Alladin

Therefore, today I have Aladdin on review. Let’s see what’s in the box? Maps of the East Filling the box is unlikely to amaze you with its variety. The basis of the game is cards and coin tokens. Each player has a separate deck of cards (6 pieces in each deck) of different colors. 2 cardboard sheets are waiting for your nimble fingers to push off coin tokens and player tokens. Well, the cherry on the cake – a few ziplocks.

The quality is decent and acceptable. Rules are a delicate matter As you probably already guessed, the rules in this game are simple. After all, the game is designed for the mass market. In Aladdin, we will gain glory points by playing cards from our hand. Each player will have the same deck of cards in their hands, consisting of 6 characters from the Disney movie (Jafar, Abu, Aladdin, Jasmine, etc.). In the center of the table, a tablet of the cave of wonders is laid out, on which coins accumulate over the course of the game. Next to the cave is the palace board, on which players note their progress.

At the start of a turn, each player chooses a card from his hand and places it in front of him. Then the players turn over the selected cards and play them in order of seniority (from the lowest number to the highest). There is no concept of the first player in Aladdin. When activating his card, the player must play its ability. For example, Jafar earns Fame Points for revealing Aladdins and Jasmine, and then sends them back to their owners. Abu takes a coin from the cave or two if Jafar was opened.

The Aladdins divide the coins in the cave equally among themselves. Dahlia gains 1 renown point, or 2 if Jafar was revealed. Jasmine exchanges coins for glory points. The genie returns all of the player’s played cards back to his hand. After the draw, some characters fill the caves with new coins. The game ends at the moment when one of the players scores 15 or more points. The winner is the one with the most points (in case of a tie, the winner is the one with the most coins). Simple rules, right? How to rub the lamp correctly My impressions of the game varied from the beginning to the end of the first game.

Fortunately, from worst to best. As I wrote above, I took the game only because of the author. I didn’t read the rules of the game, didn’t watch the film, didn’t expect anything supernatural from Aladdin. When I read out the rules of the game, distributed the cards and began to study the properties of the cards, I was very upset. So much so that I was ready to put the game in a box and not play. All because I could not decide on the choice of the first card. I dismissed two cards at once – Jasmine and Genie.

To play the first one, I had only 2 coins, and there was no point in returning the cards with the genie. There are 4 cards left. There are only 2 coins in the cave – Aladdin is swept away. There are not enough coins for Abu either … So who should he play? I was sorely lacking characters! I ended up just re-mapping four characters and picking one at random. But with each move the game became more interesting. The cave was filled with coins, the players played different characters, strategy and miscalculation appeared.

Well, and most importantly, a fan has appeared! When choosing a card, you look at the coins in the cave, the cards played in front of the players, and the position of the tokens on the Fame Track. All the characters are very interestingly related. For example, if there are a lot of coins in the cave, it is logical to play Aldadin. But if someone has Jafar in his hand, then it is dangerous to do so, because a) Jafar will receive fame points; b) you will waste your move. Abu is guaranteed to receive one coin (provided that there is one in the cave), but this is very little for a spurt to victory. Dahlia is guaranteed to get a point of fame, but with Jafar there will be as many as 2. The genie returns the characters to his hand, but fills the cave with 3 coins. The only thing to note is that you cannot take the accumulated coins from other players and you cannot lower their glory. That is, the game is moderately kind.

At the end of the game, brains boiled. I did not expect this at all from a rather simple card game about role-playing. It was necessary to urgently stop the leader and somehow overtake him. The players creaked their brains, thinking how to catch the leader so that he could not play either Aladdin, or Dahlia, or Jasmine. By some miracle, one player caught up with the leader, and in the end both scored 15 points, but the old leader still beat the coins. Epic Party! I thought that maybe the second or third game would change something in my opinion about the game, but in principle it settled down after the first game. The game performed very well with the minimum of cards that it offers. This surprised me in the good sense of the word. The result is a small game that is played literally in 15-20 minutes and leaves a pleasant impression. After the first game, I definitely wanted to play again (albeit on a different day), because I liked the excitement that is hidden in Aladdin’s gameplay. I cannot say that this is an original game that I have never seen before.