Galenus, Lewis & Clark, Princes of Florence Reviews - Chairman of the Board

hey everybody today I'm taking a look at three Euro board games the first of which being gallonus then we're going to take a look at Lewis and Clark the Expedition and finally we're going to take a look at the princes of Florence now before I share my thoughts on these games I want to give a shout out to the show sponsor keyienda dot Co dot UK who are my go to online retailer when it comes to purchasing board games and if you use the link in my show notes or the QR code then you can get five percent off your first order okay so let's start with gas this is a one to four player game takes 60 to 120 Minutes to play and it's essentially a worker placement game where you're trying to get points by curing these different diseases Now The Twist on this game in a glut of other work replacement games is that you can switch from placing your workers to resolving the actions whenever you want and you might want to do that because if you are in say a communal worker placement spot you can make sure that you jump in there before your opponent does now again the goal of the game is to get points and you're going to mostly do that by curing these kind of disease um little cubes from these cards that come out and you get some bonus points if you are the one to clear that card off now each person is also going to have their own little personal player board which represents like a little hospital where you can take in patients from the main cards just to secure them for you to make sure that nobody else can resolve them on your behalf you've got some little unique player powers on the player boards and you are getting more and more efficient at curing these diseases by climbing these four different tracks each representing one of the different disease types but whenever you get past a certain threshold on these tracks you need to cash in some of these tokens which you've reserved in this Focus area in order to pursue and get stronger and stronger now I actually found this game quite formulaic it was quite you know one track in terms of what you're trying to do just get better and cure things get better and cure things it was quite procedural um I thought but again it did always hack back to that one Twist of I stop pacing workers and get a fewer actions in order to you know have the best initiative and resolve my actions now I do really like that mechanism um but I don't think it was enough to rescue this game from the rest of the generic nature of it because again apart from that one twist there wasn't anything here that really did you know kind of set my world on fire there are these variable cards that come out each round and they're all pretty similar in what they do and because there's like special events on them and things now these location cards which can um where you can acquire these books and these different kind of herb types which will you know improve your ability to do different things but again I did find it very rinse and repeat and this was a game that I was tracking for quite a long time on Board Game Geek actually because I was really interested in that Twist on the worker placement um no mechanism um and yeah I was I'm not gonna lie I was very disappointed with the way this one played out I'm not saying it's bad in any way but again that that one twist was not enough to make it feel different from a lot of other you know medium lightweight games out there and it did feel just very generic now there was a few little um things in the game I also did not get along with so the resource gathering on the different way you're climbing these tracks on your personal playboard it's fairly interesting because if one thing kind of goes beyond the scale it can affect another resource type or another currency and the same goes if you kind of fall below a certain track but sometimes even if you're trying to do good things it can hurt you by going Beyond these tracks so it was a bit of a an exercise of spinning plates and sometimes it didn't feel it intuitive or didn't feel right that when you were doing well at the game you're actually getting punished for doing so um but yeah this one I can apart from that one mechanism it just felt like it fell very flat it was one that I'm not really interested in going back to and that's a shame really because I do like this medical theme and I had some promise there and that is a mechanism that I'd like to see exploited more and developed more because it's very cool it also it reminds me of a game like um like Shakespeare where you can choose to have more actions but probably go last or fewer actions but go first and sometimes that importance of rushing to the certain actions um you know is is a real decision to overcome but in this one that didn't really shine through unfortunately and I cannot recommend it um the box here is way too big the production is a little bit weird as well because the components are very small like all the different tokens and wooden bits are a mini skill and they're quite fiddly to handle and it just feels a little bit of an amateurish project um product I suppose in the gameplay um is kind of aligned with that so yeah I cannot recommend this one unfortunately that is gallonus next up we have Lewis and Clark the Expedition this is a one to five player game takes around 30 minutes per player according to the box but we'll touch on that later now this is a racing game that is held together with deck building mechanisms with some resource management and even a hint of worker placements now the objective is to race down this river and through some mountains as quickly as you can and beat your opponents to the finish line now to start with the worker placement mechanism that is fairly basic stuff just collect a resource here and there sometimes you have to be quite careful with crowding the board because there is another card that lets you kind of hold up all the meeples that are the workers and then use them yourself and that part was fine I don't really have much to say about it where this game really shines for me is the deck building and the Hand management part and the resource conversion because there are a ton of cards here and the way that these cards synergize with each other where one thing can lead to the next thing is actually really solid and to go beyond that the game gets even better because you can actually use cards to activate other cards so they're always used as workers themselves so you can use the wooden meeple workers to activate your cards but you can also use other cards to activate cards and as you are trying to most efficiently navigate this hand of cards to go down the river and of course waste no movement because it is a race and that is actually a really interesting decision and again that hand management can become quite taxing because you need to think you know what I need to use this card but that card would be really strong if I used it as a worker for another card and so on and it's all about trying to pick up that right display of cards use it in the right order in order to waste nothing because you even get punished if you have any kind of resources left over or if you have any surplus cards that you've not used and you can take this kind of um delay tokens which will slow you down so you do have to play Not only um you know not only cleverly but also efficiently because if you do not get things exactly right you can be punished quite significantly for doing so and I actually like that part of the game now it can become a little bit frustrating because you can get caught up in these kind of negative feedback loops where you find yourself in a bit of a bit of a hole and it's quite difficult to get out of it because you're spending so much effort just to shed these penalty tokens ultimately that does fall back to your decision so it comes back to a decision-making kind of problem I suppose and that's all on the players so actually mechanically this game is very impressive again I love that dual card use mechanism I love these resource conversion trees um I love a lot about this but there is one massive problem I have with it and that is it is far too long you know this game it took well way longer than the Box adjusted I think it overstayed it's welcome