by: Michael Barnes

I showed up at Swamp Castle, one of my usual gaming venues, to find a game featuring a sepia-toned image of Manhattan island and Brooklyn on the table, ready to play. Noticing a very distinct font and wooden figures with fedoras and trench coats, I added up the evidence and said “hey, cool, this must be some kind of gangster game.” I looked closer, and upon seeing an image of Brando on the Corleone player card, the puppeteer logo, and the Paramount Pictures logo on the box, I realized that it wasn’t just a gangster game. It was a game based on The Godfather.

Released at Essen 2010 as a German-only release from Kosmos, it is unlikely that it will ever see US release almost certainly due to licensing expenses. It’s a damn shame, too, because this is an excellent, accessible German-style family game with a great setting. Fans of the novel or films as well as gamers interested in a quality hour-long title with ample theme, competition, and strategy would find lots to enjoy in the game. It’s part of Kosmos’ hit-or-miss line of literary adaptations (Witch of Salem, Dracula, and a game based on Pillars of the Earth are among them), and like the others it’s designed by Michael Rieneck. I’m not the biggest fan of his designs as I find them very restrictive, but in this game I think he’s found the right balance of control, limitation, and variable strategy.

(Image courtesy www.ratgeberspiel.de)

Each player heads up a crime family: the Barzinis, Tattaglias, Stracci, and of course the Corleones. The goal of the game is ultimately to make the most money off of family-owned businesses, blackmail, favors, and other illicit income sources. So that key part of the organized crime theme is there, and it’s metered in glorious paper money—no chips, counters, or tracks.

More significant in terms of illustrating the Godfather theme, family relationships and political power are crucial. Each turn is prefigured by the draw of a narrative event card that both affects some facet of gameplay, also moving a black car around the city, presumably transporting the Godfather as he makes his rounds and protects local ventures from interference. These cards also bump up a marker on either the Family or Influence path. There are only seven turns, so what happens is that one of the two paths completes its four-space trek first, and any player who has not maxed out their personal Family or Influence tracks isn’t eligible to win. It’s a neat concept that encourages players to balance family and business, and if that’s not The Godfather then I don’t know what is. This is a game where an abstracted family wedding imparts a special bonus token--just the same as getting a politician in your pocket.

Gameplay is driven by a unique dice allocation system. Each turn, a player rolls a set of four multi-colored dice. One die out of the pool is selected to go on a resource generation spot, and all on-board businesses that match that number produce income—a la Settlers. The pool is re-rolled, and the player proceeds down four rows each offering a number of choices, placing a die in each slot and matching the color to its thematic function. The grey die is for family, the red die for influence, white is for income sources and black is for foul play, including sending rival gangster pieces into the Hudson. There are 12 unique actions that are all thematic and sensible, and “Puppetmaster” results can also be unloaded into spaces that bump up both Family and Influence. It’s a solid system that sort of splits the difference between freeform choice and proscribed decision points, offering the player ample ability to choose actions and gamble on the rerolls to get a better result.

On-board play is somewhat static, derived from a simple worker placement mechanic. Manhattan is divided into districts, with each district featuring a couple of business sites- rackets, smuggling, gambling halls, loan shark, and so forth. Having a gangster piece there grants ownership, but it also makes them vulnerable to FBI raids, which might send your boys to the penitentiary for a spell, or worse. These businesses are the primary source of income, but the game offers other ways to earn a buck. In my game, I was run out of business by other players but wound up fixing fights, calling in favors from family friends, and extorting other players via blackmail.