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jp's Diamond Trust of London (DS)

[May 28, 2019 01:30:14 PM]

I think I might have kickstarted this game way back when receiving a "special" version of it in a sealed thick envelope. I then bought another copy (thinking that it might be necessary for two-player matches but...mostly because I didn't want to open the sealed thick envelope. I don't think the game has sold particularly well, so I'm not really looking at high collector's value or anything. Not that I'm really into that anyways.

So...I finally played this over the weekend - only against AI, which I understand is not the ideal way to play the game. And the game is...uh...it's ok? I guess.

It's basically a 2-player euro boardgame with an additional element of bluffing - you can bribe your opponent's "pieces" such that they'll tell you what their actions will be next round and you can use that info to change your actions.

It's fine.

But it's not really THAT special/interesting and it might even run a bit too long? (matches are 10 rounds - I'd like to try it with 8).

There's so many good euros out there with bluffing and what not that I'd rather play face to face - oh, and with more than two players.

Also, it doesn't quite work well enough for me as an ethically interesting game - sure, it's about the diamond trade and there's bribery (even the UN officer is bribeable), but...there's not much more to it than that as far as I can tell.

So, as much as I'm a huge fan and really respect Jason Rohrer, I'll be putting this one up on the shelf as a "novelty" of sorts.

As a good note, I did enjoy reading the rulebook, and that definitely helped me to wrap my head around the game. I think this might be the only videogame I've seen with the core loop in the manual? (which makes sense since the game is fundamentally like a boardgame, so easy to wrap your head around that way).