Typically, I gravitate to abstract strategy board games.
I like the one-on-one competitive nature of most games in the genre, and the lack of luck as well. The less dice I have to roll, or cards to draw in a game, usually the better. The best abstract strategy games are a battle of the minds with wins and losses based on making the best choices.
So when I got my hands on Capere I was intrigued. The 2014 release from Playford Games is what the publisher terms a social abstract game, which I admit I was not sure what that meant.
It turns out that in the case of Capere it is a game that comes out of the box looking very much like an abstract strategy game, and then overlays a huge luck factor as moves are dictated by the random draw of cards.
Let’s start with a general impression of the game out of the box. The game comes with stone pieces, so that is a huge plus.
The cards are high quality and should last a long time, even without sleeving them.
The board, an 8X8 grid, is cardboard, but certainly functional. Given the stone pieces a wooden board would have been a better match, but I appreciate the cost would likely have been prohibitive.
So before my thoughts on the game I had a chance to fire a few questions for feedback from game designer Paul Ali, in particular what he likes most about his game.
“I believe the most interesting element of Capere is its balance of strategy and chance,” he said. “It’s a game that takes some hard thinking to win, but the cards throw in that element of unpredictability.”
I might argue that the cards trump this game in a major way, but the designer’s view was interesting to learn.
As for the creation of the game Ali noted, “the most challenging process of developing my game was trying to come up with a set of rules that insured that each round played would be completely different from any previous game played.”
You score points in Capere in two ways, capturing an opponent’s piece by surrounding it on the orthogonal sides, which is a point and removes the captured piece. It’s a nice score option but is soon abandoned because it is too difficult to achieve in most cases.
The other scoring option is to get one of your pieces across the board to the opponent’s side, scoring a point and returning your piece to your home row. This is the method almost all points seem to score, at least in a two-player game.
In a four player scenario where you play in teams, there is more opportunity to capture based on pieces going across the board in all four directions.
The pieces move based in cards, which allow one to four movement which can be used to move a single piece, or split between pieces.
As you can imagine once into the opponent’s half of the board a four move card all but insures a score.
There are a selection of specialty cards which add some special moves, and impact game play, draw the Medusa card and you do not get to move that turn as an example, which are fun, but amplify the luck factor as well.
Overall, a fun filler game, but the strategy is limited with the game being largely a race game dictated by the luck of the card draws.
