The first thing to be made clear is that this game has nothing to do cardinals or kings. It is simply a very lightly themed abstract game of placement that happens to be played on a map showing part of medieval Europe. The theme starts and ends with the use of the map and the names for the pieces. That said, the good news is that it is a rather good abstract game of placement, which crams an impressive amount of interesting play into a short space of time. It is also a welcome addition to the rather thin ranks of games that are not merely playable with three but probably at their best with three.

The map shows nine of the countries, duchies and principalities of medieval Western Europe--France, England, Bavaria, Burgundy and so on. Snaking across is a simple road system and dotted along the roads are sites for monasteries. In the centre of each of the nine regions is a placement area for "counsellors". Each player has a set of playing pieces made up of cylinders (counsellors) and houses (monasteries) and the game equipment is completed with a deck of cards. Eight of the nine regions are paired off by colour. So, for example, England and Swabia are the same colour, as are Bavaria and Burgundy. The odd one out is France, which is the largest and has a colour to itself. The cards are in the same colours and carry the names of the corresponding countries. Thus a green card simply has on it the names 'Bavaria' and 'Burgundy'.

Play is governed by a '3-2-1' rule. On your turn you may play up to three cards (from a hand of three) in order to place up to two pieces, but if you place two they must both be in the one country. The cards determine where the placements can be made. In order to place a piece in a country you must play either one card of the same colour or a matching pair of a different colour. For example, if your hand consists of one green and two pink cards, your options are:

1. place a piece in either a green or a pink country, leaving yourself with two cards;
2. place two pieces in a pink country, leaving yourself with the green card;
3. use all three cards to place two pieces in one of the green countries.

After you have made your placements, you replenish your hand back up to three by selecting from two face-up cards and the top card of the face-down deck.

Getting the restrictions right is one of the two key steps in a placement game. The other is the scoring and here it comes in two stages: a smallish one at the halfway point and a larger one at the end. At the halfway point the scoring is just for monasteries and there are points to be gained in each of the nine countries. The player with the most monasteries in a country receives one point for each monastery in the country. The next player receives one point for each monastery belonging to the first player. And so on down the line. For example, if blue has 4 monasteries in France, green 2 and red 1, the scoring would be 7 to blue, 4 to green and 2 to red. Players with no monasteries in a country get no points from it. (There is always one chancer who asks about this. Hit him.)

Scoring at the end consists of a repeat of the intermediate procedure, together with bonuses for chains of monasteries (one point per monastery in any chain of at least four) and a scoring for the counsellors. The latter works as follows. Numbers on the board indicate 15 possible 2-country alliances--usually a country and one of its neighbours. If you are either first or first equal in counsellors in both of the countries in one of these alliances, you score a bonus equal to the total number of counsellors in the two countries.

The shape of the game tends to be mainly monasteries in the first half and mainly counsellors in the second. There are three reasons for this. The first is the chains. They will be important at the end and you won't build them up unless you make an early start. The second is the intermediate scoring. Provided you all take it seriously, you are likely to come out of it fairly level. But you do need to take it seriously, as the difference between first and second in a well contested country is significant and so are the cheaply bought second places. Somebody has four monasteries in France, where he is trying to build part of a chain. If you place one monastery for a second or joint second place, it is going to net you 4 points while only giving the leader an extra one. These are not bargains that you should pass on. The third is a restriction which ties the number of counsellors in a country to the numbers of monasteries currently there and this stops an early rush for the counsellor spots, even though you all know that they are going to be important at the end.

As I said at the start, this game packs a great deal into its 45 minutes and what it does, it does pretty well perfectly. If you like abstract games, you will almost certainly enjoy it.

Last year's fast-paced Best Family Strategy game beckons us again to fight for influence in Central Europe. Players discard cards from their hands to place cloisters, or advisers, in a single country. Whoever has the most cloisters in a country scores the total number of cloisters there, but, intriguingly, anyone with at least one cloister present scores the number of cloisters of the player with the next highest count! A majority of advisers in a pair of allied countries scores their total number. Highest total after two rounds wins. Schacht's Web of Power requires a lot of difficult decisions in a mere hour of play.

