Back to the boardgame café.
And just one game tonight, new Stefan Feld release
Medico. Which to me fell
firmly into the "beige modern Euro" camp: there are things slightly
influenced by the theme, but mostly you're collecting tokens to get
other tokens to get your score up.
It's all a bit of an abstract point salad. There are some pleasing
optimisation puzzles, but if you want something that will give you any
idea of the decisions faced by a travelling barber-surgeon in
mediaeval Europe, this is not the game for that. I mean, there aren't
even any patients! (Oh, you can "heal the city lord and gain his
favour", as mentioned in the blurb, but in game terms that's simply
picking up a Favour card.) It's all set collection and tactical
movement.
All of this is not helped by what is either poor translation or
terrible original rules writing. Is selling in the market an action
you can take in passing rather than only at your specific destination
for the round? Probably, since it's listed under secondary actions,
but if so why does it say "at your Destination"? How does Prestige
relate to the actual scoring track, if at all? What is the point of
the small white meeples, the Medicus' juniors?
There was nothing here to offend me. Stefan Feld is a competent game
designer. But there was also nothing here to appeal, to say I should
ever play this game again rather than any other competently-designed
abstract Eurogame. If someone has it at a convention and says "hey
Roger, come and play", sure, I'll come and play. But I can't see why
I'd ever seek it out, and at the same time I can't see any obsessive
Eurogamers deciding that this is their game that they will play and
get good at to the exclusion of all else (which might be the case for
some of Feld's earlier designs such as The Castles of Burgundy,
Trajan or Bruges).