Gùgōng: Pànjūn

I like Gùgōng. I like board game expansions. So naturally I am going to like the Gùgōng expansion? Well as it turns out, not as much as I might have hoped.

Designer: Andreas Steding
Solo Designer: Steve Schlepphorst
Publisher: Game Brewer
2020

(Venture over to my Gùgōng review for my thoughts on the base game – I won’t be touching on it here at all, suffice to say that I enjoyed it quite a lot!)

Pànjūn adds four modular expansions to Gùgōng that you can add or leave out to your heart’s desire. I’ll explain a little about each of them in turn, give my thoughts as we go and then more than likely finish off with any general thoughts and musings…

Module 1: The Palace Stairs

A variety of different overlays for the left and right hand side of The Palace of Heavenly Purity. Now when you climb its stairs you have to make a decision on which side of the steps you will ascend - and once you have committed then there is no switching.

• Choose to take the left stairs and you’ll have a shorter than usual path to the top but you’ll will need to achieve certain objectives before you are able to gradually progress – for example have your double servant unlocked or have a certain number of servants on the Great Wall. Cant meet the objective? You’re staying put on the naughty step until you can! There will be three objectives to meet as you progress.

• Take the right hand set of steps and you’ll have more to climb but this time many of the stairs have either a bonus or a malus which will be triggered during the Morning Phase - some thinky decisions therefore on when (or when not) to move so that you can grab those juicy morning phase bonuses or whether you are able to pay the cost of any of the negative steps as if not then you are forced to move back a space. Gulp.

This module corrects one of the few things that I felt was lacking in the base game. The palace steps are touted in Gùgōng as being a ‘make it to the top by the end of the game or else you lose the game’ but in reality there wasn’t too much of a challenge at all in making it to the top – I may have had one tiny eye on the stairs but generally it was pretty effortless to find myself at the top by the end of the game. I really wanted the game to have a couple of anxious ‘I’m not going to make it’ moments which just weren’t there. Here though, I have one side of the steps that give me some conditions that I need to meet in order to climb which also give me some overarching strategies to focus on right from the off as well as a challenge in order to meet the conditions. The right hand side offers some early bonuses during the morning phase but also some penalties nearer the top which I will need to either pay or find myself forced backwards on the steps which inevitably creates some tension. The Palace Stairs module very much feels less like an expansion and more a finessing of a specific 'weakness' of the base game. Regardless though, it’s a welcome addition.

Verdict: Given the choice, I wouldn’t play Gùgōng again without this module.

Module 2: The Summer Palace

A new area for you to exchange gifts and take actions in. Here at the Summer Palace you find a lake and two piers and once you have exchanged gifts then you can choose to add one of the servants from your pool onto either of the piers. In the Night Phase, the pier with the most servants then gets scored and whoever has the most servants on that pier gets the associated bonus:

• Gain a Court Lady During a future turn you can use your Court Lady to double up on the actions that same turn – so potentially take up to 4 actions in one turn. Once used she goes back to the Summer Palace to be potentially claimed again later, or if you haven’t had the chance to use her during the game then she is worth 3vp at the end.

• Gain a Jade or gain two additional servants. The additional servants that you gain from this pier are of a neutral colour though and can’t be placed on the main board - so for example cant be placed on the great wall or on your boats – but they can be used to pay the costs of taking an action. Quite handy then.

You’re not just keeping an eye on the Summer Palace though for when the Night Phase arrives as interestingly there will also be a permanent card placed on the Summer Palace – either a 2, 4, or 9 and anytime during the game when a corresponding card is placed anywhere on the board, you can choose to score one of the piers and gain its benefits. So now if I find myself with a number 4 in my hand (for example) then I know it will allow me to trigger a Summer Palace bonus when I play it anywhere on the board so I need to not waste it by not having already made sure that I am ahead on one of the Summer Palace piers.

My initial response when I played with the Summer Palace was excellent – it forces you to keep one eye on it at all times – making sure that your opponent isn’t ahead, making sure that you have primed it in anticipation of you playing a card from your hand that will trigger its bonus in your favour. Having to keep a frequent, almost permanent, eye on the Summer Palace takes the game weight up slightly beyond its medium weight. The Court Lady rewards of being able to take double the amount of actions on your turn is great and getting more jade is always a good thing. On the face of it having more servants in your pool sounds good as more servants enable you to do more things. That said, I had a couple of games (particularly when paired with the Peasants Revolt module, below) where either myself or Meng (the solo opponent) felt like we no longer had a shortage of servants during rounds - that was quite jarring as what I liked a lot about the base game was the limited amount of servants at my disposal and having some agonising choices on how to use that limited pool or how on earth to set about finding more. Here though I was occasionally finding myself drowning in servants – so lots of choices on how I might use them which felt initially satisfying but ultimately took away some of the tightness of the base game.

Verdict: It’s a mechanically and thematically clever, enjoyable module and one that if I was wanting to add a little more heft to my game of Gùgōng then I might pull it out. Equally I would be happy without it. Good, but inessential.

