Amalfi Renaissance may never win the award for ‘most innovative theme’ but it absolutely deserves more than a second glance if you enjoy thoroughly charming, accessible and strategic medium weight Euro games.
Amalfi Renaissance
Designer: Takeo Yamada
Publisher: Sylex
2023
How to Play:
An updating of the 2020 title ‘Amalfi’ designed by Takeo Yamada, Amalfi: Renaissance published by Sylex Games sees players taking on the role of “a merchant in the Italian port town of Amalfi during the Renaissance period”.
Grab a player board representing the port of Amalfi. Four ships sail in its port at the start of the game - available for you to use both as workers to be placed on the main board as well as resources that can be spent during the game (keen eyes will notice that your player board has slots at the top that ships can sail in offering a range of resources such as wood, wine and spices etc).
A practical example of one of my turns might be that I take one of my four ships and place it onto a space on the main board - leaving me with three ships remaining on my personal player board. This specific main board space that I have placed my ship onto has a cost of two bread to visit (you start the game with 3 bread) but will then let me sail two of the ships on my player board into the ‘wine’ area. Each ship that sits in the wine area can carry three wine and because I have two ships there I now have six wine in total. On my next turn I can move those two wine ships down back into the port to use all of the wine that they now carry to claim a card that I have had my sneaky eye on - a card that costs five wine but has a lovely bonus and some VP. I don’t lose any unspent resources though, they convert into bread which will come in handy for future placements out on the main board. Of course the pinch inevitably comes as the more ships you place out on the main board, the less you then have on your player board to use as much needed resources. Aaarrrghh.
Different spaces on the main board reward you with different resources and very broadly speaking those different resources might see you:
• Unlocking more ships to use in future rounds (you’d be very wise to do so!)
• Obtaining new, more powerful areas to sail to on future turns.
• Gaining cards that represent treasures and artefacts that offer end game VP and one time bonuses.
• Gaining and playing character cards into a personal tableau - characters full of not only unique charm but also one off / once per round bonuses, ongoing effects, strategic goals to try and chase etc.
Once you have placed all of your ships onto the main board then it’s the end of the round - and let’s hope you haven’t spent all of your bread as you’re going to need some leftovers to feed the hungry crew on your ships! After four rounds it’s the end of the game. While there will be a good chunk of points gained from generally gaining cards and items and going about your 'Amalfi business', your end game VP will be exploding if you have managed to exploit each of the four variable objectives for each round (e.g. gain 6 VP for every ship you built this round) as well as three variable main overarching strategic objectives (e.g. build 6 ships and 4 lighthouses).`
Firmly medium weight, if not slightly lighter and plays in 60mins or less. Definitely one for fans of synergy finding / strategic goal chasing… but more on than that in a moment.
Solo Headlines:
I do like a simple automated opponent to compete against, something easy to operate, something providing competition for spaces and resources and doing all of that with some semblance of ‘intelligence’ – but I’m not adverse to Beat Your Own Score (BYOS) solo modes. That probably speaks to my personal preferences as a board gamer – I like to play against the game, rather than against other people. So, there are more than a few BYOS games of all weights in my collection that I will happily play, and Amalfi Renaissance is now one of them. Before any of you abandon this review because you aren’t a fan of BYOS then just hear me out for just two more minutes as the solo mode here is doing a couple of things that I particularly like...
Firstly, it has win conditions as well as more general victory point (VP) thresholds to try and beat. Remember those three main overarching strategic objectives I mentioned earlier that you can try to achieve in the game for a hefty amount of VP? In the multiplayer game they are more of an optional (but recommended) race to reach first but here in the solo mode those objectives are compulsory – you must have met two of them by certain points in the game (three of them on the more challenging difficulty) or accept immediate defeat. I just love the tension of a win condition in a solo mode – pushing to try to get enough of X, Y or Z done in time, sweating if you don’t have enough cards of a certain symbol, or haven’t quite placed enough lighthouses out, or haven't unlocked enough ships. You can feel the game's timer ticking down as you grind to reach those objectives. So now I have both the ‘can I beat my previous high score / reach some pre-set points thresholds’, but I also have variable, compulsory objectives to try and reach each game. The marriage of those two things is something I get real satisfaction from.
The second thing that I enjoyed about this particular BYOS solo mode is that while there is some arbitrary blocking of spaces and taking of cards and resources, this isn’t as random as perhaps other ‘flip a card and do what it says’ solo modes. Here, what the solo mode takes or blocks will specifically depend on the precise action that you have just taken on your turn. So, for example (a very basic example!) if I place a ship on the main board, it will place a ship on the main board. If I play a card, it removes a card from the shared market. It's all very basic and simple stuff that becomes intuitive after the first couple of rounds, but what it does do is make me pause for thought during my own turns; “wait, if I take the move that I was planning on taking then the solo mode is going to do the exact thing that I don’t want it to do as it would scupper my longer term plan, maybe I should do something slightly different to thwart it”. It just makes for a really nice meta game of trying to take my best turn, but also being mindful of what that turn might make the solo mode do.
Finally, I like the challenge that this BYOS solo mode offers which reminded me of a lot of Newton. It’s a game that is relatively easy to learn, but wow is it hard to master and score well at. So those arbitrary point thresholds are going to take a good while to reach, all while juggling those win conditions and the different levels of difficulty that they alone can be played with.
