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Amalfi is a feel good game, where all the actions you do will not be punitive…or almost. It’s that kind of game where you want to do everything, but it’s not possible so you want to come back to it all the time to discover it more and more: Amalfi is very addictive. On top of that, the edition is so pretty! SO ? Are you going to specialize in wine or boat building?
Amalfi, Renaissance?
Amalfi Renaissance is a new edition by Sylex of the Amalfi game, released in 2020. This new, completely pimped out and luxurious edition brings its share of new features:
- new mechanics like building lighthouses
- new asymmetrical characters
- new illustrations and artworks
- rebalanced decrees and titles for more choice and replayability
- a double-layered main board and individual player boards
Amalfi Renaissance version Sylex is a great graphic and ergonomic success, between its artworks and its double-layer boards, its wooden boats: the game is a pleasure for the eyes, in addition to being functional and pleasant to the touch.
Amalfi, love at first sight
My god it’s good. It’s been a long time since I’ve been this satisfied after playing games. In Amalfi you will have to manage your boats which are your workers but also your resources. Yeah hot! During a tour you can sail to a destination, acquire works, discover private destinations, build boats, invite or hire a noble.
You also have free actions like lowering a boat from a slipway to your port or from your port to the bay to have resources or discarding characters from our hand to have bread. But there is one thing important Please note, as soon as you sail from your port to your bay (to gain resources for example) your boat will be unusable until the next round. One of the most important resources in the game is: the bread ! You use it to feed your crews, and sometimes nobles.
But Amalfi, how does it play out?
A game is played in 4 rounds of 3 phases.
Action phase:
During this action sentence you will each take turns doing one action, from a panel of different actions that you can do in the order you want. And you take turns of actions until everyone has a turn. The first player to pass becomes the first player for the next round.
- Navigation : Take one of your boats to sail to a destination, private or not. And take the additional actions that result from this, this could be moving boats to one or more slipways, erecting a lighthouse, earning bread, acquiring a noble
- Acquisition : Pay for a work and do the action listed on it, without forgetting to add your victory points
- Discovery : Discover a private destination and place it next to you, only you can go there (but your opponents can build a lighthouse there to gain bonuses).
- Invitation : Place a noble card from your hand in front of you by paying its cost, there are several types of noble cards, immediate actions, commitment actions, end-of-game scoring and continuous actions.
- Commitment : It is during this action that you can engage your noble placed earlier in the game and do his action, then turn the card it will no longer be usable before the next round, unless an action allows you to do so.
- Construction : Build one or more boats if you have enough wood.
In addition to all these actions, you have optional actions that you can do as many times as you want and that do not only count as one main action. Like lowering a boat from a hold towards your port to have resources or bread, lowering your boat from the port towards the bay to have resources or bread, or discarding as many cards in hand as the cards you want to gain .
Once all your actions are done, BIM end of phase, we move on to the next hurry up !
Meal phase:
As its name suggests you will feed your crew with bread, look at your last unlocked boat and pay for the bread according to what is written on the last free square most to the right. For each loaf of bread that you cannot pay you will lose 3 victory points, which means that it is a solid gold resource!
Decrees phase:
Look at the decree of the current phase and add your victory points gained during this round. Then the decree is returned and the arrangement of the next round is made, and we move on to the new period. And you start again with round 2.. so on for 4 rounds.
Being taken for a ride
The game mixes brilliantly worker installation, worker management, resource management and engine building. The choices are very difficult to make in Amalfi, more than once you will have to give up on things you had planned to try to turn the situation to your advantage, it takes guts, moreover when your opponent steals your place or discards your card you will certainly have want to gut himYes yes !
If you like chance in big games, don’t go to Amalfithere is none, or very little, only during the drafting of cards from the starting hand, but then everything will be calculated and anticipated if you want to carry out your project which will certainly be thwarted by your friends.
So no, Sylex definitely doesn’t lead us away, Amalfi will, I’m sure, find its place in a lot of kallax, and I’ve had a lot of feedback in this sense since I praised it on the networks ! The explanations are so fluid that we explain it very quickly to new players and roll youth!
