Designer: Benjamin Schwer

Artist: Michael Menzel, Christof Tisch

Publisher: Playroom Entertainment

Prior to Hadara and Crown of Emara, I have been oblivious of Benjamin Schwer aka Benjamin Liesch as a designer. Herr Schwer is definitely one of the most exciting designers off late, at least to me, and I have my eye on him. I have to admit that even though both Hadara and Crown of Emara have strong roots with the earliest interactive Euros, these two titles also spot a more modern “build your own engine” focus on game play. Still, I really do enjoy both these titles, especially Emara. I usually find the combination of mechanisms in his designs solidly implemented even though they are not exactly groundbreaking. Perhaps not surprisingly, Livingstone also shares the same mold where the mechanisms are uniquely blended into a new design and gives the game a fresh feel. It is really too bad that Livingstone has somewhat languished among a vast pool of underappreciated games.

A combination of familiar mechanisms is blended together to create a fresh feel

Immediately off the bat, you will notice that Livingstone is an amalgamation of several mechanisms that have appeared elsewhere. Again, if solidly implemented, this is not necessarily a negative attribute. The one that stands out most is the end of game scoring requirement which is similar to Cathala and Maublanc’s Cleopatra and the Society of Architects and Reiner Knizia’s High Society. Throughout the game, players are encouraged to secretly contribute to the Queen’s coffers by stashing coins in a nicely constructed cardboard chest. The point here is you do not want to be the player who donated the least during end of game scoring as that will automatically disqualify you from winning even if you score the most points. This criteria is similar to High Society where the most spendthrift cannot win the game. In Cleopatra, players accumulate corruption tokens in a container and the players with the most in the end will lose regardless of victory points accured. Hence, there is a fair bit of tension during the game where players have to be mindful of the money spent or corruption tokens accumulated. Since this is a “blind” process where it is unclear how your stash compares to your neighbors, you have to carefully weigh the amount contributed while leaving enough money to pay for the actions you want to perform. In Livingstone, players are expected to announce a donation, but do not have to reveal how large the donated sum. In theory, you want to pony up just one coin more than the last place loser to stay in contention while maximizing cash flow to score points. Not surprisingly, this hidden stash mechanism has plenty of detractors. Folks who dislike the guessing game will find this feature irritating even though there is no doubt it generates a fair bit of angst and second guessing.

Another familiar mechanism in Livingstone is dice drafting. To carry out actions, players will draft dice. Each round, two dice per player will be rolled and players take turns drafting one die each turn to perform an action. In general, higher value dice are better as one gets to earn more coins or draw more gems from the bag according to the face value of the die selected. The real conundrum here is that you can only pick dice with increasingly higher face value. So, if you pick a “6” as your first die , you will have but one action in that round. Likewise, a person who picks a lowly “1” can potentially have two or more actions for that round so long as there are valid dice left in the pool for selection. This is a pretty neat way for prioritizing actions.

Prioritizing actions through drafting dice works well in Livingstone

So what of the actions? Earning coins is straightforward. You earn the amount of coins based on the number of pips on the die. Similarly, one draws a number of gems – sight unseen – from a drawstring bag based on the number of pips on the selected die. If lucky, red, blue and translucent gems can be worth 5, 3 or 1 coin(s) respectively . However, the bulk of the black gems are worthless. No doubt, this is a gamble and I think it is only worthwhile if you can draw multiple gems from the bag in one turn – which means selecting a high value die. All gems are worth 1 point at the end, but there is also a white gem when drawn, forces the player to lose all the gems in the inventory. Such is the luck of the draw.

For most of the time, players are angling to pick up dice to set up camp sites on the shared board to score points. Each round, a steam ship at the bottom of the board moves down the Nile from left to right as players pay to pitch up tents along the corresponding land column that matches the ship’s location. There is a price to set up the tents and it is increasingly expensive to build tents with each round. There are 6 tent locations in each column , one for each die value. As to be expected, tents are pitched corresponding to the die selected and bonus points are also earned based on the die value. So selecting a “3” die allows one to set up a camp site on the “3” location which then nets a player three points. Clearly, the higher the die value, the more bonus points are earned from tent placement. However, there is also a sizeable amount of end of game points based on majority tent placement calculated across each horizontal row. In particularly, the “1” location which nets the fewest bonus points has the highest end of game majority scoring when all the tents are factored across multiple rounds. There are roughly ten or so spots for steamship to travel before it reaches the delta when the game ends. This means, players will have a chance to fight over the majority control over the course of ten rounds. This is where the bulk of points are earned in Livingstone.

Finally, there is one final action that a player can take that is independent from the value of the die selected – drawing a power card. As the name of the action suggests, these power cards are usually one-use special powers that brings some type of rule-bending benefit for the player.

In summary

Livingstone is a solidly constructed Euro with a combination of mechanisms that meshes well and gives the game a fresh angle particularly for newcomers. Fresh because the dice drafting works spectacularly well in creating tough choices for players to score points on the main board. In most cases, players have to decide a trade off between short term bonus points vs. long-term majority scoring. Securing a high value die usually means sacrificing future actions and in some cases, it maybe warranted to grab a majority or to take a stab at mining gems. Even with low value dice, there is always the ability to take a power card that can help boost specific actions. Timely play of these cards can help make a difference in securing victory.

What perhaps doesn’t work for Livingstone, particularly for veteran players that are looking for more control, are the two mechanisms that inject some uncertainty in the game. While the blind gem draws can be avoided, the Queen’s donation cannot be ignored. To win, you need to stash just enough money to beat out the most miserly among all players. This part is hard to predict unless you choose to count the coins earned by all players, the frequency of donations and speculate as to how many coins are deposited with each donation. It is tedious work, but I guess it can be done. This is a guessing game at best and one that will turn away some players who do not want all the hard work to end up being determined by a relatively arbitrary filtering criteria at the end. I believe the game can be played without the donations, but omitting this mechanism will end up stripping the game of some tension as there is not much hidden scoring in the game.

I can understand why Livingstone is not getting any attention among the numerous Euros that come out each year. It is a pretty familiar game and one that may not invoke a “must have” feeling. To its credit, the game is light and when the more polarizing aspects of the game are grafted upon the main scoring engine, the weight of the uncertainty generated by these mechanisms is not heavy enough to sink the entire game. Basically, if you want to inject some gambling or blind bidding type mechanisms in the game where the luck of the draw runs deeper, then the complexity needs to be tuned appropriately. While players may feel unjustly penalized in a longer and more involved game, Livingstone remains light enough that players can afford to shrug off an unpredictable loss.

As far as kids go, I would argue that having this extra uncertain component really ramps up the atmosphere for the game. I can tell my 8 year old is not as keen in playing just a “victory point” game where careful assembly of a scoring engine will win the game. Instead, some uncertainty during game play – such as the gem draw – usually livens the game a tad. This is also the reason why she enjoys Catan more than her parents. So, Livingstone is actually a good balance of both and I can recommend it for family gaming.

Initial impression: Average; good (family)