House of Fado

• Designers: Vital Lacerda, Joao Quintela Martins
• Publisher: Eagle Gryphon Games
• Players: 1-4
• Age: 14+
• Time: 30-60 mins
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

In Portugal, some restaurants serve traditional Portuguese food alongside performances of fado, a music genre that can be traced to the 1820s in Lisbon, Portugal and is often characterized by mournful tunes and lyrics, often about the sea or the life of the poor, while being infused with a sentiment of resignation, fate, and melancholy.

People spend their entire evenings in these restaurants, called Casa de Fado (“House of Fado”), dining and listening to the music, which speaks about “saudade”, a Portuguese word meaning “longing, nostalgia, yearning, missing something or someone”. Typically, there isn’t any rotation of the tables. Once you enter the restaurant, you stay until it’s closed.

In its traditional form, fado is played by a trio of musicians: a guitarist plays “Guitarra Portuguesa” (a twelve-string Portuguese Guitar); a singer, that is, a “fadista”; and a guitarist playing “Viola de Fado” (classical guitar). The Portuguese guitar has a unique sound, and the chords are played in different bars from those of the classical guitar.

In the game House of Fado, players have to manage their restaurant, attract customers, and contract and promote fadistas and musicians, thus gaining prestige for their fado house. Managers will move their staff members to different places to perform some actions, using the same bump action as in The Gallerist.

First, you must set up the board – placing the musician tiles, Notation tiles, and Fado tiles all in their place.  Customer meeples are placed in the bag: 2 grey, 3 black and 4 brown per player.  Then, these are randomly distributed above the three bottom locations.  Each player gets their own color coded restaurant board and all the bits of their color. The spaces on the Prestige track at the bottom are all covered with cubes.   Each player starts with 3 workers next to their Restaurant board.

The game is played in turns, with players placing one of their Workers on any of the seven Action spaces on the board or on the action space on their personal Restaurant board.  During the first three turns, players place one of the unused meeples that started next to their board in setup.  In every turn thereafter, they must move one of their previously placed meeples to a valid location.

If you place your meeple on a space that is already occupied by an opponent’s meeple, the other player’s piece is moved onto a free Kick-out space, and that player immediately receives the benefit of the space that their meeple was moved onto.  If there is a choice of Kick-out spaces to occupy, the player whose meeple is being moved gets to choose which space (and therefore which benefit) to take.   Note that you cannot kick your own meeple out, and you cannot even place a meeple on an action space if you have a meeple in one of the kick-out spaces for that action.

There are five possible locations to place a worker – and each has its own set of rules, so it’s probably easiest to describe them individually:

1] Musician Market – there are two possible worker spots here; place your meeple in either, and then choose up to 1 tile from the group on the left and up to 1 tile from the group on the right.  The cost of each tile is the sum of the modifier above the tile group printed on the board, and the number from the chart on your restaurant board – dependent on the Fame level of the tile.  If there is no die on your tile, place a “1” die on it when purchasing.   Place the tile on your restaurant board, and take the corresponding Notation tile and place it on the matching space at the bottom of your board. You can only have one musician of each type.   Note that you always have resident musicians preprinted on your board, but you can ‘replace’ them with musician tiles.  If you are kicked out here, you can choose between taking money or adding customers to the bar area of your restaurant.

2] Street – You can choose to add Customers or a Critic to one of your tables in your restaurant.  Customers are all placed at a single empty table in your restaurant.  You start with 2 tables, but can unlock a third table if you progress far enough on the Prestige track at the bottom of your board.  Customers will earn you money and will also provide Applause which will increase the fame of your musicians.   If you want a Critic, you pay a fee as shown by your progress on your Prestige track. The Critic takes up an entire table by itself, and you should note that it does not give applause nor pay for its food.  If you are kicked out here, you can either take money or add a Notation tile to your restaurant board.

3] Rehearsal Room – you can either take a Notation tile or you can write music and score one of the four Fado tiles on display.  To do this, you must discard Notation tiles as shown on the Fado tile.  Score the VPs shown on the Fado tile, and then place that Fado tile on your Restaurant board. If you are the first player to have 3 Fado tiles, you will gain the Star for that area.  If you are kicked out here, you can either gain money, or pay to increase the fame of one of your Musician tiles.

