Firenze

KS - nothing extraordinary but a nice through back that likely influenced other designs. Nice and easy going for the occasional play.

Essen 2018

A rather accessible euro that has some interesting mechanisms I haven't seem so far. Would like to play it more but it isn't as enjoyable as many other midweight euros so its less likely to hit the table.

1 play / 4 players

LIKE: The blocks as currency for building and taking cards is a great system. The board artwork is quite nice.

DISLIKE: Swingy game with cards. The "tribute" card is horrible and can turn the tide against a player. There is no way to mitigate for tearing down multiple towers. Similar cards have less severe circumstances (the other cards only effect towers over 5 height, etc). It is too situational and random for such a game. Some players at the end of the game had no actions to take, because several towers were full. This lead to some bad experiences. I was the only player who half-enjoyed the game. The theme of using towers led a couple players to think lower blocks needed to be build first, creating some confusion.

OVERALL: I love the OG style, but the gameplay feels dated and turns can be slow due to keeping track of each player's phase, some players would skip around, which is not really allowed. It's probably better at 3 players, because of the swingy-nature of the cards at 4 players. Personally, I'd get rid of the tribute cards, there are enough negative cards to keep the game interesting.

Similar games: Palaces of Carrara, Century Spice Road

Feels like a 7, I'de like to play this some more.

Firenze is a very traditional euro game of action selection, resource management and a race to claim the best building spots. Very straightforward while still offering a good amount of min-maxing your gains without a need to analyse a gigantic decision tree. The amount of information available is limited which makes assessing the situation quite fast but still not too easy.

Perhaps the biggest decisions are made when you are selecting the action from the market. There are both, very good ones as well as ones you want to avoid. Basically you are expected to choose the cheapest action but you can skip them by paying resources for every action you skip. This is a good mechanic but unfortunately the decision is not as tight as it could be because there is an abundance of resources and most of the time you can afford skipping without an eyeblink. This is especially true if you manage to get the Warehouse card (=increase your resource limit) early in the game.

I enjoy the game for its simplicity and for the decisions it offers. While not super tight, it still fun to analyse the market and see what you can do.