General Headlines:
I’m usually more of a fan of giant, table hogging, heavier euros with a hefty set up that enables me to drift off in my own meandering thoughts before being pulled sharply back in to an overwhelming number of mechanisms to (delightfully) burn my brain on. That said, every fan of bigger mid-heavy euros needs a day off from time to time and longs for something a bit more compact and easier to get to the table - Amalfi Renaissance fits this bill perfectly. It’s a fast set up and pretty reasonable learn. While it might have a more modest footprint, there is nothing modest about the overall production here as everything is of extremely high quality – double layer player boards, double layer main board, chunky screen printed components, thick and luxurious cardboard tiles, large cards etc. While the ‘map of somewhere in Europe’ setting of the main board isn’t going to win any awards for innovation, the artwork feels both modern and classic at the same time – particularly in the huge stack of characters cards. It all makes for just a lovely, warm production.
Gameplay wise, there are a few things going on here that I really enjoy, and they all meld together splendidly:
Firstly, the dual use of your ship ‘workers’ - you start with four and can unlock more during the game. It was an inspired decision to see your ships being placed on the main board to take actions which 95% of the time will see you gain resources, but for the remaining ships on your board to then have to dock into a particular port to gain those resources. It makes for some very interesting decision making – wanting to place your ships out to take actions but the more that you place out the less you then have remaining on your player board. You are naturally nudged towards trying to unlock even more ships to use but then you face the reality of needing to pay an ever increasing amount of bread at the end of each round depending on how many ships (and therefore crew) you need to feed. You also desperately need that bread to pay the cost of placing your ships out on the main board in the first place! It’s a really interesting balancing act and it makes for a lot of analysis paralysis as you scrutinise every possible option to try and squeeze out every last drop from the use of your ships. And make no mistake, this game is all about ‘squeezing out every last drop’ - the aim here isn't just to place your workers, it's to try and make your turns and your round last for as long as humanly possible by seeking out as many efficient synergies as possible. The added tightness of needing to ‘feed your workers’ with leftover bread adds to the puzzle excellently – how to do everything you want and need to do AND have enough leftover at the end of the round!?!!
I’m a big fan of games that tell me up front everything that I need to try and achieve by the end of the game and off I go over a set number of turns trying to reach those strategic goals. Amalfi isn’t doing this subtly – its literally giving you three (variable) big VP earning strategic objectives to meet (e.g. have X number of ships, have built X number of lighthouses, play X number of cards). Ignore them at your peril. These on their own would keep this fan of strategic games happy but the game ALSO gives each round a variable strategic goal. For example, at the end of round one I might get points for ships built, round two for cards of a specific type played etc. The two areas mesh together excellently as I scan over those major variable overarching strategic goals to see if I can get them singing with those variable end of round strategic goals “I was planning on getting a few ships built in round one but I should wait until round two as that round offers four points per ship built???” and “That main end game goal to get lighthouses out? Round one rewards me six points per lighthouse built– let's try and smash a few out straight away!!”. Try to tackle any of the goals (end of round or end of game) in isolation and you are going to see your scores in the sub-100 area. Find ways to get them all working together and watch your scores creep up…
…. watch those scores explode however if you can also build a nice tableau of cards that also complement your strategic goals! I really enjoyed working my way through the big deck of ever changing ‘character’ cards - snaffling them into my hand and then bringing them into play: one time bonuses, once per round bonuses, ongoing game changing effects, even more strategic objectives to chase with cards that offer end game VP if you meet its particular objectives. This card display refreshes quite a bit with lots of tasty cards frequently catching the eye. Deciding whether to abandon Plan A in order to get a specific card before it vanishes is a delicious dilemma. Just grabbing a card and playing it because it looks good though isn’t going to get you far here – playing the right cards at the right time with all of those strategic goals in mind is what it's all about. I also really liked the little bit of optional handholding on offer at the start of the game - some suggested starting hands of cards to choose from or indeed randomly select. These starting hands give a tiny bit of direction and all complement each other - for example one starting hand might be clearly aimed at a ship building strategy, another might be geared towards gaining resources and so on. After a few games though you’ll be fine just grabbing a random hand of any six starting cards and licking your lips as your eyes flit back and forth across the strategic goals to see how you might be able to exploit any cards to their maximum potential.
Do I have any specific complaints? Not really. Amalfi is lighter than my usual heavier end of mid-heavy tastes and consequently I also felt that I had seen much if not all it had to offer after the first 5 plays. However, please don’t read that necessarily as a criticism. Amalfi: Renaissance is filling a very specific space in my collection – something that I can quickly grab off the shelf from time to time, a straightforward ruleset, easy to unbox and pack back up, more than satisfies my strategic itch, has win conditions that offer some good tension, lots of tasty synergies to try and seek out, and a beat your own score solo mode that begs you to play just one more time.
Comfort food in a box.
At a Glance:
Amalfi Renaissance offers a strategic gaming experience with a balance between complexity and accessibility. It’s a game that caters to those who enjoy thought-provoking gameplay but also appreciate a game that’s straightforward to set up and play. The game boasts high-quality components and dual-purpose ship ‘workers’ that players must manage wisely to maximize their resources. Strategic goals are clear from the start, with variable objectives each round adding layers of tactical depth. File this one on your solo shelf marked, ‘big strategic focus/ quick to get to the table / relatively straightforward ruleset (for a medium weight game) / plays in 50 – 60 minutes (or less) / some good tension’. It sits very nicely alongside other similar games such as Newton, or Shipyard and fans of those two games I think will find a lot to like here.
Final Score:
7.5 out of 10 (Reviewed after 7 plays)
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