Today was a day of some good gaming; firstly of Cargo Noir, our new Days of Wonder game we got from Andy at Battlequest - a game based on criminal families and cargo smuggling. Now depending on your sensibilities will depend on if you will like the theme of this game; remember, it's criminal families smuggling items of ill repute, such as guns, cigars, gems, ivory, cars etc. The idea of the game, which seems fairly fast paced, but does take about an hour and a half to play, is that each family has three cargo ships to start with and 7 coins. The 'board' is based around several ports throughout the World each with differing numbers of spaces to hold illegal goods, such as New York with three spaces, Rotterdam with 4 and Cape Town with 1 for example. There is also Macao, a general trading port with 8 spaces for items and the Casino.
There are also a series of cards with purchase amounts on them with victory points as well. A typical turn revolves around resolving the cargo ship events of the previous turn, selling your items in your family cargo area (a card display in front of the player) and finally re-establishing where your ships will go this turn.
The game actually starts on the 3rd phase of a pre-first turn; all players get a chance to send their ships out to locations around the world, to the casino and/or to Macao. After this the game begins with phase 1 - resolve the previous ship placements - a ship placed at the casino wins 2 coins from the casino; a ship placed at Macao allows the owner to gain one random coin from the bag or to swap an item from the eight listed for one in your warehouse and any ships at a port wins the cargo there for the coins they agreed to pay for it (see phase 3) unless they are in competition with someone else (see phase 3), otherwise they have to decide if the cargo is worth upping the stakes again the competition (paying at least one more coin) or pulling out and using the money elsewhere.
In phase 2 of a player turn, the player decides to cash in any cargo for victory cards. There is a two-tier scheme for cashing in, mixed and similar. A chart indicates how much 1, 2, 3, 4 etc mixed cards are worth and how much 1, 2, 3, 4 etc similar cards are worth (more!). A player can cash in say 3 jems, 2 cars and a cigar box for x number of points which can be used to buy typically criminal items - villas, night clubs, dive bars, right up to a Principality!
Finally in the 3rd phase, the player then re-designates where their cargo ships will go for the next turn, placing bid amounts down for cargo or attempting to outbid other players for more precious cargo they want.
It's a great game of bid and outbid, forcing opponents out of the bidding process whilst trying to be a high roller in the criminal underworld with purchases of illegal goods and items. There were several queries we had about the game even in our third play - such as according to the rules when cashed in, items don't go back into the bag but we found we were running out of items 2/3rd of the way through; amongst others. I'll question this and others on boardgamegeek to find out how to play the game better. Check on the forums at http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/90305/cargo-noir
All in all a good game; we played it twice - with 3 then 5 players ranging from 8 to adult and was enjoyed by all.
We also had another game of "7 Wonders" 5 players which again was just thoroughly enjoyed - a real hit game. Anita won for the first time with a crushing 59 points, just hedging Roshni out (with 57) as she had -3 for Military Victories.
End game for Cargo Noir - my family (bottom) wins!!
