PLEASE NOTE: This was a playtest of a prototype version. Components, mechanics and such might change in the final product.
What an honor! Being a part of the first public playtest of <PERSON> latest title, 504 (to be released at Essen this year), meeting the man himself and getting my copies of Power Grid and Friday signed - I couldn't be happier! Forgive me if some parts are a bit unclear, I’m exhausted but too excited to sleep!
504 is a game for 2-4 players that consists of 9 modules (wargame, pick up & deliver, majorities, racing, exploration, privileges, shares, streets and plants). Three of these modules are chosen and the order determines the main objective/scoring (primary), how economy works (secondary) and flavor added to the game (tertiary). Components consisted of a number of discs, meeples, cubes, player markers, roads in different player colors as well as neutral discs, terrain tiles (with different sides), a die, resource tiles, money, a fifth set of player components for specific games (I believe shares module uses these, but does not allow for a fifth player) and so forth. I got to try two games that I will describe to give you an idea of how combinations of modules work:
Exploring > Plants > Streets: Players started on a single tile with all the other tiles (forest, desert, city, sea, plains, grasslands and mountains) put to the side in their respective piles, some of which had a token marking 1-6 on it. We started with $60 to spend on workers ($10 each) which could be used to take various actions through exhausting (lying sideways) or expending. For example, to explore we would declare where we wanted to explore and expend a workers, rolling a die to find out what tile is discovered on that spot. The numbered tokens change over the course of the game on different factors such as how far away the area you are exploring is to the closest city.
Workers can be used to move into tiles, collect victory points on tiles, build plants (secondary – for income, bonus money for players who produced different resources from the different types of tiles in addition to a base of $20) and building roads (tertiary – allowed for easier movement). I might be missing some uses for the workers. Different tiles cost different amounts of workers (1 for grasslands, 2 for forests, 3 for mountains) and fisheries could be created adjacent to water tiles.
There are a few more mechanics to the game and it ends when every tile has been used. Some of us spread out, covering a lot area, some kept their workers together and others focused on streets to allow for easy movement. It was interesting to see different strategies used and as you would expect, where some lacked on victory points, made up for it with stronger income for a better late-game. 349
Sadly we didn’t get to finish as a player had to leave and we wanted to try new modules before the night was over. This game might be about an hour and a half to two hours with experienced players.
Race > Pick Up & Delivery > Privileges: The board was set up before playing. Some tiles (I think just water), were placed in predetermined areas while the rest were shuffled and filled in almost like a diamond. The ten city tiles had different facings from the previous game we had played and on them had a combination of different resources on them. If I remember correctly, each of them was missing one resource e.g. wheat, cows, ore, fish but with lumber missing (I might be forgetting one of the resources but I feel this is correct with two city tiles of each type).
Each player started on a different city tile marked with a disc of their color. To win, we had to be the first player to visit the 9 other cities (also the game end condition). The missing resource printed on each city tile had four tokens of that resource on it. Players have a car which can hold up to one good and can be sold at a city tile that a) has that resource printed on it and b) has not had that resource sold on that city before (marked by putting the resource chit face down to cover the resource printed on the tile). The value of goods are reflected on a chart that changes as players sell goods (sold resource moves down three increments of $10 and all other goods move up one increment). Again players would also receive a base amount of $20 at the end of their turn.
Players start with $80 and can upgrade their vehicle once per turn. For $80 the car can hold two goods instead of one and for $50, the speed of the car can be upgraded (3 > 4 > 5 > 7). Money can be used to increase the number of tiles traveled, water tiles are impassable and mountains required an additional movement point to travel into. 349