VINCI

Introduction

Vinci is a French abstract strategy game about the rise and decline of civilizations. The game is similar to History of the World or Britannia. From prehistoric times to the Middle Ages have civilization followed civilization. Some grew into great empires, but none of them were eternal. Progressively with their expansion, they weakened up to the point where they irremediably went into decline - and new civilizations came to build new empires on their ruins.

Vinci lets you control a civilisation each turn and build an empire for it. Your fellow players, who each controls civilizations very different from yours, strive for the very same goal. With rules that are simple to learn and components that are a pleasure to handle has the game instant appeal. With a Luck factor close to zero you need to be an astute strategist to gain victory by constantly adapting to the changing situations; but whatever downfalls your civilization encounters, you will always remain in the race to the end.

Overview

The game takes place over a map of Europe, broken up into into areas. The aim of the game is to score Victory Points (VPs) for controlling areas of the map at the end of each player turn. The first player to amass a prerequisite number of VPs win.

The players control successive hypothetical empires that rise and decline throughout the game. Each empire is represented by two randomly determined civilisation chits, which define the special characteristics of the empire, including number of armies and bonus scoring mechanisms.

Different empires have different strengths and weaknesses. A player may pass over certain empires in favour of others at a penalty in VPs. Similarly, taking an unwanted empire will score VPs for a player. In the end, what secures victory is the VP tally, so this balances up the empires rather nicely.

Game Mechanics

The game is played in turns, each player moving in sequence. During each of his turn, may expand his current empire or declare it in decline and switch to another.

When an empire expands, the play may spend pieces to attack adjacent spaces. An attack succeeds if there are sufficient numbers of attackers. No dice, no luck.

A player loses a turn when he switches empires, the current empire goes into decline, and no moves may be taken. The player may only score for pieces currently on the board. As such, timing is critical, to avoid a low scoring turn.

Basically, a player scores for each space he controls. Civilisation chits give bonuses for control of certain types of spaces (like mountains or ports). There is even one Slavery chit, which gives points for each army successfully vanquished!

Comments

This appears to be a shorter version of History of the World by Avalon Hill. As one player put it, the model is deterministic, not probabilistic. If an area is attacked by a sufficient number of units, it is captured automatically; no dice, no luck. IMHO, this speeds up the game as the moves could be planned beforehand, during another player's turn.

The game components are nice, and the civilisation chits add colour to the game. The board is functional, although on the drab side.

The game has a chess-like quality to it, and the selection of empires has a bidding flavour to it. Weak empires suddenly seem attractive, after players have successively passed over them. A good introductory game.

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