Clippers, San Juan
I have always had a softer spot than most for the little guy/omega wolf. As a result, I have always wanted to give Clippers a try, especially as I found out about it during my early infatuation with eurogames. Tonight Chris brought it over and four of us gave it a spin.
In a nutshell, it is very similar to most of Alan Moon’s games. It is a remake of Santa Fe and Santa Fe Rails and it shares elements with at least Elfenland and Ticket to Ride. I have not played Union Pacific, but I cannot believe it is too far away either. Having said that, the game it most resembles to me is Expedition. I just checked Bruno Faidutti’s review of Clippers, and he agrees with me as he has listed all those games as similar.
Unfortunately, I believe all those games I listed are superior to Clippers and, at a glance, the ratings on the Geek seem to agree with me. However, the problem is not the legendary poorness of Clipper’s components, it is in the gameplay.
Some of the reviews, particularly Greg Schloesser’s, are scathing about the component quality and even Alan Moon himself apologised for it in a BoardGameSpeak. I disagree that they are that bad. The flag circles and counters are too small, but they are not terrible enough to reject the game outright. We found Greg Aleknevikus’ quick set up charts pretty superfluous. It only took a few minutes. Setting up Cobra and discerning the Tiger battalions was far harder, just to mention the last game I played. In addition, the board itself is very attractive, and the route markings are visible enough.
On the other hand, the gameplay was too slow for the chaos caused by the other players. In that respect it reminds me of Maharaja, but that is a more interesting, original game. Towards the end of the game Clippers slowed right down as everyone min/maxed their placements. A timer might improve this, but I would still rather play Expedition any time, even though the German rules translation has big flaws. In fact, playing Clippers reminded me of how much I would like to play the latest English language National Geographic Expedition version, as they will have probably fixed the rules.
In this case, the hype was overstated, but I agree it is an average game. – 5/10
We finished with a relaxing quick game of San Juan. I still have not got this one’s strategy tied down in my head yet. I think I need to play it on BSW a few times in a row, so I can get it fixed.