Keltis

Keltis is a multi-player (2-4 players) board-game with an Irish theme where the goal is to get the highest score at the end of the game. The group I was in played with four people, and it took us about 50 minutes just to finish one game, as we found the rules difficult to understand.

In Keltis the aim is to get one of your coloured stones to the highest position along one of five paths. This is only one way to rack up points though, other ways include collecting "wishing stones", landing on a direct score spot on the track, and not having one of your pieces on the first three spots of a track (which awards negative points). Due to the difficulty of calculating points at the end of the game with the existence of the direct score spots, there is a score keeping stone and a score keeping path along the perimeter of the game board.

The way a player moves down a certain coloured track is by playing cards of that colour in either ascending or descending order, but once they pick one order they cannot change to another order with that coloured track. An example would be that a player has a hand with two blue cards that are numbered 1 and 2, and three yellow cards that are numbered 10, 8, 7, and a three other cards of different colours. The player would most likely either want to start by playing a blue card in ascending order, so first the blue numbered 1 card, and on their next turn the blue numbered 2 card. Or the player could decide to play the yellow cards in descending order, so first the yellow numbered 10 card, then 8, then 7, allowing them to move one of their pieces up three steps along the yellow path.

The game ends when either the deck of unused cards runs out, or there are 5 pieces on any of the tracks that are in the top 3 spots of the track (spot with 10, 7, and 6 points). The player with the most points at the end wins!

- Things I Liked:

Probably one of the first things that stuck out of my mind was that in the rules it was stated that the first person to play would be the one who most recently travelled to Ireland, this allowed me to go first.

Another thing that allows for re-playability was that the direct score, wishing stones, and extra move spots are shuffled for ever game. So one game the movement spots might all be down one path, so it would be very easy to get one piece up to a high spot on that path (probably use the doubling score piece). Or more likely all the pieces would be spread out and depending on what cards that player draws that round they must pick which path is best to go down, without one path being blatantly obvious that is was a desired path.

I liked that the game moved quite fast after we ironed out all the discrepancies in the rules. The most important aspect of the game would be to plan ahead, and if there are no favourable moves, pray you get the card that you need. Other than that plays per player would be simply placing down one card and moving one piece (or more if they land on a movement spot).

The fact that there are negative scores for landing in the first three spaces of a track, and also for not getting any wishing stones means that the player needs to spread out their strategy, even though the best way to play the game would be to get to the highest place on a few tracks. For players who aren't able to get to a high spot in a track they should attempt to cover up their weak spots by getting more pieces to a mid point in the tracks, and they can still win. I actually fell into this trap while playing the game, and ended up with a piece in the negative zone, that caused me to place in second. I was the first one to get to a high point on the track, but I kept stalling and decided to put a new piece in play, but the game ended promptly after, and I lost 3 points.

I liked the fact the board was mainly green... since it's my favourite colour. The art was also nice, the board is covered in Celtic art.

- Things I Disliked:

The board's score keeping path does not have negative spaces, and since we were all newbies, many of us started down multiple paths at the start, resulting in up to -20 points. It wasn't until we passed roughly the mid point of the game before any of us got a positive score.

I also disliked how the board was shaped, the starting point was converged, but the pieces didn't all fit on the starting zone. Also the paths can really only fit up to 2 pieces on one spot, so playing with 4 players leads to pushing and shoving of pieces on the board.

I dislike the inclusion of the wishing stones since they give those who climb faster an advantage, and they already have an advantage of more points. The wishing stones are a removable game piece, so only one person can receive it's benefits, and whoever climbs faster is more likely to get more of them.

The discard mechanic is also a bad aspect of the game, as discarding is possibly the worst thing for a player to do during the start and middle of the game. The discard mechanic also gives players who are high up an advantage since it allows for them to not put a lower piece into play. An example of this would be that the player has 3 pieces at the last spot of three different paths, they see that their score completely topples the others, and can simply continue to discard a card and not move a piece (not gain a negative score), until the game is complete.

I dislike that there is not a way for a player to stall or really effect the movement of other players other than maybe by picking up wishing stones. Other than snagging wishing stones first the player is pretty much playing by themselves, and watching that the other players don't go over their score.

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The one element I would design differently would be to completely remove the negative points so it would be easier to count points. So the points gained from each spot on a track in ascending order would be : 0,1,2,5,6,7,10,11,14, and the wishing stone points would be : 0,1,6,7,10,14. I might also remove the double score piece as with the increased maximum points you can receive, this would be a very powerful piece to play right, and quickly. Would you keep the double score piece in the game even though doubling the score would lead to +8 more points than the normal version? Should the double score piece, double both the bonus point spots on the track, and also wishing stones that it collects? Would this be game breaking?

Personally removing the double score piece would increase thinking that players have to do, and would encourage players to spread out their advances. This spreading out of advances would keep the game more balanced, and also it may hide certain player strategies. Having the double score piece would automatically cause players to simply look at their hand, and pick which ever colour of cards they have the most and send it down that path, without much other thought. Or the player would simply look at the board and send the double score piece down a path with a lot of bonus score spots, and double the points along that path, a pretty transparent strategy. Many other players would probably follow suite, as there really is no way to play against a player.