In service of the Tsar
Have you heard of ⚒️The First Tsar: Ivan the Terrible? I mean the board game here of course. 🙂 It is a competitive euro with 2 main components: action-planning with worker placement and area majority. Both are cleverly intertwined, and as the game is quite stingy with turns and resources you have to make the best out of both. 😉
A round begins with a planning phase, with players sending out worker meeples to 1 of 5 actions. They don’t actually resolve the actions yet, that only happens after every worker is placed. 🧐 You can choose to put some coins under your worker so they can activate the bonus of the chosen action, though you might get outbid. Finally, each action has a card assigned to it, showing which part of the map you can send your worker to later, to take part in the majority contests. When you activate your workers you don’t have to do so in the same order as you planned them.
There are 5 possible actions but only 3 workers, and a game consists of 4 rounds, so that means you will do only 12 actions. 😮 Thus you have to consider every choice well!
The actions let you:
1️⃣Place or move warriors on the map
2️⃣Produce basic resources with 3 cities where you are present
3️⃣Draw or complete project cards
4️⃣Trade resources and receive luxury goods
5️⃣Acquire Estate or Title cards
☝️You can earn points by completing projects, which is also the primary reason you need to collect resources. Estate 🏠 cards lend you activatable abilities, while Titles 📜 give special scoring goals. Of course the main focus is the area majority ⚔️ on the map. At the end of each round the 4 sectors of the map are checked to see who has the most influence, with the 2 leading players getting the region’s bonus. After the 2nd and 4th round there are additional scoring steps too.
💬The First Tsar is a constant dance with the pieces on the map, workers in the five action chambers and markers on the Tsar track which resolves all ties. It is a somewhat tight albeit fun game. The meeples and resources have cool wooden tokens, and the footprint of the game is refreshingly small compared to similar euros. I’d say it is definitely worth a try! 🙃
