Istanbul, well-known in the board game world, winner of the prestigious Kennerspiel des Jahres award, was released in the Big Box version six years after its premiere. In addition to the basic version, the box also includes two add-ons – Mokka and Bakshish as well as Letters and Seals . For those who have not had the opportunity to get acquainted with this title before, it will be a good opportunity to reach for it and get the whole set right away.
I will tell you right away that I also belong to this group. I knew there was a game like this and more or less what category it belongs to, but I didn’t play it until the Istanbul Big Box came to my table . I was afraid of mixing up components from individual add-ons, but my doubts were quickly dispelled. The elements are well marked and during the preparation for the first game, I easily completed and put away two add-ons to start getting to know the game from the base itself.
What is this all about?
In the game, we play the role of merchants who, together with their helpers, will move around the bazaar. It is made up of sixteen tiles, the arrangement of which can be random or as proposed in the manual. They require preparation according to the rules described above – in the indicated places you need to place mosque tokens, rubies, cart extensions, postage markers, progress tokens and the mayor and smuggler pieces. Place a pile of bonus cards, dice and coins next to the board. Each player receives a cart on which he places four cubes of his color on the gray spaces, a family member whom he places on the Police Station space, a merchant disc and four helper discs, which land as a stack on the Fountain space and coins, depending on the order of the players. .
A player’s turn consists of up to four steps. First, move your disc stack with the merchant on top one or two spaces. If the target tile does not already have a helper of its color, leave it there. If there is, put a pile on it, adding one disk to it and taking it on a further journey. If a lone merchant goes to a location where he has no assistant and no more disks to leave behind, he cannot take the action. The exception is the Fountains field, which “summons” helper disks scattered around the bazaar and allows you to create a full stack. The second step is to pay 2 lira to each player whose merchant is on the end tile, but this step does not occur every turn. Then we perform the action from the end point of our movement, as long as we have left or collected a helper from there. If there is a member of another family on the tile, the mayor or a smuggler, then our fourth step will be to collect 3 lire and send someone else’s pawn to the field of the Police Station, picking and paying for a bonus card or getting and paying for one good.
The goods are presented on the trolley and each time we acquire an item, we move the marker to the right, and when we spend it – to the left. Below are the ruby slots, and they are our main focus in the game. Collecting five (or six in a two-player game) ends the game. You can get them, among others for the maximum expansion of the cart or the acquisition of mosque tokens.
Mocha and Bakszysz
The first expansion pack expands the bazaar with another four locations. We also get new bonus cards and the coffee merchant pawn, which we place on the tile in the same way as the mayor and smuggler. From the new character, in the fourth step of your turn, you can buy coffee (another type of good in the game) and download the appropriate marker. Prepare the new tiles with the corresponding components, and place some of them next to the board, as described in the preparation for the game.
A significant change is the option to completely skip your move and play a guild card instead. They can mess up a lot on the board, because it is difficult to predict the action that the opponents are going to take. Previously, their movement was limited by the reach of the merchant. The new guild cards introduce more unpredictable actions, making the game even more fierce and the race for rubies accelerating. Especially that with this expansion, the requirement to get six rubies applies regardless of the number of players.
The add-on also allows you to limit the mobility of other players. Thanks to the blockade marker, we can close the passage between the two locations. Everyone except the owner of the blockade must walk around. This adds a bit of negative interaction and sharpens the atmosphere above the board.
