BOMBYX Histrio Board Game

In a strange, cartoonish fantasy land inhabited by anthropomorphic animals, you are trying to put on plays for the King's annual drama festival. Over the course of two "seasons" you'll need to send emissaries to the eight cities of the land, where they will try to recruit actors and acrobats, and solicit money from patrons of the arts, so that at the end of each season you'll have the money (and talent) to put on a play. Trouble is, if two players visit a city at the same time, things go a bit wrong. And to complicate things further, at the end of the season the king will either be in the mood for tragedy or comedy. Your play will be mostly one or the other. Woe betide you if you misjudge what he's feeling...The bits in this game are very pretty: There's a little cardboard theatre stage with a rotating backdrop, miniature plastic fantasy airships (called "Caravels") which represent your emissaries, tiny cockerels as theatre managers, and nice plastic coins. Each player gets a set of eight "travel cards" numbered 1 - 8, one for each of the cities, a set of the Caravels and three of the cockerel "managers" in their colour. There's a long, thin mini-board representing the eight cities, again numbered 1 - 8, and a deck of "encounter" cards, which are shuffled and one card placed beneath each of the cities. There are three kinds of these cards: actors, acrobats, and patrons of the theatre. Each player starts with 3 coins - and coins are the victory points in this game. There's also a deck of "secret request" cards which can give you points at the end of each "season", if you satisfy the conditions on them - more on that later.On each turn, each player selects one of the travel cards they have left in their hand and plays that card face down on the table. When all have chosen, the cards are revealed, and each player places a caravel underneath the city they chose. The cities are then resolved from left to right, and players gain all cards and their benefits from the city they chose, if, and *only* if, they're alone there. The three kinds of card that players can get have different effects: Patron cards just yield the coins printed on them; Acrobats are placed in front of the player and have special powers (like like enabling you to block other players from a specific city for one turn; or take the cards from a city where you're not alone) that can be used once per season; and finally, Actors have experience values of 1 - 5, and enable the players to put on their plays for the season. They're either comedians (gold) or tragedians (red), and each may give a special benefit when it's taken - steal a coin from another player, for example, or place one of the player's cockerel Managers on the stage, and take as many coins as there are then managers (of all players) on the stage. Less-experienced actors give better benefits, as a trade-off. The player may choose send one of the actor cards just acquired to the discard pile to influence the king's mood, and all other actors are placed in front of the player as part of their "troupe" for this season's play.If more than one player chose the same city, though, it's bad news: all the encounter cards are discarded, and any actors in the pile influence the kings mood according to their experience and type. In compensation the affected players get a "secret request" card each. The king's mood is very important, and, sadly, he's a right moody old blighter: he changes his preference like the wind, because actor cards get discarded quite a bit. When this happens, the needle above the king's mood dial on top of the theatre stage moves, one segment per experience level of the actor discarded, in the direction of the actor's speciality, comedy or tragedy. If a combination of tragedians and comedians is discarded, the needle moves the net amount in favour of the higher total minus the lower: if there's a 3-value tragedian and a 1-value comedian being discarded, say, the needle moves 2 points towards the tragedy side. The mood indicator has two halves, one for each mood, and if the needle traverses from one half to the other, another fun thing happens. The back of the theatre has a backdrop on a spindle, showing a comedy or tragedy performance. At the start of the game when you flip the coin to show which mood the king is initially in, you spin the backdrop to the appropriate performance. If the king's mood changes to the other kind during the game, the backdrop is spun round, satisfyingly knocking off any managers present on the stage, which return to their owners.Once all cities are resolved, a new turn begins. A card is added to each city from the encounter deck (in this way, cities can build up a few cards, making them more appealing), and it's the next turn, unless the encounter deck's run out, in which case it's the end of the season, and a scoring takes place, based on the king's mood: if your troupe of actors better matches how he's feeling you get many more coins. You can also then play one of your special request cards at this time, which give bonus coins based on a condition (like "10 coins if your troupe doesn't match the kings mood", or "5 coins if you only have actors of 4 or 5 value"). If it's the end of the first season, you set up for the second season similar to at the start, and do it all again. If it's the end of the second season, you see who has the most coins, and they win.Histrio is a light, family game, but for a family game there's still a fair amount to think about. Second guessing other players is never easy, but you've got to try, because you REALLY don't want to be in the same city as someone else too often. It also can be quite tricky to predict how the king's mood will change, since as soon as other players see you building up a nice lot of tragedians, say, they'll likely start sending lots of comedians to the court (unless they too are invested in tragedy). You can try to keep a bit of balance through the season, and then suddenly make a last-minute grab for the actors you need for your play to meet the king's mood, but that's risky too, as the game moves way quicker than it at first appears, partly, I think, because of the simultaneous card-play, so you have to be careful about timing - leave it too long to acquire the actor you need to get the king's favour, and you may miss out altogether! All in all, a fun, well illustrated and produced game.