First Impressions Peloponnes

 One of the reasons for doing a first impressions section of this blog was to cover games that I won’t ever play again, because I don’t want to. The game could be dull, convoluted or just plain broken. It’s a testament to how many great games there are out there that there’s very few games I won’t touch after just one game. However, you do have permission to shoot me if I ever attempt another game of Peloponnes.

Peloponnes is a civilisation building game where you take command of one of the city states of ancient Greece and attempt to construct the most powerful state in Greece. In fact though what you’ll be trying to do is survive!

You should never judge a book by its cover but and in the same way should never judge a game entirely by its components. This means that when I first saw Peloponnes I tried to quell the wave of boredom that took over me as I gazed upon a box full of cheap grey card and wooden cubes. This is one of the most uninspiring looking games around. Not only is the game made from a pallet of grey but the game uses small iconography that is difficult to understand at first.

Surely with such dull looking components my evening’s gaming can only get better. No. Each turn players bid on a small selection of upgrades for their community. You have to bid on something and some of the upgrades are really good, which means everyone bids on them. So far so good. The problem is on the second turn you can’t just buy any upgrade, no they have to link the upgrade to your previous one. One wrong choice or just plain bad luck and you end up with a pretty useless technology tree. Then there are the disasters. Not only that but some of the upgrades require building materials as well as the bidding currency. Every so often a natural disaster will hit your civilisation; it’s not a case of if but when. Certain upgrades can defend against them but there’s a good chance you’re going to lose a high percentage of your population or resources to a flood or volcano. At the end of the game points are totted up based on how many materials, goods and population you have. Like all good games of its ilk there’s a myriad of places that you can claim these points from.

My problem at this point is that when I lost I had no idea where I went wrong. I lost two games in a row and couldn’t pin-point any particular errors. A game shouldn’t make you bewildered as to how not to lose so much. I can imagine after five games you start to get used to how the tech tree works and what has a better chance of building your civilisation but after two games I was so bored and frustrated I wasn’t interested in playing again.

It's all just a bit grey.

You could accuse me of being overly harsh on Peloponnes, if you’re a fan of euro style games and bidding mechanics then you may find that it is right up your street. I however, found the game dull, devoid of fun and a bloody difficult. There are too many great games out there waiting to be played and I don’t have time for boring games.