for about an hour which is just you know unforgivable for me so it's kind of one of those practicality issues where the game is really good I mean I enjoyed it a lot but that you know that real issue of this game takes way longer than it should do because I don't think it really warrants the time it takes and if you shaved up a huge portion of that um of that time investment then it would be actually a very good game that I'd happily play um more add more now I know this one is um it does have its fans and I can certainly see why maybe if you're not so fussed about getting you know too many games to the table if you just want to relax and just enjoy the game and you know get get invested in this one rather than playing lots of them and say you know this is our game we're playing for the night then you know you're going to get a lot from it because again mechanically it is pretty damn fantastic but yeah that for me is a real issue you know if I'm going to play a game that's you know a midweight Euro of course with an element of deck building to it and I don't really want it to take two and a half three hours and for me that is just too much and I'd rather have it half that length to be honest so there might be some house rules in order to speed it up but for me it was just too much of an obstacle to overcome so yeah this was probably the strongest example of a game that I've played that has been completely debilitated by the length it takes at least if you're playing by the rules um as printed so yeah objectively mechanically fantastic um practical and the time it length the length of time it takes is just not on the money for me and I think that's going to really prevent it from getting my approval or from um you know getting my recommendation in any way shape or form so yeah I'd love to see like a a new edition of this one that does take those things into consideration because again just use that same deck of cards it's really well done I like the um the change of patient is due where you're constantly spamming these cards to travel down water then all of a sudden you're hit with this um idea that you need to now travel through mountains you know you might have built your engine to tailor towards that so you're always keeping these two things in mind and have to have this was a forward projecting in your head thinking soon I'm going to go into these mountains and I'm going to need a way to travel through them so I think I said what I need to say about this one great game just far too long that is Lewis and Clark the expedition and the final game I'm talking about today is the princes of Florence now this is one of the old school Euros dating back to the year um 2000 and you might notice this arrangement of designers here Richard Ulrich Wolfgang Kramer made some of the best games out there of all time you know my favorite game is oh Grande this is the same design jira who made El Grande so naturally I was very excited for this one but this is a three to five player game that takes around 90 minutes to play now this game is actually inspired another game that I've already played and that game is called Coliseum again I've really enjoyed over the years um uh shares so many mechanisms with this one this one is a big ger and a bit more stuffy I suppose and you can probably see that by the game after the board style um alone but essentially what you're trying to do is you are auctioning or bidding for these different tiles that you're placing on your personal player board they come in buildings in different kind of gardens lakes that kind of thing and all these different things you can feel your gut you're board up with correspond to these kind of um architect cards that will say you know this architect wants this in there in the yard this one's this and this and this and the more of these things you can tick off the more points you get there are ways to boost those points by collecting these bonus cards or these jesters um all with the idea of trying to get as much points as you can for the round and this game has a fantastic scoring mechanism where at the end of each round you can choose to cash in the points you've also the money you've given or gained four points I love the way that works for you put on the spot thinking you know you have all this money how much do you want to cash in for points and how much do you want to save for the next auction phase and I really like that conundrum and some great games do that such as tennis trail and I tend to always enjoy it when I'm faced with that decision now I very rarely say that Wolfgang Kramer games feel dated I think he's one of these Gamers or designers who make Evergreen games it seems no matter what he does it's extremely clean and they just hold up very well despite being decades old I'm not quite sure I can say that with the princess of Florence and I don't mean that to say um to sound overly negative there were just a few issues um I had with this one and most of that was due to Lucky card draws so it seems like you can build up a bit of a you know a thing on your board here you can draw some new contracts one minute they'll match perfectly and they've got loads of points already in the bank and the next time you're going to draw something that doesn't match at all which is just a nightmare now there are ways to change that there are ways to pick up cards other people have discarded and it doesn't even allow you to draw five cards and keep one so you've got loads of mitigation there but more than once this has happened to me in a very short amount of time where it was basically game breaking you either drew the right card or I did not and for me that was just a left a little bit of a sour taste in my mouth in um in that the card draws can play a huge part in um in the resolution of the game I suppose but I love the tension of the auction there's um a strong desire to get everything you want you can build a little bit of an engine by collecting these building um tokens which will get you discounts on buildings that you break rules that you wouldn't normally do to get around that restrictiveness because the board is quite restrictive and tight and you could even end up getting buildings for absolutely free um if you invest enough and if you invest in something it means you're not investing in anything else this round so there's a good kind of give and take and you have to sacrifice something to get what you really want but there's a lot I like here and I and I don't want to sound negative it does hold up well but there's just those few little issues I have in regards to that lucky card draws um that um that just didn't quite do it for me so I actually think I prefer Coliseum to the princes of Florence because I thought that was a little bit more family friendly and it was just had a slight more charm to it I think now I know this game is getting reprinted um this year so it'll be interesting to see if they have changed any rules or it's just been a carbon copy of the original with some new artwork but it'd be nice to see a game like this that's still no it's still very strong you know these are some of the best designers in the game um but there were so many auction games out there with so many um you know polyomino star games out there there are games I prefer in each of those categories now this game is a good hybrid between the two um but I think if I want to get a full experience of either of those mechanisms I'll play something else so this is a very very narrow Miss for me I'd probably rate this like a six and a half out of ten um just because of those small issues I had but you know considering this game is over a couple of decades old it still holds up well but not quite well enough to stay in my Personal Collection so that is the princes of Florence so there we have it that concludes the video three Euro games here sadly none of which are going to stay in my collection massive Shame about Lewis and Clark being too long and gallon s was a big disappointment for me um and Princess of Florence just a few little issues there but hopefully you found some value um in these reviews if you have please be sure to hit like And subscribe to my channel and check out my other content too but for everybody else I'll see you next time on chairman of the board bye-bye