Baghdad Prototype Preview

TL;DR

I would classify Baghdad as a mid-weight euro, but with a disclaimer that you can get lost in a bit of analysis paralysis, as there is a lot of advance planning required. You can’t just haphazardly play cards and do actions if you want to do well.

The game reminds me a bit of Viscounts of the West Kingdom and Newton - in a good way! Both are games that I adore. One reason is the card play, as symbols on cards you have in play will limit your actions. The other is the way you lock in certain scoring criteria as you sail with your ships and build the central palace.

So you get interesting card play, rondel movement on the central board, lots of bonuses to trigger, and scoring conditions you can choose for yourself. There are fun combos to be had. Just as you would expect from a game designed by the duo of Fabio Lopiano and Nestore Magnone.

Gameplay

We played a preview copy, so components and rules could change - well, the rulebook is actually a rough word document for now, so there most probably will be some changes.

I don’t want to go too deep into details, but I do want to explain some of the rules to give you a better picture of the game and the kinds of decisions you’ll face on a turn-to-turn basis.

The card play

Each turn, cards on your tableau will slide to the right and you play a new one. At most you will have 3 cards active, and the symbols on these cards will limit what you can do. Whenever a card slides off it is activated if you match its requirements, either giving you a bonus (if it was a day card) or end game points (if it was a night card).

At the end of your turn you choose a new card from the display of cards. There is no deck-building however, each card will only be played once in a game.

Whenever you play a card with a ship symbol you can move your ships, which is reminiscent of the students in Newton. You can sail down branching paths, gaining Goods and eventually locking in your ships to different end game scoring criteria.

The actions

The gameboard is a rondel made up of 4 quadrants. After playing your new card you move clockwise to the next quadrant and do an action there. (You can also use Step tokens to skip quadrants). In a quadrant you can either take a hexagonal tile, construct a building, or help build the big palace in the middle. All of these require the aforementioned symbols from your cards.

Hex tiles
The hex tiles go onto your board in a slot of your choosing, but restricted by the amount of symbols. There are 4 types:
- Students need Abacus symbols and give you a one-time bonus symbol for the future. 
- Patients need Rod symbols and give you the depicted Goods token. 
- Books require Quill symbols and let you claim useful bonuses from the Wisdom area.
- Artifacts require Anvil symbols and only give you end game points.

As you fill adjacent slots with tokens you get to activate the bonuses between them, with the more pricey slots also giving you valuable Palace building bonus actions. I also mentioned the cards having requirements on them: these are mostly about having specific amounts from one of these token types - so when playing the cards you are both looking for symbols you need and requirements you can complete. 

Buildings
If you have the Brick symbols and the coins needed, you can place down one of the buildings from the display. From then on, each time you are in that quadrant you can activate the building in addition to your normal action. There are 5 levels of buildings, so with each subsequent build action you get access to more powerful abilities.

Palace
This action also requires Brick symbols. Players build the palace together by placing wooden pieces in the middle of the board. Depending on where you take the piece from (marking it with an Architect meeple) you are also choosing the end game scoring criterion there, and you have to pay the depicted Goods tokens. Also, when placing a piece you get the bonus you cover up.

Basically that’s your turn. Move clockwise to the next quadrant, do an action, get a new card. There is one additional thing though: you have to pay Coins for Student tiles and Favor for Patient tiles next to you on the board at the end of your turn. I am not sure what the thematic explanation is, but this is quite a big restriction for deciding what to do.

Resource Management 

There are only Coins and Goods of different types, but managing these is essential. Coins are used to place out buildings and to unlock new ships (as you keep locking old ships in ports at the end of their tracks) - and also to pay for Students next to your meeple. Coins are easy to spend but harder to come by.

Goods are either exchanged for Coins in ports, or paid to build Palace pieces. You always want to have different types - when given a choice it is often hard to decide which one to get. (At least we often had some regrets when we realized later we chose poorly.)

There is also the Lopiano-staple Favor track in the game. You will keep gaining or losing Favor for different reasons as you play, but most importantly when you are in the upper half, you can spend down to gain bonuses which are sometimes life saving.

I guess you could count the Wild tokens and Step tokens as resources as they are very useful and worth saving. Wild tokens give you much needed symbols when you need them, and Steps help you get through the rondel quicker.

Game End

You continue playing in turn order, until after a while the deck of cards runs out. You then just continue up until your very last cards are played, then you proceed to end game scoring. There is no in-game point track, everything is counted at the end. 

There are 8 scoring conditions that you choose by going to specific ports and building specific pieces of the palace, but there are some more point sources like level 5 buildings, Night cards or Artifacts. 

General Thoughts

We came into Baghdad expecting a lot thanks to the designer duo, and we are satisfied with the gameplay. There are actually 3 small modules mentioned in the rulebook, but unfortunately our prototype doesn’t have the components for those.

The cards are an engaging system for the action selection. You really have to plan in advance, especially when going for an action needing 3-4 of the same symbol. Often you can’t just do things, you have to prepare by playing cards in the correct order. It’s especially fun having to not just look at the symbols but effectively working on the requirements, or taking the bonuses you will get from the cards into account. 

It’s satisfying as your player board is filled up. With the first few tiles not much happens, but then later you start triggering the bonuses between tiles. You also fill the quadrants with buildings so you can do more things each turn. I enjoy how elements of the game are interconnected.

I didn’t really mention the theme, as it could’ve easily been a European medieval city or a space station too. It does the job though and the overall aesthetics and table presence is already very nice, despite being a prototype. My only nitpick is the black screen printing on the meeples - I think I prefer when they are painted white instead (hope it gets changed in the final version).

The game has a nice simple flow, though sometimes turns can be slower if you have to think a few turns in advance. We only played 2p games and they can go for 2 hours - though we aren’t the fastest players out there. I think that could definitely be lowered with more practice. 

We are definitely intrigued to play the final copy whenever the game is fulfilled.