Brettspiel-News.de – Review | 1923 Cotton Club

Written by Nils Friedrich Heinemann on February 14, 2022.

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Welcome to the city’s most famous club – The Cotton Club. We’ve got the best drinks and greatest entertainers from Bessie Smith to Louis Armstrong. No wonder members of New York’s high society are regulars here. So don’t be surprised if you meet notable and influential people like Charlie Chaplin or Robert Wagner. Enjoy your visit to the best club in the world.

Looping Games provided us with “1923 Cotton Club” for review.
This has no effect on our rating!

Smuggling liquor, artists and celebrities

1923 Cotton Club is a worker placement game for 2-4 players to help the Prohibition Era club thrive. At the beginning of the game, the event card pile and card display are prepared, playing fields are arranged according to the number of players and each person is given a money board on which the level of money is determined. In addition to the workspaces, there are four different bars in the stadiums: reputation bar (victory points), influence bar (celebrity coin), initiative bar (brings rewards and points in the final score) and offense bar (fetches minus points in the final score).

Now the game can start using the criminal underworld to get alcohol, recruit artists and bring celebrities to the club. There are six rounds available for this project, each consisting of four phases:

1. Running events: At this point, the top card of the event deck is placed face down. Before the game begins, each person gets five event cards, three of which are kept for the game. Starting in the second round, each person can place an event card upside down from their hand to the screen.

2. Procedures: At this point, players take turns placing their three wooden signs on one of the free movement spaces. There are seven different actions, five of which use card view and you can then make improvements, gangsters, smuggling cards, artists or celebrities. For each of these five actions, three fields are available (four in a four-player game), some of which result in rewards and/or penalties. Upgrades are often free, while gangsters, smuggled cards, and artists are bought for a dollar. Through these cards, influence, initiative, reputation, as well as various tokens can be collected. These codes can be used to “lure” (buy) celebrities off the screen at a cheaper rate, provided that these codes appear on the celebrities. The difference must then be spent on Impact Points by decreasing the impact on the Impact Path. There is also a workspace that can be tagged with any number of signs, which brings in five dollars, but the crime rate on the crime track increases by one point. Finally, there is a hint action for which two fields are available (one field in a two-player game). With this action, event cards can be viewed facing downward to the round and the position of the tag used can also be changed after all people have been tagged.

3. Trigger events: In this stage, the events that were laid face down in the first stage are flipped and solved one by one. This can increase or decrease reputation, money, or influence.

4. Income: Each person receives income equal to the package of money tokens on their own card screen and money equal to the number of cards on other event cards. Event cards also act as round counters. In addition, the card screen is refilled so that there are four cards in each row. Finally, the order of the next turn is determined by the initiative path. The person with the highest influence becomes the first player, the person with the second highest influence becomes the second, and so on.

The game ends after six rounds, or in the round after the deck of cards becomes empty during reloading. Before final registration, crime can be reduced by one for three dollars for each political symbol (in your screen). For the final scoring, the reputation points on the reputation track are added to the reputation points on the cards. There’s also a reputation point for every five dollars. In addition, the person(s) with the highest crime value gain more reputation points and the person(s) with the highest crime value lose reputation points.

In the two-player game, there is a fictional player named Salvatore. A character from this player is placed according to a fixed specification at the beginning of each round. Each person receives one of the other two numbers. This is always placed right before the opposite person has to put their second shape and field blocks. In addition, at the end of the round, the card farthest to the left of the screen in this field is removed.

Tags: 2-4 people, hiring workers, 60 minutes