Princes of the Renaissance

When I introspectively look at the games I play and how I play them, I find that I'm a rather violent person. Show me a game where I can build a military and blow stuff up or beat something down and I'm all over it. This was most apparent in a recent game of Fire and Axe where I ignored building my viking civilization by settling cities and trading for riches, and instead went on a rampage sacking all the cities I could, including Rome, Paris, and Constantinople (not Istanbul). While it was really cool having all those plastic trophies of my glorious victories, I ended up with the least amount of victory points. By a lot. Clearly I need reevaluate my stratigeries when playing any game that has even the hint of a fighting aspect.

The game to heal me of my aggro affliction is Princes of the Renaissance. The backstory of the game involves foppy Italian families getting various cities to fight seemingly pointless wars for fun and profit. I say seemingly pointless, because no matter how much you fight you never EVER lose a military unit you've purchased. This floored me as the rules were being explained and I was beginning to wonder whether I'd made a mistake in sitting down to this silly game. As it turns out, the point of fighting is not actually to kill anyone, it's to make a big show for the city that you're fighting for at the moment. Win or lose, you get paid if you're fighting but it's the honor of the city that's on the line. This game is really an investment game, as players slowly buy "shares" of the individual cities hoping that they'll be worth more by the final turn. In fact, it may be to your overall benefit to have a really crappy army and fight for cities that you want to take down a peg, or want to buy into on the cheap. I really ended up liking this a lot, especially coupled with the auction mechanic that takes up a majority of the game.

Now for the not so good. The packaging is really minimal, and while it's really not cool to judge a game by it's box, it's hard to ignore the medicore bits the game comes with. In addition, the battling in the game comes down to dice rolling, and while that's fine for other games that I like, it really bothered me in this one. I'm probably being way too harsh, but it almost seems that when you boil down the mechanics of this game you're almost better off just playing Ra. It's got a lot fewer rules to learn and is just as or more fun. I will say that getting into the theme of the game is pretty easy, and we were talking like snooty royals and role-playing a little near game's end.

In the end, this is a game you really have to be in the mood for. As a new player, it took me a while to get into how I was supposed to play and win. I ended up in second place out of four players by 5 or 6 victory points. I had fun, and give this game a 6/10 VP. Definately something I'll be playing again soon.