Resafa

• Designer: Vladimir Suchy
• Publisher: Delicious Games (distributed by Rio Grande Games in US)
• Players: 1-4
• Age: 14+
• Time: 60-120 minutes
• Played with review copy provided by Delicious Games

The game Resafa takes place during the 3rd century AD in the area of today’s Middle East. Resafa now lies in ruins in modern-day Syria, but at this time it was a fortified desert outpost that flourished as a stop along important caravan routes. In the game, players represent merchants who travel on business trips and buy and sell goods in the various cities in the region. Resafa had no local sources of water, so it depended heavily on large cisterns to collect the spring and winter rainwater to make the area habitable. Players build water tanks and canals to distribute that water where it is needed. In the cities, they build workshops to help their businesses grow, which will allow them to collect resources and camels. They also construct gardens between the businesses, generating more resources and also victory points.  The game is played over six rounds. In each round, a player takes only three actions, playing action cards in this tight and exciting game.

Setup for Resafa is a fairly complex affair – you don’t need to know the specific details, but you’ll put the board on the table and then sort and place the trading tiles, workshop tiles, garden tiles.  There are also lots of cards, and you’ll have to make a deck of sack cards as well as to sort and place the special cards at the row on the bottom of the board as well as the array of bonus cards just off the board. Finally, you’ll draw one of the 3 canal set up cards to set up that portion of the board placing canal tiles and water cubes as directed.  

Each player gets their own player board and all the bits in their color.  Their two starting workshops are placed nearby, diagonally adjacent to each other.  Players get a six card deck of action cards, each with two actions (each associated with a specific color) shown on it, and a hand of 3 cards is drawn.  Players place markers at the bottom of the camel track on their personal board, at the start of the 4 special card tracks at the bottom of the main board as well as on the scoring track which runs around the board.   Each player also places their camel figure in Resafa on the main board.

The game is played over 6 rounds, and each player will play three cards in each of those rounds – there are spaces at the top of the player board to track the cards played.  Cards are drawn only at the start of the 1st, 3rd and 5th rounds – so in the even numbered rounds, you’ll have to use the cards which were not played in the odd rounds.

On a turn, the active player chooses one of the cards from their hand and plays it above their board, with the desired action/color placed at the top.  Players can do the color part and the action part in either order.

First, with the color portion of the card – there are 3 options:

1. Choose a face-up bonus card of the same color 
2. Take a sack card from the deck; these give resources or conversions and can be played at any time
3. Move forward a step on the corresponding colored special card track. When you enter a  space that has the symbol for that area you can either choose the face up card in the stack you just passed and take a bonus VP+coin, or you can look at the rest of the facedown stack and take a card off your choice (but no bonus).  All players can go to the end of the pink track; of the other three, you are limited to one Level 3 advancement and two Level 2 advancements.  Each color of special action card has its own theme.

Next, with the action icon depicted on the card:

• Workshops – spend 1 coin and 1 stone then build the workshop, choose which side you want to show/use; either the side that has 2 rooms to make things or the side that offers VP and extra production. If you have a merchant on the appropriate spot, you can also build Level 2 Workshops.  Place the new workshop so it is touching another workshop on the corner (you will build gardens in the spaces in between)
• Production – use one room on two different workshop tiles.  If you have workshops that offer extra production, you can take those as well
• Provisions – take one of the 3 choices: take a bonus card, bump up on a color track or take a sack card

• Garden Construction – build a small (1 stone) or large (1 stone + 1 coin) garden. Place it and then claim any green bonuses on adjacent workshop tiles that are connected to this tile via gardens. Additionally, if you have fully filled in a garden space, take the bonus shown on the chart on the left of the player board.
• Canal Construction – pay the cost on a canal tile from your personal supply, then place it on any empty space in the water network (tile cost always in upper left) making sure that connections are maintained in the vertical direction. Take any bonus from the space as well as any canal bonus tiles.  If the tile is built next to a water cube, place the cube on the tile.  If you have filled two garden spaces, you can choose to build a water tank instead (found on the reverse of two of your canal tiles). 

• Trading – Move your camel, paying the coin cost, and then optionally buy or sell one type of good as shown on the location tile – the quantity determined by your standing on the camel track on your player board.  Some trade actions come with a bonus which is immediate.  When complete, turn the trade tile over.  One half of the trade tile is colored red or blue, this is to help you identify the more favorable deal on that side of the tile.  Finally, you can optionally establish a trading base for a coin and a stone. Put a player marker onto the spaces at the bottom of the city and take the merchant tile from that space.  The merchant tiles are then placed in your merchant area on your player board, and this will help determine the value of your gardens, workshops and canals at the end of the game.

Play continues until all players have played 3 cards.  To end the round, any unclaimed bonus cards are discarded and a new supply of 3 cards of each type is dealt out.  The start player marker is passed clockwise, and a new round is started.  Cards are only drawn at the start of rounds 1, 3 and 5.   At the ends of rounds 2 and 4, players first take any of their yellow special action cards into their hand first before drawing up to 3 cards. 

At the end of each of the even numbered rounds, there is also a Rain scoring phase where each player scores 1VP for each canal tile they have placed in the water network.   They also score for any blue VPs noted on those tiles.  Then, any activated water cubes are moved through the canals, always towards the bottom of the board; every tile a water cube passes through will give its owner 1VP plus any blue VP on it. 

After the sixth round is complete (and the Rain scoring phase for that round is complete), there is some end game scoring:

• Score any Scarab tokens on your player board
• Score gardens/workshops/canal tiles at their value determined by the chart on player board
• Score pink special cards based on the criteria on them
• Score all other cards for their yellow VP value
• Rare goods are 1VP each
• Regular goods and coins score 1VP per each 5
• 5/8/15 VP for 3/5/7+ canal tiles built

The player with the most points wins. Ties in favor of the player with the most canal tiles placed.

