajanum, almost all the information was public; whereas in Carpe Diem, the fountain cards make the end game scoring a bit unpredictable. I personally prefer the former approach.

 

I've always wanted to play The Speicherstadt but couldn't get hold of a copy. I ended up getting its reimplementation – Jórvík. When I introduce Jórvík to people who haven't played The Speicherstadt, I'd say this is a queuing game (I know, it sounds boring as hell, but it's actually very clever and fun) – you need to queue to buy a card, but the more people behind you, the more expensive the card becomes. However, it just doesn't feel quite right with the Viking theme. Having lived in the UK for 10 years, I believe no one loves queuing more than British people. But it's hard to associate Vikings with queuing. Can you imagine a bunch of Vikings patiently waiting in the queue? The only scenario for this to ever happen would be people dressed up in Viking costumes in front of an Apple flagship store, waiting for the latest release of their products.

I wouldn't say that I got along well with all the Feld games though. I was not impressed by The Oracles of Delphi or Macao. In The Oracles of Delphi, travelling around the board felt more like commuting – can you imagine Vikings Greek Gods taking the bus? 😉 As for Macao, I know a lot of people love it, but I found myself constantly at the mercy of the dice - waiting for the right colour to show up with the right number is not fun.

To summarise, the mechanics in the Feld games are definitely the highlights, and I feel that his games are thoroughly playtested as they usually play very smoothly. However, if one values the theme the most, Feld games are usually not very thematic. Burgundy, Paris, Rome…could have been anywhere. Especially Macao - I thought it was going to be a gambling game!

Aishwarya 

FELD - one of the most spoken names amongst modern board game players. Stefan Feld is from Germany and well acknowledged in the industry for his prowess in euro-style games.

I started off with his famous title called Trajan, which introduced me to some of the concepts like the Rondel mechanism and the world of "point-salad". I think the theme is pointless in this, which could've been taken care of, but I would gladly say it is one of my all time favorites thus far. A few years ago, when I was completely new to board games, I made an involuntary commitment to a Feld Fan, who I met with every Wednesday for a few months, at the Fantasy Flight Event Center in Minneapolis, USA, for my first learning game of Trajan. Since then, I've been keen on hunting for some of his games to be added to my collection.

As you can see in the picture, I own Bora Bora, Trajan, Bruges, In the Year of the Dragon, La-Isla, Aquasphere, The Castles of Burgundy (the card game and the dice game), Luna, The Oracles of Delphi and The Speicherstadt. I am fond of almost everything except The Oracles of Delphi, may be just because it fell flat for me as a pretty simple pick up and deliver game.

I got to play the incomparable Castles of Burgundy (CoB) very recently and must tell you the story. On one of the Monday game nights that I hosted when in Ohio, USA, I exclusively wanted to play the CoB Trio - the board game, the card game and the dice game - and successfully made it happen with 3 other friends. Absolutely enjoyable and I remember voting unanimously for the board game being the best of the three. Personally I loved all of them, two of which I own, but somehow I missed out on the deals for the board game version. Now I am waiting for the Anniversary edition to be released later this year.  I also heard it is a great solo game and that's good news for me. The box art with the shiny Burgundy and Gold is so elegant, that would make any gamer's shelf long for it.

I have to insist that the word "point-salad" was probably coined just after the advent of Feld games. It is logical to a certain extent for the gazillion ways to score "victory points" in his games, yet I have not felt anything to be more than needed, that is, just the right amount of choices. There are also a lot other notable mechanisms that could gravitate anyone towards him. For instance, Bruges has a well executed card play, so does La-Isla, Aquasphere has a brilliant programming mechanic, Trajan with the Rondel, In the Year of the Dragon with action selection, the evergreen CoB with dice rolling and tile placement, etc.

The newer releases like Forum Trajanum and Carpe Diem seem to have gained enough attention already. I'm very much drawn towards Forum Trajanum, slightly because I want to see why someone mentioned somewhere that "it is a collection essential".  I have played Merlin once, which he co-designed with Michael Rieneck (who is the designer of Pillars of the Earth) and remember not being very impressed with it. Just another rondel inside rondel with running around the board for points and of course at the expense of theme.

Having said all that, if you have not played his games, make sure to try one the next time you see it on the table (at least CoB 😊) and for those who are about to become tired with unlimited plays, wait for him to whack you with a better one again in the future. The Feld-o-mania will float around forever and is the right term in every sense of the word, because of his inspiring contributions and huge fan base.