Dewan

• Designers:  Johannes Goupy, Yoann Levet 
• Publisher: Space Cowbows
• Players: 2-4
• Age: 10+
• Time: 40 min
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

 “Our territory was limited, and resources were scarce, we marched from camp to camp in pursuit of victory.” —Traditional Dewan song

Dewan is a fast-paced, competitive area-placement game for 2-4 players that features racing, placement, and hand strategy. During play, you collect terrain cards and spend them to strategically place your camps on the territory. Make the best use of terrain and resources so that you can satisfy the requirements on your story tiles. Along the way, gather berries and master fire to earn additional points.

To start the game, build the map by choosing a random starting tile for each player and then N number of neutral tiles, making sure to put Berry tiles on the appropriate hexes.  Also, choose a scenario tile for the game (to provide end game scoring rules).  Each player gets a tribe board and the 9 Camps in their color – 8 are placed at the bottom of the player board and the last is placed on the starting tile for that player.

A display of 5 story tiles is made above the board, with the rest forming a deck. The Terrain deck is shuffled, a display of 6 face up cards is made and 2 cards are dealt to each player as their starting hand.  A start player is chosen, then in reverse player order, each player chooses a Story tile from the display or the top of the facedown deck and puts it in the first slot on their player board.

The game is now played in turns around the table until at least one player has placed all their camps at the end of a round.  On a turn, the active player must either Take 2 Cards or Place a Camp.

When you choose cards, you must take cards from the display AND they must be adjacent to each other in the display.  You are not allowed to draw from the deck.  Replace any chosen cards with new ones from the deck.  There is no hand limit, so you can always choose to take cards.

If you choose to play a Camp, choose a non-Water location where you want to place a new Camp – and place the leftmost available Camp from your board.  To pay for it, trace a path of terrains from any of your previously played Camps.  You must discard a card for every terrain on this path, including the start and finish.   One exception is that a single Water card can be used for as many contiguous water terrains as you like.  Additionally, if you traverse through a hex with an opponent’s camp in it, they receive the card that you played for that terrain.   Further, any time a starting hex is paid for – any card can be used for that space.

If the destination space has Berry tokens in it, take one.  Now, look at your player board to see if that Camp placement gives you a special ability – this could be getting an additional Story tile for your board, allowing you to slide a Terrain card under your board or signalling the end of the game.

Story Tiles are essentially ways to score points – if you have placed 1 Camp in an appropriate location corresponding to those shown on your Story Tile, you can score that tile.   You may need to have a camp in a certain color terrain OR have it adjacent to water or one of the three special icons found on the borders between hexes.  You can also use the cards which have been placed under your board to complete these requirements.  When you complete a story tile, you slide it upwards on your board (and draw a Terrain card as a bonus).

The game ends at the end of a round when at least one player has placed all 9 of their Camps. Unfinished Story tiles are discarded.  Points are scored as followed:

• Points on completed Story Tiles
• 1 point per flame icon on Story Tiles and on cards tucked under your board
• 4 points to the player(s) with the most flame icons scored
• 4 points for each group of 2+ connected camps on the board
• 2 points for each Berry token collected and shown on cards tucked under the board

The player with the most points wins, ties broken in favor of the player with the most terrain cards in their hand at the end of the game.

The rules also include four different variants.  There is a Team Play scenario which creates a 2v2 competition. Each player still has their own color, but some of the scoring now requires pairs of Camps or Berries with one coming from each player.  Three additional scenarios require extra rules and components – changing how the things happen during the course of the game. There is a Downpour scenario (involving the spread of water markers), the Volcano scenario (with spreading lava markers) and the Lake Villages scenario (which allows you to place villages actually on water spaces).

My thoughts on the game

Well, the designer pedigree of the game (Goupy = Faraway, Levet = Turing Machine) and the publisher pedigree had me instantly interested in this game when I saw it at SPIEL.  Also, the enthusiasm of the publisher was infectious.  It’s not often that I take a full demo of a game at the Wednesday press event at Essen, but the Space Cowboys people were so excited for it that we went through the whole game and played a couple of turns!

This has become one of my favorite games from the fair.  I really like the tight confines of the story tile fulfillment.  You only get 9 camps and 3 cards under your board, and with these 12 things, you have to be able to score as many of the story cards as possible.  Because of this, you really need to try to find tiles that work well with each other.  Getting cards that share components is usually one of my strategies.

You do need a bit of luck as you are forced to draw a new story tile with every other camp placement in the game – and there are times where I have actually considered stalling on a camp placement in order to wait out the other players hoping that they will refresh the story tile market so that I have better tiles to choose from.  Of course, by doing this, I do risk losing the chance to place a camp in the spot that I want!

Board play can be tight, and while you’ll save cards if you stay near your other camps, you’ll lose out of the group bonus.  You score 4 points for each grouping of 2 or more contiguous camps – and if you have all your camps in a single blob, you’d only get the single four point bonus for it.  

The game therefore causes you to want to expand across the map; but the small number of hexes ensures that you’ll always be in close contact with your opponents; and you’ll want to try to avoid using your opponent controlled spaces when possible because they’ll end up getting the cards you spent to travel there, and that will only make their next turn that much better.

There is plenty of competition for spaces in the game, and if you keep a close eye out on the cards that people are drawing, you might be able to figure out where they are trying to go, and this could help you decide if you want to beat them to a space (or whether they are a threat to your plans).

The base game has been great, and honestly I haven’t strayed much from it – but I do like the fact that there are three other scenarios included in the game for me to try out if/when I get tired of the base game.  

The box has an interesting self-storage system where you put together a grid of punchboard to give yourself compartments to hold everything.  It works really well with the exception of the small tokens, and I’ve had to use a spare small baggie to hold those in place as they would otherwise migrate around the box.  Otherwise, the box organization is really quite good.

At the moment, this would be my personal front runner for Kennerspiel des Jahres.  It is a very elegant game with a simple turn structure, but each game has a lot of tension and packs a lot of gaming entertainment into a short time frame.

Thoughts from other Opinionated Gamers

Doug G.: Shelley and I really wanted to like this one, but it fell flat – at least with 2 players. It might be better with more, but we didn’t give it that chance.

Mark Jackson: I’m with Dale on this one. My initial elevator pitch description of Dewan was “civ-building meets Ticket to Ride”… but with some more time to think about it, it’s actually closer to Web of Power/Kardinal & Konig with the combination of drafting cards and placing settlements on the map. This 40 minute game comes with five different scenarios (we only played the basic one) and has very nice production… and falls solidly in the well-done super-filler category. (Note: per Doug’s comment, both of my plays were with the full complement of four players.)

Dan B.: I liked the system quite a bit (with four players). I think the first scenario would get a bit stale after a few plays, but presumably that’s why there are others. I might well get to “I love it” after trying the others.

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

• I love it! Dale, Mark Jackson
• I like it. Dan B., Chris W, John P
• Neutral. Doug G, Ryan P
• Not for me…