My thoughts on the game

So I’ve always had a mixed bag of experience with Suchy games.  I love the ideas – oftentimes there are multiple different mechanisms going on that intertwine together.  Surely, you don’t have enough time and actions to do everything, and you end up juggling things to keep things afloat.  Recent releases all shared this tight feeling: Messina 1347, Evacuation, and Woodcraft.  Sometimes though, the mechanisms all work together and you get a wonderful cohesive experience; sometimes, it just feels like you’re playing four mini games that came together in a box.

Here, in Resafa, you again have multiple main tracks to consider.  You can score points through trading goods, by building canals in the water system, by advancing along the end game scoring card track – and in order to do most of those things, you have to figure out your good production infrastructure so that you have resources to do all of those things (i.e. why does EVERYTHING in ancient Resafa have to cost a stone and a coin?!)

What ties everything together are the dual purpose action cards.  This innovative system drives all of your choices, and it does make you choose between certain paths as you can only do one half of each card… I’d definitely recommend acquainting yourself with the combinations of actions on your cards at the start of the game, as you might find that certain combinations of strategies will be harder for you to pursue (if their icons share a card).   Without finding extra actions elsewhere, you’ll be able to do each of the main actions a max of twice per pass through your deck.  Of course, this could change during the game if you add advanced yellow action cards to your deck or you pick up certain special cards that grant additional actions.

Making the most of your actions is key – you only get 18 main actions and 18 color actions in the game, so you’ll want to find your strategy early on.  If you have a particular goal, say maximizing trading – it’s also important to know that unless you find other ways to do things, you’ll only have 6 of those actions in your base set of cards over the course of the game.  

You end up with some interesting decisions based on the way the cards come out.  You might really want to start a round 3 with a canal – maybe there is a spot that really appeals to you.  However, if you don’t draw a canal card in your initial hand – welp, you will really have limited ability to make that happen, and you might have to pivot your plans.  I like the way that cards force you to tactically review your plans with each deal.

There is also a tough decision to be made with the colored portion of the card.  You can take the immediate reward of the bonus card (this is one the main ways to get extra actions) OR you can invest in moving up the corresponding track.    The benefits of the special cards from the track are MUCH better, but you only get this benefit for every third bump up the track.  The supply of bonus cards is also limited, only three per color per round – so there is a bit of time pressure to snag a card that you really want – this is one of the main ways to get those extra actions you’re always looking out for.

My games so far have been long, but not overly so.  There is definitely a lot to think about in the game, and much of the downtime between turns is spent looking at the options left to me in my hand of cards and the things on the board.  It’s definitely 90 to 120 minutes that goes by quickly.

After a few games, I do think that this game feels more fiddly than some of the other recent Suchy releases – with a number of super picky/odd rules that feel like they are bandaids placed over rough edges in the design.  The rules about the water movement in the canal system are non-intuitive (to me at least), and the restrictions about building level 2 warehouses and the water collection tile are also fiddly.   Though it has never been close to an issue in any of my games, the rule about limits on progression of three of the colored tracks (but not the pink track) also feels off.  That being said, all of these rules are definitely stated in the rules and each has a visual reminder somewhere on the main board or player board.  

Resafa (so far) also allows way more specialization than Evacuation or Shipyard – I have seen players do well clearly focusing on just one aspect of the game.  I ended up doing really well only doing canal placement and goods shipping.  I bought a single warehouse tile, a single garden tile and only gained a single merchant tile.  Despite ignoring what feels like 3/5 of the game, I had a competitive score – I won by 10 but it was a close affair to a player who mostly built warehouses and gardens (and had just enough merchants to push up the bonus scores on both).   That felt unlike Evacuation or Woodcraft where you at least had to do a little bit in the other areas.

In the end, it would be unfair to expect Resafa to play just like other designs from the inventor – and honestly, I’d probably complain about if Resafa was too similar… The challenge of balancing the action selection and the limited amount of actions makes this a nice tight game, and one that I have enjoyed exploring so far.   If you like chewy games, you’ll probably find this one Delicious.

Thoughts from other Opinionated Gamers

Tery N: I do like chewy games, but as Dale mentions above sometimes you feel like you are playing a series of mini games and that is how I feel here.  It didn’t feel cohesive to me at all. That said, the rules were clear and I did feel I had interesting choices on all of my turns. I thought the card track was an interesting mechanism, and despite my perceived lack of cohesiveness I did enjoy playing enough that I would definitely be willing to play again.

Ryan P: As a big Suchy fan, Resafa is the style of game that is definitely catered to my tastes. I like the freedom of choosing between free bonus cards and free track bumps with your color action. I enjoy the tension of combining color with the main action, creating a great decision space on a simple card play. It’s also always a fun moment in gaming when you get some awesome broken card like you can from the tracks. I am 100% with Dale that there are too many weird, small rules that make me hesitant to teach the game to new people – I wish some of it was cleaned up, or removed entirely. I also find the canal scoring overly complicated for very little payoff in terms of fun. But I strongly prefer my euros as point salads like this, as that gives the game life to me. I won one game with all trading posts played and cards that scored them and scarabs. One game I won by finishing 5 whole gardens, and the next I lost to someone who had 1. I love Resafa, but I know it’s not perfect – I don’t expect others to be down with some of its wonky ways, but we have each other!

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

• I love it! Ryan P
• I like it. Dale Y, Tery, John P
• Neutral.
• Not for me…