Bruges

Today's review is of the 2013 release, Bruges.  For 2-4 players, it takes 60 minutes.

Overview
In the beautiful "Venice of the North," your goal is to acquire the most victory points through smart use of resources.

game at start; image from here

Each player starts with 5 guilders (coins).  Starting with the first player, each round consists of phases:

Phase 1- each player draws until they have 5 cards (choosing from either of two draw piles)- cards have a color, shown on the house on back and person on front (yellow, blue, purple, red, brown)

Phase 2- first player rolls 5 dice (yellow, blue, purple, red, brown) and sorts them in ascending order in the designated area;

• for every 5 or 6 rolled, each player gets a threat marker of the corresponding color.  If someone has 3 threat markers of the same color, a bad effect happens (flood/fire/plague/raid/intrigue; depends on the color)
• add up every 1 or 2 rolled; this is the cost to advance on the reputation track this round.  Each player now may pay that amount to advance one spot in reputation. 

Phase 3- in turn order, each player plays a card and takes one of six actions using that card.  This is repeated until every player has taken four actions (meaning they'll have one card left in their hand for next round).  Each card has a color (yellow, blue, purple, red, brown).  The actions:

1. Discard a card and take 2 workers from the supply matching the color of the card
2. Discard a card and take guilders equal to the value on the matching die color (example: if you discard a blue card, and the blue die has "4" this round, you take 4 guilders)
3. Discard a card to discard a threat marker of the corresponding color.  Get 1 victory point
4. Discard a card and pay the amount indicated to build a canal on a space matching the color of the card discarded in your area (must be done in sequence, based on the order in your area)
5. Build a house (play a card house side up by discarding a worker of the same color)
6. Recruit a person (play a card person side up in a house (color needn't match) by paying the guilder fee indicated)

Characters have abilities that are activated either upon recruitment or whenever they're 'triggered' (varies by character).

Phase 4- check for majority.  Whoever has the highest reputation, most characters, or most canal progress flips their corresponding majority marker (worth 4 victory points at game end).  These stay flipped even if another has majority in another round.

After the phases, the next player becomes first player and the next round starts.  The game ends after draw piles are depleted to a certain point.  Then points are tallied- any majority markers, houses are each worth one, people worth the value indicated on their cards, reputation a certain amount, and canals a certain amount based on how much you've built.  Highest score wins!

game in progress; image from here

Review
This game is good in many ways- there are a lot of meaningful decisions. Color is very important here, relevant for all actions.  The fact that you can see the color on both sides of the cards is helpful and unique.  I like the different colored dice determining how much reputation costs, how much gold certain color cards can get you, and the threat marker concept.  And there's a lot going on; maybe too much going on. As the picture above may convey, there's a lot to keep track of.  Lots of different people, too, with different abilities- that was impressive (someone drew a lot of portraits).  It's straightforward enough once you get the hang of it, but it's still 'busy' and easy to lose track of things.  This has heavy appeal to certain audiences, but not for everyone.  For me, it's a good game, but not one I'll play frequently.

Rating: B+