Stephens

• Designer: Rola & Costa 
• Publisher: Capstone Games / PileUp Games
• Players: 1-4
• Age: 12+
• Time: 60-120 minutes
• Amazon affiliate link: https://amzn.to/4eQlmu7 
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

After the big earthquake of 1755 that tore down Lisbon and most of Portugal’s southern coast, it was necessary to rebuild an entire nation. The demand for window glass increased so much that William Stephens, a British businessman, saw the opportunity to expand his business in Portugal by investing in the glass industry.

In Stephens, players compete amongst one another in the role of master glassmakers working at the famous “Stephens” Factory to become the most prestigious figure in town…after Stephens, of course. Through clever and cunning planning, all players will develop their works, invest in new businesses, and promote the creation of jobs. Through a unique action-selection mechanism, on their turn players choose from a variety of options, either by activating the Stephens factory or by activating one of their personal investments.

The game ends when the Napoleonic forces arrive in town, at which time the player with the most prestige wins.

To start, place the board on the table. At the end on the left, place the red profession deck face up and then put the top two cards next to it.  On the right side, place the blue profession deck face up and then put the top two cards from that deck next to it.  On the other side of the board, make a market of 5 contracts and 5 investments on the appropriate slots. Each of the 4 furnaces in the factory start with 4 cubes matching the color shown on the board.  The French army marker is placed on the 55 space of the scoring track.

Each player gets their own player board, taking the 21 discs in their color – placing 14 of them onto the spaces depicting abilities in the central area of the board as well as onto certain spots on the influence track. Discs are also placed on the main board on the scoring track, dune track and forest track. The Influence marker is also placed on the influence track found around the outside of the player board.   Players get a random starting profession and 4 coins.

The game is played in a number of rounds, and each player turn is simple – you take one of two choices: 1] take a single cube from a factory on the main board into your personal supply and perform the corresponding action OR 2] Take a single disc from your player board to assign a worker to a new profession and unlock an ability for yourself.  Now that you know both options, you’re ready to play, right? 

If you take a cube from the main Stephens factory, you’ll take a translucent cube from one of the furnaces. There is an action in the bottom corner of each furnace that tells you what action you get:

• Fund a new Investment – choose one of the 5 available Investments, paying the cost in coins printed on the board for its slo. You have 3 spaces on the right of your player board for investments – each row can only have investments for a particular color of cube.  The left side of the cards shows the points and cubes you will get in a reset phase; the right side may indicate that you have to move down the Forest or Dune track. Slide the investments down and refill from the most expensive slot. 
• Commit to a new Contract – choose one of the 5 available contracts, paying the influence cost printed on the board for that slot. Put the contract in one of the three slots at the bottom of your player board. The left of the contract tells you who the contract is with; the right half shows the resources needed to complete it. Slide the contracts down and refill from the most expensive slot. 
• Activate Professions – when you take any non-white cube, you activate the row of profession cards attached to that site. Players that have discs in that row can activate their professions in any order they choose, and every activation is optional.

You can later also take cubes from small factories – these have wooden cubes. When you take one of these cubes, you must activate all the professions in that row. (description directly above)

If you choose to take a disc from your board, you assign it to a profession card to either:

• Create a new profession – choose from any of the 6 face up profession cards and attach it to any factory – red professions to the left side of the board, blue professions to the right. There are 3 different locations to attach professions on each side of the board. Note that all factories must have fewer professions than the factory immediately below it on the board.  Take a disc from your board and assign it to the uppermost worker space on that card, paying the cost if any.  The bottom portion of each profession card shows the benefit gained each time the profession is activated. 

• Reinforce an existing profession – select a Profession already in play and place your disc on the lower space of that card as an Apprentice. You cannot already be on that card as the Master.  During the game,you get the same benefits when the profession is activated; at the end of the game the Apprentice gives 1VP to the Master on its card.

As you do this, you also generate a permanent ability for yourself. If you remove a disc from the Influence track, you unlock a further portion on which to move your marker.  The spaces on the left provide you scoring opportunities. The spaces on the right give you abilities concerning Professions, Contracts and Investments or increase your cube production at the small factories.  The icons for each action are fairly clear and next to each disc.

As the game progresses, you should always check at the end of a turn to see if a Reset Phase has been triggered. This happens when at least 2 of the 4 Stephens furnaces are empty of cubes.  There are a number of things that happen in a Reset Phase.

• Advance the French Army marker – it always moves 5 steps ahead.  The game ends if the French Army marker reaches or crosses any player scoring markers on the track.
• Replenish the Furnaces – replenish the two empty furnaces with the number of cubes specified on the space where the French Army marker now lies
• Score VPs – if you have unlocked the 1VP per Reset Phase ability, score that VP now
• Empty the Small Factories – All the cubes in the small factories on the board are removed to the supply
• Activate Investments – each player looks at their investment cards in columns. Each column is chosen individually whether or not to be activated. An entire column is either activated or not. You must pay all the costs of a column to activate it, and you then gain everything shown.  A column does not have to be complete with 3 cards to be activated, you can activate columns of 1 or 2 cards.

• Supply Small factories – use all the cubes just gained from investments to supply the small factories and then gain the rewards depicted for each contribution.
• Fulfill personal contracts – Optionally, players can spend all the required resources and/or accessory tiles on a contract card to complete it. The completed contract is placed on the left side of the player board and will now provide end game scoring.

After all these steps are complete, the game resumes with the turn of the next player in order.  Play continues until the end-game condition is met – namely when the French Army marker meets or crosses a player scoring marker.  The current round is completed so that all players have the same number of turns in the game.  After the last player has taken the final turn, there is one final reset phase that occurs regardless of the number of empty factories.

