There are two things that the audience of Eurogame enthusiasts craves, and the reason will perhaps be revealed in a few decades by new Freuds or Jungs: towns that are on average little known to those who were not born in that country and more or less famous historical events.
I’ll risk it: Euronerds like myself are passionate about geography and spent hours during childhood in front of a map trying to guess which was the capital of Tanzania or Uruguay (even if Montevideo was among the simple ones) and following the courses of rivers in search of the states through which they passed (the Danube will surprise you quite a bit, if you follow it). Furthermore, any battle described in the history book was an excuse to daydream about fights where Napoleon fought against Genghis Khan at Thermopylae; surreal but powerful medleys in the imaginative evocations they created.
Therefore, it is not surprising that a title like Messina 1347 immediately arouses a morbid interest in wondering what the hell happened in Sicily during medieval era, and the answer is soon given: the first cases of the Black Death in Western Europe. Merchant ships of the Republic of Genoa from the Crimea, full of goods and, of course, rats, landed in Messina in 1347, and the rest is history.
Vladimir Suchy, author of Underwater Cities and Pulsar 2849, takes us back to that year: our families will have to save as many people as possible while the plague spreads; there will be no shortage of quarantines, deaths and purifying fire, as in any self-respecting epidemic.
The worker placement mechanics combined with the resource supply engine, and even workers in quarantine will contribute to the cause, mix with the “mission”, that is, trying to stop the disease from spreading in various neighborhoods of Messina. The result is a quick “medium weight” German boardgame where, once the first wave is over, one will crave another one, if it weren’t…
About setup times, of course! In this game full of tokens and meeples, a limited game duration is completely unbalanced by the infinite setup steps, between sorting stacks of tokens, managing player pieces and so on and so forth.
Unacceptable for us, Dicetroyers, so we studied a brand-new organizer for Messina: 1347 down to the smallest details, with trays for every single token and setup step. Some of the containers in our organizer are sized to be placed directly on the game boards, to completely eliminate the time it takes to set up this little gem.
Because if the black plague is no longer a scarecrow, the disorder is, and always will be. We’ll take care of purifying everything from chaos; always and in any case, count on us!
Oh, and if you missed them, go and take a look at our organizer for Underwater Cities or our organizer for Pulsar 2849 also!
Discover also the other games in our catalog and contact us for any request or question!
