#44: The Princes of Florence (Mark's Top 100 2022)

The Princes of Florence 

BoardGameGeek

• rank: 213
• rating: 7.5
• published: 2000

Print Status

• out of print (but not impossible to find)

Why It's On The List

• You have 21 moves - 7 auctions & 14 actions - in order to turn your estate into the perfect place for great artists & scientists to create their masterworks and bring prestige to your name... each action, each bit of coinage, each building, each recruitment is vital. What a perfectly formed & thematically rich (yes, I think it is!) Euro game...
• ...it's the perfect balance between game length (70 minutes) and an unforgiving system. Any longer, and it would be soul-deadening to play out the final rounds when you know you've lost all hope of winning. Any shorter, and there wouldn't be enough time to make meaningful decisions in this game's Spartan structure.

Tips & Tricks:

• I first started playing The Princes of Florence with a German version and cheat sheets to translate the cards. The game was/is good enough that people were willing to get over themselves & learn to play this way. (I have since replaced all of the components in my set with English language equivalents except for the player boards... which is what you see in the picture above.)
• This game is subject to groupthink - despite much debate online, jesters & recruitment cards (both of which are valuable) are worth what the market will bear, not some arbitrary number established by a bunch of game nerds (he sez with his tongue firmly planted in his cheek).
• There are two expansions available with newer versions of the game that are nice but not necessary. (For those of us who've played it a lot, they offer some variety - but the original game is so good that even I, the Man Addicted to Expansions, don't feel like they are important.)
• The building strategy (building LOTS of buildings) can work - but only if you commit to it and only if you're the lone person attempting it.

Extras

• Here's what I wrote about The Princes of Florence for The One Hundred: both the list entry & my personal entry.
• This is the third of three games designed by Wolfgang Kramer on my top 100 list.