Let me tell you about one of my favourite game designers, Stefan Feld. Like Uwe Rosenberg, Feld is one of my Mount Rushmore figures of game design. Owning seven of his games, more games than any other designer, Stefan Feld has a way of creating brilliant game mechanics with many interesting choices, that, too me, are a joy to play. Key features Feld is known for in his games include:
“Point Salad” – this is a term that originated from a recurring pattern in Feld’s designs. A “point salad” game means that almost all actions you perform in the game will give you some form of victory points. Although some people may find “point salad” games make decisions feel arbitrary or less significant, from a psychological point of view, this is a very clever design decision. A “point salad” provides continual positive reinforcement to the decisions you make, giving a sense of satisfaction and pleasure throughout.
Themeless Euro – A criticism of Stefan Feld’s games are that they are themeless or rather the theme has been “pasted on”. Rather than integrating mechanics into a theme, a theme can feel almost tacked on by Feld as almost an afterthought. As much as I love Feld’s games, I have to agree with this challenge. If you prefer theme over mechanics, leaning more Ameritrash than Euro, Feld games may not be for you.
Innovative Central Mechanic – One of the things that makes Stefan Feld’s games great are the inventive mechanics he comes up with, combining or putting an original spin to classic gameplay functions. For example, in Bora Bora, players take actions through dice worker placement. Combining the luck of dice rolling with action space denial, players are forced to mitigate bad rolls while paying keen attention to spaces other players may want to use. In Trajan, he creates a unique twist on the classic game Mancala, implementing a mencala device for players to control the actions they take through the puzzle of pieces around a wheel.
During reading week I added another Feld game to my collection called Luna, printed in 2010, but having just got another reprint last year. Luna takes place in a fantasy realm, where each player controls novice monks, trying to win the favor of a Moon Priestess, while entering in a temple. Players must reposition their novices on on seven different islands around the central temple board, to benefit from the changing game state round to round. Essentially, players must track the movement of three character that move in between round to the various islands, and must each gravitate towards them for rewards or avoid them to not be penalized.
Luna is very unique for its section selection. In one way Luna is a worker placement game, where each island represents an action space. However, rather than simply select an action from a particular island, players must plan ahead to get there novices to those islands from previous turns. As a result, there is a high amount of strategy to the game. And with a preset movement of the scoring characters that move around islands, tactics are at a minimum, while long term planning is the key to success. Despite the lack of tactics, there is a significant amount of indirect interaction in the game, as players must pay close attention to how they are moving their novices around islands and into the temple.
I believe Luna is a very good game. I do not think it is Feld’s best game, with Castles of Burgundy and Trajan being superior. Suffering from a truly variable set up, I worry the game might become repetitive after a number of plays, where an optimal strategy and rerouting of novices becomes obvious. However, Luna is relatively quick to learn, visually appealing, and has a plethora of meaningful choices. I would recommend this game to people who enjoy strategic games with minimal theme, who prefer more indirect interaction than direct, take-that opposition.
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/70512/luna
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