Before you lies a map of central Europe, ripe for influence and political intrigue, and fraught with a perplexing plethora of choices to deal with in less than an hour of play. Your hand of three cards enables you to place one or two cloisters, or advisors, in a single country. You can score in many ways. For example, if you have at least one cloister in a country, you score the number of cloisters of the person with the next highest count. Whoever has the most cloisters in a country scores the total number there. Also, a chain of at least four cloisters scores the number of cloisters in it. Finally, a majority of advisors in pairs of allied countries score the total number of advisors in their respective countries. You have restrictions, too: (1) A country cannot have more advisors than there are cloisters in any one color, and (2) you can only place one cloister in an empty country. Most points from two scoring rounds wins. The game involves plenty of knotty decisions that will keep you thoroughly wrapped up in the Web of Power.

I recently played this game with my friends Kevin and Chris. Out of the clear blue sky this weekend, Kevin came over for our weekly game session with this little Überplay game. We played only one game but it was enough for me to see that this game has potential beyond our first brief encounter. The game is managed by cards, and plays a lot like Ticket To Ride in that aspect, so if you're familiar with T2R then this game will come to you quickly. If you're trying to introduce a new player to T2R then teach them this first (if you have it already) they'll catch on to T2R faster that way.

The printing is nice, and Überplay has done something you don't usually find from most board game companies. They printed on BOTH SIDES OF THE BOARD!!!! The reason for this is one side is used for 2-3 players and the other for 4-5 players. The map is the same on both sides, but there are more roads, and more towns connected by them. Basically it's a game of area control, but it's also a game about building, and creating roads, much again like, T2R. You have houses you can place, and emissaries you can use to control certain areas. All the pieces are wood, and have that Carcassonne "Meeple feel" to them. It is my belief that whatever printing company Carcassonne was printed by, was also the same one that printed this. If not, then perhaps the same artist was used? Either way, the artwork, and interior of the box for both (Carcassonne and China) really look alike. I'm sure we'll play it again, and often. The game is small compared to other board games, but there's a lot of little wooden pieces, and the board leaves plenty of table space for your beer, ashtray, dice, and other knickknacks.

The game sets up fast, play is fast, maybe 30 minutes tops once you play it enough, and is a lot of fun. There's a predetermined ending (2 shuffles of the draw deck), and scoring is done when territories are filled in, and/or at the end of the game. So if you like T2R, Carcassonne, territory control games, or you're looking for a game like T2R for younger players, this is THE game to get. I think it merits 5 stars, but I need more game play on it to know for sure, but I'll mark it as 5 for now, perhaps later on, I'll have to come back and edit this to reflect a lower rating, but I doubt it.

And remember you can't pass "GO" if you don't play the game!!!!

Although very different from Chess and Checkers this game has the same sort of abstract, deep gameplaying characteristics. Since there are not many games like that which play with 3 or more players this is an interesting game. There are many finesses in this game that only come out after a couple of games which make that the game becomes more fun the more you play it, it also means that there is no such thing as 'beginners luck' in this game. The more experienced you get with the game the better you will score.

There is also an extension to this game called 'The Vatican', it is not for sale because it exists of only one extra board, you can download it for free and print it out on plain paper.

In less than an hour, players will struggle for control for Middle Ages Europe. A set of simple rules propel players into a stunning variety of situations. Definitely not detailed but certainly dynamic. The bottom line of Web of Power is balance. While perhaps not the boisterious of games, Web packs alot of tension into a small space. A compelling basic board with simple and understandable pieces, the game creates a light speed absract version of Risk. It is a political game in its very essence. This is an ideal game for passing the casual gamer into the world of 'German' games. Easy to explain, difficult to master, Web of Power is a game I will never tire of. The fastest of quick dense modern strategy games.