Oct
16
Game session: Diamonds Club, Genial Spezial and Inquisition
Filed Under Diamonds Club, Genial Spezial, Inquisition, Session
Thursday night reserved for games in Leppävaara and this time I was also able to join the club and play some games.
First I sat down on a table where half of the people were preparing for the European Championships in Spiel. We played Diamonds Club which I had played once before and had liked it and I even remembered how to play the game. Diamonds Club is like Japanese whisky; it’s clean and perfectly balanced but it doesn’t have same character as the best of the games in its genre. It tastes good but you know that there’s better drams waiting for you out there.
Image from BGG by Tomasz Baron
After Diamonds Club I ended up reading the rules of Knizia’s Genial Spezial and playing it for the first time. Genial Spezial looks and feels like the original Genial. It also has some similarities, like scoring and shape of tiles used in the game, with its big brother but in the end it’ totally different game than the original Genial. I liked the game as I think most of the Genial friends would do but still I feel that this is just a way to profit from the Genial brand. Game would have deserved own identity; now it’s just a part of a growing lineup of Genial franchise.
Image from BGG by Werner Baer
The night ended with two games of Inquisitio at WilliamK (a bar next to the library the game club is held). Inquisition is an interesting game from a Finnish game designer Jani Rönkkönen produced by Tuonela Productions. It won the first prize in the Finnish Board Game Society’s game develop contest back in 2006 after which the designer has tried hard to find publisher for the game (even with the help of Bruno Faidutti). It took three years to find one from Oulu, Finland and end result is a deck of cards and few discs in a compact box.
Image from BGG by Daniel Danzer
Inquisitio is a game where players are accused of different sins in the medieval Europe waiting for their turn to be tortured by the Inquisition. One can easily understand why it was so hard to find someone to publish the game – the theme is really extreme and it’s well incorporated in the game.
What happens in the game is basically this: players are lined up in front of the torture room to be taken in. The choice of who’s going in the room depends of the bribe the character is willing to pay for the Interrogator and as the man gets greedy the others will have to pay more to avoid the room. Unfortunately someone doesn’t have the money to bribe the interrogator and he’ll be dragged into the room to be tortured. Before your head is put in a head press or they cut one of your body parts of you have an option to confess your sins, even though you might not have done anything, and avoid being tortured. If you don’t, you’ll fall into the worst nightmares one could imagine, suffer mental and physical damage and are left with marks of torture on your body which can (and will) be used against you later on. Obviously, if you’re the one the Inquisition finds to be most guilty for the crimes you will be burned at the stake in front of a cheering audience.
Image from BGG by Mikko Lahtinen
All above is executed with cards in a clever way. Players have money and features in their hands and first they try to avoid the torture chamber with money. Interrogator and torture method are also face up and from the interrogator card one can see which features the interrogator looks after and for which sin he accuses players of. The player who ends up to be tortured has to reveal all features in his hand which are similar to those shown in the interrogator card. After revealing the cards he receives money and has a choice of either to be tortured or to confess. Torturing causes damage and weakens player’s chances to win the game and confessing makes character more guilty and he might end up being burnt at the stake (and loosing the game).
Sometimes it’s good to confess though because:
a) you suffer less damage while they don’t torture you
b) the other players who have confessed the same sin before you become more quilty when you confess
c) you get to point a finger to one of the other players and accuse him for one of the features in the game. If he has cards of that feature in his hand he must reveal them and suffer from the increased guilt points in the end of the game.
So it might not be such a bad idea to confess after all but the problem with this is that in the end you score points for all the interrogator cards that have lead to a confession.
Image from BGG by Mikko Lahtinen
In our game we confessed every sin that came upon us; whether it was witchcraft or blasphemy we were guilty (and probably this would have been the case in the real life too since non of us probably would want to try out any of the torture methods). In the end the there were a lot of guilt points awarded because of the several sins confessed and huge amount of features in the interrogator cards on the table which also generated points.
Luckily I avoided the worst combinations and did not have the most guilt points; the two lucky players who tied the most guilt points were burned alive. Of those who survived the Inquisition I had the most mental and physical stamina left and I won the game (probably in real life I would have also had the best chance to recover from the horrors of the torture chamber).
Was I happy to win the game? Well, sure but more than that I was happy to be alive.
Was the game any good? Sure, it’s solid game, there’s interesting mechanics in it and it has a strong theme to support the game play.
Why am I so disturbed then? One could not play without thinking of the real thing and at least for me it raised some disturbing images in my head. We laughed at someone being tortured and damaged by an interrogator because, in the context we played in, it was funny. But there are some things you don’t want to play with and torture is quite high on that list, at least for me.
Learn your history before you play Inquisio because it helps you to appreciate the theme and the fact that there’s absolutely nothing fun or good in torture even though the game itself can be entertaining.
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One Response to “Game session: Diamonds Club, Genial Spezial and Inquisition”
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Whether I’m a disturbed person or just a masocist, but after reading your blog post, I want to become tortured… But only in a game of course.
Inquisitio goes into my wishlist.