inconsequential ruminations

I finally managed to persuade Vanessa, my wife, to play a game with me. Originally, we wanted to play West End Adventures cooperatively, but we ended up playing Canal Grande as we ran out of time.

The two previous times I had played Canal Grande, it was intriguingly confusing, but this time it was much clearer and I was able to translate that into a succinct rules explanation with plenty of examples. I think Ness enjoyed it a lot.

Canal Grande is the two-player card game sequel to San Marco and is also designed by Alan Moon and Aaron Weissblum. The aim of the game is to capture districts of Venice, represented by cards. Players alternate dividing cards into two piles. The other player then chooses the pile they prefer. There are two types of cards:

• Action cards, including:

** district cards, which are used to capture districts in a battle, called a vote, like in Ivanhoe or Taj Mahal.

** spy cards, which allow players to take two extra cards from the deck.

** traitor cards, which allow players to steal cards from opponent’s hands.

** doge cards, which allow a player to initiate a vote, using district cards.

** gondola cards, which allow players to substitute different districts when in a vote.

• Number cards, which determine when a round ends. The first player to reach 10 points, finishes the round and is forced to be dealer next round. The player under 10 points gets a bonus of three action cards.

Action cards are good and number cards are bad. The skill of the game is in evaluating how valuable the actions cards are to you, balancing that against the number cards and trying to steer the choice of your opponent.

Rather like Battleline, you either have to win one vote in each of the six districts, or four votes in one district.

I enjoy this game a lot. It is not as elegant as Lost Cities or Battle Line, but it pretty unique. I have always found the dilemma of splitting a pie to be interesting (so would you if you had as bossy a sister as me), so maybe it is not surprising I enjoy Canal Grande. It is a pity the art on the cards is so horrible. I think it would be more popular otherwise. I have played a few Adlung-Spiele games and on the whole have not been impressed, but this and Ebbe & Flut are good. There is a four-player partnership variant, but I suspect most will prefer to just play San Marco instead. I would still like to try it though.

Mikko points out a problem with the luck involved in having to have a card in a district before being able to participate in a vote. Apparently this rule can be left out if this worries you. It does not yet, but I won the game with four uncontested cards of the same district, so it might after a while.

Bruno Faidutti also suggests an interesting variant:

My opinion is that there are not enough district cards in Canal Grande – or too many special cards. If you have a second game at hand, take two cards for each district from it, and add them to your deck. It will make the biddings more dynamic.

I will probably buy another copy to try this variant and the four-player game, as it is so cheap.