by Darth Thulhu
I was one of the players in Seth Jaffee's Thursday game, and am heartened by the answers the game designer had to Seth's queries. My experience with the game session went through three distinct phases:1: Ooh! Aah!
My initial impressions were all highly positive. I place a lot of emphasis on theme and Creative, and the graphical layout and various tokens are absolutely top notch. This is a truly beautiful board, and I would rank it a definite "step up" even in the very competitive field of current game art. Moreover, the physicality of the resource and worker tokens was superb. The "height matters" stackability of the Sages and Pashas and Merchants was intuitive and neat, the various resource tokens were all distinct and uniquely shaped, and the innovative pyramiding resources-to-wealth conversion guide was handy. Stylistically, I adored the deliberately-incorrect map and the "Arabicized" font used for the placenames.
My only regret regarding the board layout is not having clear zones to place excess resource and worker tokens. A secondary bankers board, or an extra cardboard bin-set, or designated storage zones on the board near the three worker-generation palaces and around the perimeter would have been appreciated.
2: Uh. What?
After the initial excellent impression, the rest of setup was less positive.
I was sorting pieces while Seth went through the rulebook, and my opinion is that the current tiles are precisely as bad as the board and unique tokens are good. Where the board and tokens were pure beauty, the Office tiles were several flavors of problematic, and the dispositions of the Mercenary tiles were unclear in the rules. The Mercenary confusions can be fixed with FAQ errata and a better rulebook translation, but the palace tiles have several fundamental flaws:
* Illegible costs. Light gold numbers on medium gold coins is bad graphic design. Every title pile and palace cost must be reinspected closely, every time, every turn. This rapidly becomes tedious.
* There are two conflicting color themes across the tiles: Border Colors (Greybrown for tappable effects, and I believe Tealgreen for one-shots and Lavender for perpetual effects) and Textbox Colors (Greybrown for Intrigue, Rustred for Military, Tealgreen for Sages, Indigoblue for Merchants, Lavender for Pashas, and you see why this is a problem). I am used to Magic: The Gathering making "color matter" in the border of a tile/card, and having each pile of tiles for each palace be a mixed bag of three clashing colors never looked good. Even worse, the complete lack of any "mana symbol" or other graphical indicator about guild identity will make the tile setup toxic for colorblind players, because most of the tiles are a mix of multiple cool pastels. As I said: the tiles are exactly as confusing and muddled as the tokens are distinct and crystal clear.
* Each guild Office tile has a neat illustration, but misses the opportunity to have that illustration help identify guild identity. These portraits are all very well-made, and fully equal to the board's quality, but they do not clearly cluster in style according to guild/palace. Facial hair varies randomly across all guild illustrations, headgear varies randomly across all guild illustrations, ethnicity varies randomly across all guild illustrations, and so on. What could have been a source of concise visual shorthand (black kaffiyehs and full beards = Military, red fezes and mustaches = Merchant, white turbans and goatees = Rashid's Palace) is instead a source of more muddle.
* Expanding on the previous: Holy patriarchy, Batman! As mentioned, each Office tile has a unique and characteristic illustration on it. Of the three dozen and more on offer, there is precisely one single, lone woman (an underhanded spy). Yes, yes, medieval Arabic culture was highly patriarchal, but so was medieval every-culture-everywhere, and there are plenty of medieval-era games that try to be plausibly inclusive for modern-day players. This is a doubly missed opportunity, because not only are there many lost visual markers to better potentially distinguish the guilds, there is also a loss of powerfully flavorful Creative hooks: there is no First Wife of Rashid, no Sheherazad, no grey-woman assassin, no Fatima holy woman, no masterful souk tradeswoman, no bazaar-stall matron. For a game based heavily on deriving value from trade, these Title tiles miss much of the trade-roles that should be present.
There are several potential solutions (half the guild palaces are all-female (intrigue, merchants, pashas?), or each Office tile has a male face and a female face on reverse sides, and so on), but this was quietly jarring, and has only soured on deeper reflection.
* Finally, there is insufficient Office diversity for extended replay value. The game makes the same few dozen titles available in all games, and I expect the metagame will be optimally solved very quickly. Having more titles available, but only a random fraction in play during any given game, would introduce a Dominion-esque diversity to the possible board states. As it stands now, game setup is always exactly the same before rounds where workers start getting placed, and I expect the novelty to wear off fast.
Given how integral the Office tiles are to the game engine and victory calculation, these assorted flaws are enough to make me honestly downrate the game as-is from a 9 (must buy and would love to play) to a 5 (willing but not enthused to play).
3: No. Just no
[Note: This issue refers to the actual game played, and has been clarified since as being worthy of FAQ errata to remove the problem.]
After getting past the indistinct blur of Office tiles and into the gameplay, playing al-Rashid was fun, at least until we ran into vague and confusing wording concerning "basic resources" on one tappable Office tile, and further vague and confusing wording concerning "any pawn" on the Intrigue Guild power.
If not errata'd, the latter rules leak honestly ruins the gameplay. Every other mention of pawn-movement clearly says "your pawn", so when the Intrigue Guild (and only the Intrigue Guild) says "any pawn", that opens the door to entirely unpleasant gameplay options.
As we played it, it downrates the game to a 3 (bad game, don't want to play), so I am very glad to hear that this is not how the Intrigue Guild is intended to be played. As we played it, the Intrigue Guild encouraged malicious kingmaking and bad blood, and was the absolutely last thing I wanted to have to use to win the game but also the absolutely most important thing to use to win the game.
Final Thoughts
In its current state, I can't recommend al-Rashid's English edition. The rules as written encourage miserable play experiences, and require far too much errata to be acceptable in their current wording. Current Game Rating (1st English edition): 3
If the rulebook were cleaned up and streamlined, but the gamepieces unchanged, I would hesitatingly recommend al-Rashid. The hard-to-sort-and-read Title tiles would still be an active detriment, the metagame would still lack variety, and the details of the metagame would be complicated enough that there should always be an expert leading the game, but for all of that it would be a game more fun than not. Potential Game Rating (fixed rulebook): 5
If the Office tiles got a comprehensive graphical overhaul to match the beauty and clarity of the board, and the rulebook were cleaned up, I would happily recommend al-Rashid's English edition. The metagame would still be static, but the gameflow itself would be markedly improved and worthy of the artistic beauty of the game. Potential Game Rating (fixed rulebook and clear Office tiles): 7
If the Office tiles were not only graphically improved for clarity but also diversified for greater inclusiveness and variety, I believe al-Rashid could be a triumph. The more I reflect, the more al-Rashid feels a lot like a modest FFG game with high potential and great art quality that really needs an expansion of deeper content to fully come into its own. With greater variety and options in Office tile selection, the metagame wouldn't be easily solvable, broader appeal could be created to a larger pool of gamers, and more casual repeat play could become customary. Potential Game Rating (overhaul + expansion): 9