Fresco

This may seem shallow, but a games art and presentation can count for a lot more than it should when deciding if a game is good or not. Just look at Mecanisbergo, and who horribly bad art can almost sink a game before it starts. Such is not the case with Fresco, which stands as one of the most colorful games I've played in recent memory.

For a game that deals with paints and painting, this game had better be colorful. What we have is a pretty straight-forward worker placement game. The players have a number of apprentices that are sent to buy paint from the market, restore part of the cathedral's fresco ceiling, paint portraits, or mix paints for more exotic colors. There's an interesting mechanic for determining who goes first, and it involves how cruel you are to your minions. Wake them up early in the morning and their able to act first on everything, but they become unhappy to the point that the number of available guys are reduces for you. Going first also means that you pay a premium for paint, so money could be an issue for the early birds.

Another interesting idea at work in Fresco is the fact that the "full" game is actually composed of a simpler base game with several expansions played alongside. Confused? Think of it like this. Imagine Monopoly. Now imagine that when you bought Monopoly that it came with several other rules and pieces that added a stock market mechanic and airlines. You could still play basic Monopoly and have a good time, but for advanced players the extra expansions could make the game more interesting and replayable. This is the case with Fresco, as the base game eliminates several steps in the round for the easier core game. This means that you're not required to teach the full game to new players or to people who are not hardcore board gamers. Agricola actually works this way as well, with a Family mode that leaves out many of the extra cards that can make the first game of Agricola very confusing. I don't begrudge Fresco for this, but I don't see myself or any of my group ever playing the basic game. The full game is still straight-forward yet challenging, and the random elements of the game allow for a good degree of replayability. In fact there's already a separate expansion that allows for even more portrait options.

Fresco is all about deciding what's the right play at a particular given moment. Overall strategies must change with the flow of the game, and there are very few "bad" decisions to be made. I would say the only lackluster aspect of gameplay is the Happiness of your workers. I've played just about every game with the lowest amount of Happiness, and usually will play an entire game without one of my minions as a penalty. While the extra guys are nice, they're usually redundant since the best options are usually already taken. Going first always seems to trump having more actions, and I've never really felt hindered by being down a worker.

Fresco will fit in just about anyone's collection. I can heartily endorse it for any gaming group of any skill level. Families, light gamers, and the seasoned veterans will all find something to love about Fresco. I guess you could say it's the "freshest" game to come around in a while.

Also, I'm very VERY sorry about that last line.