4] Billboard – You can either promote a musician or contract a renowned musician.  To promote someone, it must be a musician with a Fame of at least 2.  Take said tile from your Restaurant board and place it on the appropriate space.  The fame level must be higher than the Musician tile currently on that space; that less famous Musician is returned to the market with its die.  Take the leftmost Prestige cube from your track and place it onto the track of the Billboard space you are using. Score points equal to the number on the die of the newly placed Musician tile.  Alternatively, you could hire a musician from the spaces here, paying a cost as shown on the chart on your Restaurant board based on the fame level of the musician.  It is important to note that there are two action spaces here, and each one only allows you to access two of the three possible sites here.  If you get kicked out here, you could choose money, a customer or a Notation tile.

5] Restaurant board – each player has an action space on their Restaurant board, placing here signifies that you are closing your restaurant for the night.  Each customer pays you a fee based on your current Prestige track standing.  Then, as they applaud, you can use them to increase the fame of your musicians.  The number of customers required to increase Fame is shown on the chart in the upper left of the restaurant board.  Also note that each type of musician can only use certain types of customers to increase their fame – this is denoted above their space in the restaurant.  If you have the first musician of any type to reach Fame 6, you move that musician to the Famous area of the main board and take the star token beneath it.  Also, immediately score 6 points.  Now decide whether to keep your musicians; if you dismiss one, return it to the appropriate Market area with its die unchanged, and also score a number of points equal to its die value.  If you have a critic in your restaurant, return it to the board and also remove two Prestige cubes from your prestige track.  If you are the first player to remove all their cubes from the Prestige track, you will earn the star for this feat.  Finally, discard all the Customers in your restaurant.

Play continues until three stars have been gained by the table. The current round is completed so that all players have had an equal number of turns.   There is now some final scoring:

• Each Musician still in your restaurant scores points equal to its current Fame die level
• Score points for Stars collected (chart on the board)
• Score each of the three specialties in the Billboard area – based on the scoring tile for each area, give points for most, 2nd most and 3rd most cubes in each area.
• Score points for the number of Fado tiles accumulated in the game
• 1 point for every 5 money left over

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

My thoughts on the game

I was attracted to this game when it was sold as “The Gallerist” but not as complex.  While I respect the super-complex designs of Lacerda, I have found that many of them are just more than what I enjoy in a game.  I’ve had the pleasure to meet Joao Quintela Martins in the past, and I’ve always enjoyed his designs, so I thought that this might be a good design for me.  (Also, I should note that I like JQM’s games despite the fact that he supports the second best football team, and greenest team, in Lisbon)

The action selection/worker bumping mechanic is still quite interesting, and this adds a nice layer to the decision making around action selection.  The little bonus actions are easily accomplished, but they can definitely add up over the course of the game.   I feel that money is quite tight in the game, and even a bump bonus of a single coin can be a nice boon at the right time.

There is so much to think about here.  Do you get a critic to help you increase your reputation so you can get more tables in your restaurant?  Do you hire a new musician for your band or replace one of your current artists?   Letting a musician go can score you VP.  Replacing one also helps you on the area majority game for the artist bonuses.

All of the actions weave together nicely here.  Rarely is there a turn where I feel like I can’t improve my situation – more likely, I have a number of choices that look good, and it’s a matter of deciding which one suits me best.  There is a fair amount of reading your opponent’s intentions, as oftentimes the best play amongst seemingly equal choices is one that your opponent also wanted to do.

We did think at first that players earlier in turn order might have an advantage – there was a bit of a groupthink about going for critics early, and this meant that the player last in turn order was left in the cold on that – but there are so many other ways (i.e. bumping) that players can catch up on that it seems to even out.  

As the game winds to a close, keep a close eye on the star situation for each player. Once someone has two stars, the game can end abruptly, and it stinks to be one round short for your plans when someone gets their third star.  

House of Fado is a great puzzle of a game, and one that works smoothly.  Sure, it’s not as complicated as The Gallerist, but for some (including myself), this is clearly a feature and not a bug.  While still at the upper end of my personal complexity comfort zone, this one plays so smoothly that it stands a chance of making the cut into the permanent collection.

Thoughts from other Opinionated Gamers

Dan B. (1 play): I think there is a disadvantage to going later in turn order, which has nothing to do with critics or any other groupthink – you have fewer chances to get bumped and therefore get the extra actions from that. This would be easily fixable with some sort of compensation, which someone should have done in development.

But the game has more serious issues from my perspective. At the start your actions are very constrained both by lack of money and the fact that some actions are completely useless early on; this is an example of a game which should start somewhere around the third round, with players having more stuff to work with. However, while it’s better later I still found it unengaging, as you just cycle through pretty similar sequences of actions with minor variations. That all being said, I’d be willing to try it again, although not with four players.

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

• I love it!
• I like it. Dale, Derek J
• Neutral. Dan B.
• Not for me…