From: Peter Card Subject: Loewenherz - I'll win a game one day Loewenherz ---------- Designed by Klaus Teuber Published by Goldsieber I have played Loewenherz (Lionheart) a couple of times, and for what its worth, here are my impressions. I was well beaten both times, which is a good way to discover some of the intricacies. It is a fairly abstract strategy game, in the consim / general game grey area along with Settlers. The board is a made from 6 square tiles which are put together in a 3*2 pattern inside a rectangular outer board with the victory point track and card stack spaces. Each tile has a 6*6(?) grid of square regions. These can be clear, forest, city or goldmine. This allows for many* variations. Play is driven by the action card deck. Each turn, a new card is turned face up, showing the possible actions for each of the 3 phases. These can be ... Build some walls ( One or more wall symbols ) Expand a region, or place a knight ( One or two sword symbols ) Take a political card ( Crown ) Receive some gold ( Moneybag symbol with a number) There are also a few goldmine cards. Each gold mine scores 1VP for the owner, and another action card is turned up. The action cards are divided into sets, which must be shuffled separately during the setup stage. Set A, not used in the basic game, has a lot of walls actions, while the last set includes the King Dies card, which ends the game instantly. Any VP political cards are then scored, the gold mines score for one last time, and the winner is determined. If the game hasn't ended yet, the start player for the turn chooses which phase to take. So, if the second phase is chosen, and this shows a sword symbol, he is choosing to expand a region. Then each player in turn makes his/her choice. If two or more players choose the same phase, there will either be a negotiated settlement or a secret bidding war to see who gets to operate. Money is always shared equally, a political card will always cause a fight, and 3 or more players going for the same expansion or walls action will always fight. The three phases are completed in order, and then the start player hands the token to the new start player on his left, and the next turn begins. Once the region including exactly one of your castles has been surrounded by walls and/or board edges, you score victory points for it, with bonus points for any cities included. There is nothing to stop you completing a region for somebody else, and it is possible that a wall placement action to complete several regions. You can't place walls inside a region though, and any internal wall sections are removed at the instant a region is completed. The expansion action allows you to expand a region by one or two spaces, each worth 1 VP plus any city bonus, or take a knight. The coveted double expansion action allows you to place an extra knight. Knights are placed next to a castle, or next to a contiguous line of knights connected to a castle. You can expand into an adjacent region, IF you have more knights in your region than the other sucker has in his. Knights also physically protect the space they are sitting in. Achieving local knight superiority is vital. A player losing territory loses 1 VP per space, plus any city VPs. It is tempting to try and define a big region, for lots of VPs. However, the VP score for a new region is worked out on a sliding scale, and is less than 1 VP per space. A region with an insufficient knight force will be picked apart by its rapacious neighbours for a net loss of VPs. Of course, if you can create a region including about half the board just before the game ends, you will do well. One popular tactic is to cut a region in half, creating a neutral regions which is subtracted from the victim's VP total. This is actually less painful than simply substracting a VP for each cut off space would have been. Political cards can be very powerful. The lucky winner can look through one of the two stacks of political cards and choose the one he likes. Beware a previous winner coming back for a second go, as he/she will know exactly where to look. There are cards giving you gold, victory points, a treaty or a traitor. When played, at the moment you choose which phase to go for, a treaty puts two adjacent regions at peace. If either player breaks the treaty by expanding from one into the other, he/she is fined 10 gold. It might be worthwhile, even at that price. The traitor card is the most powerful, in my opinion, causing an opponent's knight to change sides, at the moment you choose phase, moving to an adjacent area you control. This can cause the knight superiority equation to change sign in an instant. In the basic game, each player has a preset starting position, with one castle surrounded by a complete wall, defining a region, and two more unfenced castles. Each castle has one adjacent knight. In the advanced game, there is an initial setup sequence, similar to Settlers, where the players takes turns to place their castles, and the game starts with action card set A, allowing the players to build up an initial region, or not. Throughout the game there are always more things you need to do than you can actually do. Hard choices have to be made about when to expand, when to dip into the political deck, who is the real threat, etc, etc. What more can you ask for? There is an English rules translation at the Games Cabinet site http://www.gamecabinet.com/rules/Lowenherz.html Numerical Appendix ------------------ * Lets see, 6 factorial times 4 to the sixth power divided by 8 (symmetry) gives 6! * 4**6 / 8 = 122880 variations I think.