Belfort
Put your Elves, Dwarves and Gnomes to work in the Village and Guilds of Belfort to collect resources and build up the city!
Elves collect wood from the forest while Dwarves collect stone from the quarry. An Elf and a Dwarf together can collect Metal from the mines, and either one can collect Gold. Build buildings in the 5 districts of the pentagonal city and hire Gnomes to run them to gain their special abilities.
Belfort is a Worker Placement game with Area Majority scoring in each district as well as for each type of worker. Buildings give you influence in the districts as well as income, but taxes increase based on your score so the winning players will have to pay more than those behind! Manage your resources and gold well, choose your buildings wisely, and help build the city of Belfort!
User Reviews (6)
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I must say that I am impressed. Quite simply, this is a really good game. In a way it is the Inception version of a worker placement, a worker placement inside a worker placement game. Really it is more area control, but it feels something like worker placement inside worker placement.
Game Play
You start the game with blue prints that you are going to build to manage the areas you want to control. When you have the resources that you need you can use these blue prints and build the buildings to place on the board, each one offering a benefit of some kind. The board is broken up into five identical districts and victory points are awarded for how many buildings you control in a certain district.
There are three types of workers that you can use to collect the resources that you need for your buildings. Elves are going to collect wood for you, dwarfs stone, and gnomes are special. They are like house elves from Harry Potter residing in the one building you place them in never to leave. But they will work in your building for different benefits.
Other then wood and stone there are other resources that you can collect. Either of the two can collect gold to make purchases. And both together can mine for ore. There are also guilds that you can place on IN the city you are working to control that will give you an extra benefit above and beyond the work of a normal worker. But these are limited and usually go first in the round. Your own personal buildings that you build will also give you resource benefits and the last place you can collect resources is at the trader. At the trader you can swap a resource or two for another at a set ratio depending on what you want to trade.
Mechanics I Enjoyed
Taxes are a neat mechanic in the game. Depending on the total victory points you have earned you will have to pay a certain amount of taxes once a round. It adds a little part where you have to be prepared for what is coming in the future. I think of it as in Agricola when you have to feed your family. Although failure is not as destructive in Belfort
Turn order is a big deal in Belfort as it is in most worker placement games; you want that one spot before anyone else gets there. But there are some benefits that I think I will get to in the tips page.
You can also create Super Elves and Dwarfs that will work twice as hard and bring you double the normal resources then a normal worker.
Pros
• Great artwork that I enjoyed. A new style of art that was fun, bright, and inviting. Art is always a big deal for me. Also the components are very nice and thick cardboard
• The game offers some replayability by having different guilds that you can switch in and out to mix it up or add more interaction.
• The game offers a deep level of play with diverse strategy.
Overall, This is not the game that you would play with your family or new gamers. It is going to be for avid to power gamers, which is most likely what appeals to me. I like that the game is deep enough that you can really sink your teeth into it. Just from what I have seen there are different paths that you can take and focus on that will lead you toward victory, and I really like that in a game.
Played my first game of this tonight.
Components: The components of the game are nice. Everything is printed on fairly thick cardboard and the game pieces are painted wood instead of the usual plastic pieces. It adds a nice touch.
Basics: The basics of the game were fairly easy to learn. This game is a resource management and building game. Play is turn based with each player first placing there workers in various places on the board or on previously built structures,to gain abilities, gold, or resources. Players first choose, turnwise, which abilities to use by placing workers (elves or dwarves) onto the various ability markers and paying any costs associated with them. After all the players have chosen these, players then choose how much of what resources (wood, stone, or metal) to go after with their remaining workers. Play then progresses through each players turn as they harvest resources, activate their chosen abilities, or build buildings.
Strategy: While the basic concept is fairly easy to grasp, strategy and long term thinking are key to winning this game. From the very first moment after choosing who goes first, strategy comes into play. Knowing which buildings to build, which guilds to use, and how to build on the board itself to generate the highest score is a must.
Overall: Overall this game is easy to pick up but should provide enough depth of strategy to make it a long running favorite.
Players are given starting resources and building cards as well as a few workers each as the gnome and resource markets and the board are set up.
Each round has three phases where the players will 1) place their workers, 2) take any resources their workers are collecting, earn income and pay taxes then 3) remove any remaining workers and take any necessary actions.
The action phase is where the majority of the game is played with players gaining extra workers and resources, building their building cards, buying gnomes, taking additional building cards etc.
Each time a building is built a player gets to place one of their house tokens on that building’s symbol in one of the five identical districts.
Scoring takes place 3 times throughout the game with players scoring majority and minority house/district control as well as for the number of accumulated workers and the player with the highest score at the end of the game wins.
This might get me clobbered here, but I have to admit, I’m not much into resource collecting games. It’s just not my thing.
So why do I like Belfort so much? A big part has to be the way in which the different races are intertwined and represented. That part just clicked with me. I had flashbacks to 8-bit adventure games for some reason – cute and logical.
I only got to play a few rounds at Gen Con, but I put this on my wishlist. Maybe it’ll change my mind about the whole game type.
A really enjoyable game which combines multiple mechanics seamlessly to create a challenging and rewarding experience. The worker placement aspect is slight, and generally gives you somewhere to go which is strategically advantageous, the area control is challenging, especially with the point loss for ties, it can require careful consideration to find the optimal placement for yourself while still considering your opponents. It doesn’t seem to play as well with 2 as it becomes far less challenging overall – especially in the worker placement.
not much to say but it’s a good solid game for both none gamers and gamers…. good art works … cute enough to trick my wife to play with me all the time love this game…