Module 3: The Peasants Revolt

Another new area to exchange gifts / take actions in. Use this space and either gain yourself 2 servants to your pool or choose to move back a step on the Palace of Heavenly Purity to gain 4 servants from your pool (hmmmm, see my earlier point about drowning in servants when the Summer Palace and this module are used together).

Each time I take this action (or each time a number 1 card is played anywhere at any time) then a peasants revolt token is placed face down on the module's board. After a certain number of tokens are placed dependant on player count then the Peasants erm, Revolt. The main game then pauses for a while as players secretly choose a card from their discard pile. When each player has chosen a card, all players reveal and their collective card values are added together. The Peasants Revolt tokens that have previously been added to the board to trigger this revolt get flipped over as they too all have a value on each of them which again all gets added up.

• If players' combined total is more than the peasants total then the revolt is quashed. The player who chose the lowest value card from their hand gets to keep it in their hand to use again during the round while the other player(s) have to put the card back in their discard pile.

• If the peasants' value is higher that the combined player value then they have indeed now revolted, the player who used the highest value card gets to keep it and the other player(s) again, discard their card back into their discard pile.

Urgh, I really didn’t like this at all. And not just the “wait, what happens if the card is the highest or lowest and who discards and why” general confusion. This module brings chance and luck into a Euro where I really don’t want to have chance / luck – I get that this is subjective and perhaps about personal tastes but I think I’d argue that I am probably not in a minority of players that especially like Euro style games because a lot of these elements are usually absent. When the Peasants Revolt is triggered the main game is jarringly paused for this mini game of push your luck. I just don’t like it. And I will say it again – I don’t want this many servants in a game of Gùgōng. Gaining 4 from just one action in addition to those that I might pick up elsewhere in the game just feels excessive.

Verdict: Its not just the Peasants that are in revolt - I am too. I won’t play with this module again and would likely decline a game that included it.

Module 4: Extra Decrees and Gift Cards

(One thing that I neglected to mention in the Summer Palace and the Peasants Revolt sections was that each of those modules also has a space for a new Level 4 Decree tile (the base game only having Level 1, 2 & 3 Decrees). These Level 4 decrees are largely the same end game scoring bonuses much like Level 3 decrees but are more tailored to the Summer Palace and Peasants Revolt modules, and instead of paying servants to access them, you instead move back a number of steps on the Palace Stairs (again, making the Palace Stairs even more chewy). If you are playing with either of those modules then these Level 4 decrees are a good new focus for your attention).

• Extra Decrees: Exactly what they sound like. A bunch of additional decrees to mix in with those from the base game adding some variability to each game and potential new strategies and synergies to chase.

• New gift cards: Remove some of the cards from the base game and replace them with these new cards. Most notably you will now have a 0 card which is pretty pointless as in order to use it you will have to pay the usual penalties that you have to in the base game in order to use a card of a lower value. There is also a 10 card which is now (obviously) the highest. And a few cards that now allow you to ‘take that’ other players – swap one of your cards for one of theirs, take one of their servants off the Great Wall etc.

Verdict: The extra decrees slot easily into the base game nicely and will get used by default. The new gift cards? I don’t like ‘take that’ in a game, don’t see the point in the 0 and 10 cards so these won’t be making their way out of the box again.

Solo Headlines:

No major changes to report here – a new card or two are added to Meng’s deck depending on which module you are choosing to play with. Some minor rules to learn for each module but nothing too dissimilar to those from the base game. Business as usual.

My only (slight) worry is that there are now a few more exceptions than the minimal amount that were in the base game (e.g. if using this tile then Meng instead gets 1vp). As a deep diving solo player that keeps games on the table for 2+ weeks at a time this wasn’t particularly any issue as I incrementally learned and retained the rules but I don’t relish getting the game off the shelf in 6+ months time and trying to remember some of the exceptions. The same could be said of a lot of games of this weight with modular expansions though so perhaps I am being overly critical – but this is the first game where I felt compelled to be putting small notes into bags as I packed the game away so I felt inclined to mention it. This is not at all to say that the solo mode is cumbersome – quite the opposite. It remains excellently put together and easy to manage. The expansions will just bring some inevitable frequent rulebook glancing when the game comes periodically off the shelf after any lengthy periods of time.

At a glance

+ Giving the palace stairs a bit more chewiness and tension is a welcome augmentation of the base game

+ the extra decrees bring more variability to the game without any particular new rules to manage

+ The Summer Palace module is a standout addition that forces players to keep a separate eye on it throughout the game and adds some overall weight to decisions and the game generally

+ / - Gùgōng is a game I really enjoyed, but wasn’t a game that I felt was particularly screaming out for an expansion.

- I feel no need at all to swap out gift cards from the base game to replace them with ones that have a ‘take that’ feel to them so they wont be used again.

- The Peasants Revolt brought luck / chance and penalties into Gùgōng and I won’t use it again.

Final Score:

6 out of 10. (Reviewed after 10 plays of various configurations).