Takahe’s Solo Den: Gugong

1 - 5 players 60-90 Minutes Age: 12+
Designer: Andreas Steding
Artist: Andreas Resch, Noah Adelman
Publisher: Game Brewer

A breath of fresh air…

After falling in love with Stroganov, a thematically rich, medium Euro from German designer Andreas Steding, I have decided to explore more of his previous work. Since I am predominantly a solo player, that exploration ended preeeeettty quickly. As far as I could tell, his only other solo-friendly game was the previous title called Gugong, another medium Euro strongly grounded in its theme.

Reading through the rulebook, I was instantly hooked – the core gameplay mechanism just blew me away - using gift cards as workers to activate one or more actions? Such a brilliant idea! I could already see how this mechanic can really spice up an otherwise pretty standard worker placement affair. After spending extended quality time with this game, I can honestly say one thing – this designer has jumped to the number one spot on my watchlist, dethroning both of his German-speaking colleagues (that is Uwe R. and Alexander P.)…

And the reason is plain and simple. This guy has a vision and does not get side-tracked. Once he decides on the core gameplay mechanic and theme, he just sticks to it. At least, that’s how his two games in my collection feel. Not bloated, not overwhelming, not loose… just tight, well inter-connected, with a fantastic theme that gives logic and sense to all the stuff players do in the game.

Excellent thematic integration

Gugong, thematically set in 16th century China, deals with the topic of corruption. Since bribing was banned and severely punished, officials instead started accepting gifts. In return, the donors were able to get certain favours such as a chance to participate in building the Great Wall, get access to precious jade, sail down the Grand Canal… or just play political games either through signed decrees or intrigue. The ultimate goal was, however, the same for all involved - to get an audience with the emperor.

Notice a higher value gift card (9) missing the secondary action while the other ones has one (2s, 4)

What I’ve just described might sound like thematic fluff text (and it is indeed – to some extent), but in reality, that’s what you’ll be doing in the game. Exchanging gifts for favours. Using cards depicting gifts of various value, you will be “worker-placing” them on one of 7 locations, taking the gift that was placed there previously in the process. The customs dictate however, that you can only exchange the more valuable gift for the one with a lesser value (say gift of value 9 replacing gift of value 7), so having high-level gift cards opens up your options and possibilities since you can access a wider variety of locations without being limited by the value power of your gift.

There is a downside to this though – higher value gifts do not always come with a secondary action so although they allow you to visit a broader variety of action locations, you will be potentially limited to a single action that is tied to that location. On the other hand, the lower value cards always come with an additional sub-action, but as you have probably guessed, due to their value you will usually have a very limited number of locations where you can exchange them. There are options to mitigate the low value of your gift card… but are you willing to discard another precious card or sacrifice 2 of your servants just to play it?

“Mere” swapping of cards never felt so crunchy!

There is no doubt then, that this “card-worker-placement” mechanic of choosing the right card for the right location leads to some wonderfully meaty and crunchy decision-making. Since you start the game with only 4 gift cards, it is absolutely CRITICAL you exchange those cards in the best possible time and on the best possible action locations. Just think about this – you have to consider: a) what will be the card you take back and whether it fits your general strategy (for example building the Great Wall, buying jade, sailing…); b) whether you can trigger multiple actions and benefits with your exchange; c) are you going to give your opponent any advantage by placing your gift on the board… tons and tons of things to think about before you do the exchange.

I haven’t even mentioned the 3 destiny dice that are rolled before each of the 4 rounds – these dice essentially provide an additional scoring opportunity at the end of the round and also give you additional servants for the next round. And all you have to do to secure these benefits is to collect as many cards of rolled dice values as possible. Again, yet another thing to consider when doing gifts exchange…

Being a people leader

Speaking of servants, these guys are the second most important resource you have to carefully manage, alongside your pool of gift cards. You start each round with a bunch of them (plus all the leftovers and bonus ones from fulfilling destiny dice criteria) and you can run out of them super quickly. 4 out of 7 action locations require you to either discard and/or place them on the board, and even those gift-exchange locations that are servant-free, are done less efficiently if you decide to go with just a basic version of that action (each action location offers basic and advanced action, second one obviously costing more servants).