Final scoring consists of:

• VP earned during the game (current position on the track)
• VP from the Forest and Dune track based on final position of your marker
• VP for master workers (1 VP in Stephens, 3VP in lower small factory, 5VP in upper small factory)
• VP from Apprentices – each Master that has an apprentice scores 1VP
• VP from fulfilled contracts – for each column, multiply the number of cards in the column by the number of cubes seen in those cards.
• VP from unlocked abilities on your player board

The player with the most points wins.  Ties broken in favor of the player with the most remaining influence.

My thoughts on the game

Wow, for such a complex game, it’s quite nice to see such a simple choice at the start of each turn – go grab resources or improve your engine.  Repeat.  Yeah, sure, each of those options has lots of sub-options, but from the top level, it’s just these two things.  The balance between wanting to get resources/things versus taking a turn to instead build your engine is amazingly tight.  At nearly every round of the game, there is a pretty valid argument for doing either.

Early in the game, trying to improve your engine seems like a straightforward choice – to get the most benefit from taking those advanced options for the rest of the game.  However, there can be some plum choices from early contracts/investments that also could pay off.  For me, if there is a 2VP or 3VP investment card, I’m strongly considering that right off the bat given that the card could possibly trigger seven times or more during the game.  (You also would possibly get recurrent payoffs from cube placement in the small factories).  If there is a contract available that requires 3 cubes to fulfill – I am also probably strongly considering that as it can lead to a huge multiplier in the end game.

If you do decide to improve your engine, then of course the next question is which disc to remove.  You have a LOT of options on what to choose, and it can certainly be bewildering at first.  In my starting games, I have simply tried to plan one turn ahead, and if there is an action that I’m planning to do next, I try to improve it with my disc removal this turn.  Then, once you choose which disc you want to place, you also have to choose which occupation card you want to put it on – that determines the recurring benefit from the card – as well as what location you want to put the card in.  Lower rows tend to happen more often but are lesser VPs at the end of the game. 

As you would suspect, early in the game, discs tend to be used to improve game actions. Once you hit the mid-game, then players start to look at which end game bonus scoring abilities they want to use as well as unlocking the influence track markers.  If you can build an engine to reliably produce Influence, the 1VP per influence point is probably the highest scoring of the endgame conditions.  I think the highest I’ve seen so far is 19 points – which is not an insignificant amount when our recent winning scores are 100 to 120 points.

For both the contracts and investments, the whole column placement bit is important.  The investments are maybe the more interesting choice; as you have to trigger an entire column of investments or pass on them – you have to choose your placement (mostly acquisition based) carefully.  If you put too many investments in the same row that have Dune or Forest penalties, you might not be able to trigger them as the game moves on.  Likewise, the order in which you fulfill your contracts can be really important as you are working on the multiplier for the end game bonus. Yes, each card also adds to the multiplier, but if you can get multiple cube contracts, having a column that scores 24 or 27 can be devastating to the opponents.  In my first games, I learned that it is often not worth the work of getting and fulfilling a contract that ends up in a column by itself (1 point only), I would have been better off being more selective with my contract choices and getting a card that multiplies into much more than 1 point.

The game has a really nice arc to it. Things start out nice and slow.  The glass furnaces are full with cubes, and many of the early turns (at least in our game) are taken to play discs/employees. The first Rest phase takes awhile to hit, and then the slots get refilled with nearly the same number of cubes as they started with.  As you progress through the rest phases, the refills get smaller and thus the Rest Phases happen a lot more often.  By the end, you’re only putting one cube in each empty area which means there could potentially be another Rest Phase in as few as two turns!  This pacing works well for me as you have an ever increasing bit of time pressure as you get into the game.  As the cannon moves down the track, you might end up being surprised at just how fast it intersects with a scoring piece.

Each individual turn usually moves quickly.  Again, you only have two options to choose from, and players are usually able to make tentative plans in the time between their turns.  Sure, someone else could take the specific color cube/contract/investment/occupation card that you were going to use – but if your target is still there when your turn comes, you’re often ready to go with your move.  That being said, our early games have been in the 30-40 minutes per player range, which is a bit on the long end for my tastes, but I was pretty involved with the game on every turn – whether planning for my next turn or taking rewards for my employees being activated, etc.

Stephens is a delightful surprise for me from Spiel 2024. It wasn’t even necessarily on my dance card for games to look at, but I’m very happy I did take a look at it and got a chance to play it.  This is the right blend of planning, engine building, resource management and tactical decision making for a complex game, and it is one I look forward to playing all winter..  

Amazon affiliate link: https://amzn.to/4eQlmu7 

Thoughts from other Opinionated Gamers

Mark Jackson – I’m not as enthusiastic as Dale, but it’s a really solid design that doesn’t run overlong while offering a variety of victory paths. (Note: my focus on lots of small factory goods while ignoring influence except as I needed it may not have been the best path.)

Doug Garrett: Shelley and I LOVED this game. Though complex, Dale is right that the choices are straightforward and options (though filled with good angst), are clear. We covered it both in a video on our YouTube channel AND in Episode 956 of the podcast.

Dan B. (2 plays): The core of this game is very old-school Euro with its limited menu of actions which have far-reaching consequences. Overall it’s more of the modern school with the variety of different improvements and scoring abilities you can unlock, but it doesn’t get overly complicated or long.

Tery N: I am enjoying this one. It’s deceptively simple; there are limited actions you can take, but there is still a lot of strategy here. There is not one clear path to victory; 

do you put out more workers or do you focus on contracts and influence?  I am not sure I feel the theme, but that doesn’t really matter to the gameplay, which has enough variety to keep me interested. 

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

• I love it! Dale Y, Doug G.
• I like it. Mark Jackson, Steph H, John P, Dan B. Tery N
• Neutral.
• Not for me…