So, you really want to try and work your servants hard to get as many benefits as possible and at the same time, not run out of them in the most critical moment. There are of course ways of gaining additional servants during the game (not just at the beginning of each round), but these might cost you a precious turn… so yeah, you’ll be constantly evaluating and re-evaluating every move, every decision you’re about to make, just to be sure you’ll still be able to do something meaningful on your next turn.

And yet, despite all this crunchy decision making, the game is surprisingly easy to learn, play and understand. Actions themselves are straightforward so once you’ve decided what to do next, the execution of that action is super-quick.

A fair and highly competent solo bot? Can’t ask for more!

The overall “approachability” and ease of play also make the solo game flow incredibly smoothly. Meng, the solo bot you’ll be competing with, is a card-driven automa that does pretty much the same card worker placement action selection and execution as the human player – what’s nice about this bot however, is that it needs to use servants to successfully take actions and does not get everything automatically for free (which would have been the easiest thing to do – from the designers’ perspective). This means that you can deliberately sabotage the bot’s actions or make it run dry of its supply of servants.

Why would you want to do that? Well, one thing that differentiates the solo game from the multiplayer is a twilight phase during which Meng does a second round of actions, as if the player did the advanced ones during the normal phase. But again – it can only do so if it has enough servants available. To me, the beauty of this solo design lays in its fairness.

Sure, the bot has additional round of actions and potential scoring opportunities BUT you are the one that can make sure it can’t execute a single one of them. In this sense, Meng really feels like Stroganov’s Ivan – a bot that doesn’t feel too mechanical and artificial because the way it behaves really mimics what a normal player does, including paying for stuff. In other words, Meng is not your typical, good old fashioned cheating robot that would just take stuff for free and act full-on smug about it. I mean.. it is like that here and there, but only in a tiny and acceptable dosage 😊.

Another big plus of the solo bot in Gugong is its variability. With 3 difficulty levels and 7 specialisations to choose from, Meng will rarely behave the same, ramping out its VP gains from every single opportunity given. And since this game is quite stingy in terms of giving up victory points (similar to Stroganov), you will fight hard to make sure it does not run away on the scoring track. In my 10+ games so far, Meng was always very close with its VPs and even managed to outscore me several times, especially when I didn’t have a good strategy and tried to do bit of everything. That to me is a sign of a well-balanced automa, one that will scale well as I get progressively better at this game.

A superb medium-euro that deserves more love

Gugong is yet another hidden gem I am super happy to have discovered. A medium-weight, card worker placement Euro that maybe does not look that interesting or appealing on paper, but playing it is a whole other story. The highlight here is most certainly the central gifts exchanging/worker placement mechanism, but because all the individual actions provide a viable path towards scoring VPs, it is almost impossible to address any potential issues this game might have.

For instance – in my first playthrough, I thought that the intrigue track was lackluster, useless and not that important. And then the solo bot scored 3VPs for helping with the Great Wall and another 3VPs for meeting the destiny dice criteria. Why? Because even though we both had 2 servants on the wall each, and we both had 2 gift cards matching the destiny dice, the bot was first on the intrigue track and hence it won both tie-breaks. Furthermore, it also snatched another jade because of how far its intrigue token was and moved up its envoy (twice!) on the temple track. So yeah, in this game even the most “boring” looking actions can really tip the scales in your favour. Or your opponents…

And maybe that’s the biggest strength of this game – a well-balanced variety of actions that feel equally important and offer engaging gameplay without any unnecessary distractions. In simple words: pure, expertly distilled, Euro-goodness. And that’s all I ever want from my Euros…