Portobello market

London 1921… Market traders gather at the world-famous Portobello Market to set up their markets stalls on the most valuable places. Build your stalls in the most profitable districts and steal the best streets in front of the eyes of your opponent. Bobbyn (police) determines where stalls can be built, but with a little effort, you can move him anywhere.

Parts of the Portobello Market that was good

When you have four players to play with, the game has really good intense mood to it. Not much is up to random, every move you make can be planned beforehand. Games like this you can see who is the best player, because of everything is set in front of the players, and they know everything about their opponent except their strategies.

When you are two players playing Portobello Market you get a lot more points and your strategy change a lot because of it. The game can be finished in just 15 min unlike when you play four players which usually make a game 35 min long. It is also easier to plan out moves, than when you play four players, so one move either win you the game or make you lose it. So you have to be careful what you do.

Portobello Market is easy to learn easy to master, but still it has a lot of things you can do, depending on how many that are playing the game, the gameplay can change drastically, which is nice it gives it more playability.

Parts of the Portobello Market that was bad

Portobello Market is not a bad game, but it has a lot of thing that could be improved, to make it more interesting. One thing that I thought they should have improved is the moving of the bobbyn. When you move him to another district you can lose one point if a player has the majority of that street, you have to pay the player a point. If you have the majority you can walk over a street for free. To me this feels like too little of a punishment, especially if you are two players playing, there is no risk moving him, because it so small amount of points. Also you can’t move him before you have gain any points which make a game slow and a mess in the beginning.

Not getting points for unfinished market stalls in a district. You should get some points for them in the end of the game, like you get in Carcassonne for the left over fields and castles. It just feels you can lose so easy if you start building in one district and suddenly everyone decides to build their market stalls in another district, so if you want to counter them you have to spend points in that district which makes your district you began to build on useless.

Black colored market visitors with a pink one can get you a huge amount of points, so big you can win almost just having a pink and a black visitor. If you are two players you can lose really fast by these colored market visitors.

The core game system is Placing Market stalls /Visitors and Choosing how many moves you should do during that round.

The core components used to play this game are two –four players, market stalls, market visitors, bobbyn, a cotton bag, action tiles, point cubes and the game board.

You have the board showing where you can but down market stalls, market visitors, bobbyn and action tiles. Around the board you have a path to see how much points you have and what position you are in, by placing down a point cube where you are. This works great and makes it easy to remember how far you got.

You have the bobbyn which is placed out on the board in the beginning of the game, after that everyone will start building in that district, until someone gets a point and move out of there to gain the upper hand in the other districts. You can lose points if you are going to jump to another street with the bobbyn, if no one is owning the street you just lose a point if someone else has the majority of that street you lose a point and he gains one, if you have the majority you can jump over for free.

An action tile makes it possible to do actions. Everything cost action points except moving the bobbyn. You can also use an action tile to either double or quadruple your points in one district. Once you placed it down on the board, you get a tile that can’t do this. If you use it like this you can’t make anymore actions that round. So it could also be a risky move if you don’t get a lot of points for it. That is why to keep using your action point tile that gives you four actions last in case you need it for something like this.

Market stalls, this is you core system. Placing them down on the board to get the most points, different squares on the board give different amount of points, so you have to be careful so you don’t give away a square that is worth a lot of points to someone else, that could have a big impact on who will take the lead. You also have to be careful not to start on a new district with not enough market stalls, which could mean you can’t finish a market and you don’t get points for a unfinished market street.

Market visitors and cotton bag, you put all the visitors in the bag and then when you want a market visitor to put it on the board, you pay one action point. You put them in the end the district row to get points. The visitors have different colors; Grey, pink and black. The grey is the one worth least points. And the black one is worth the most. So if you have two grey ones you only get the points for the market stands you have there. If you have one grey and pink, you get double the points. If you have two pink you get triple the points a grey and black is the same amount. A pink and a black is quadrupled the points. Players are drawn to districts that is worth the most, and that is where the gameplay is best.

Target group interpretation

Well this is a very solid game, it is not too long (never longer than 35 min), it is easy to learn. It says it is form 8 years old. I would say this is a family game, but could find anything about it being sold in a major toy-store, it may be bigger in Finland because the company is from there, but I couldn’t anything about that.
Well if you look at the front-case, it looks really boring and uninteresting. To me it looks like it has more to  do with a police solving mysteries in Portobello Market than me building market stalls. It is not until you check out the back-case you starting to get a hint of what kind of game it is. Portobello is like a mix of Carcassonne and Monopoly, but an easier version of them. I like these kinds of games, so for me, someone that do not play a lot of board games but like to play strategy games on the pc, it feels like its a game for me.

Anyone that wants to play a simple game, a game for a family or a group of inexperienced board-game players, this is the game for you.

Summary

The most interesting part of the game is the strategy part. You can plan moves beforehand with only the players being the thing that can ruin your strategies. The game is short but there is a lot of playability because of it. You can probably play two –three games before you lose interest. There is not that many rules so new players can jump in and learn them fast. If no one knows anything about this game I hardly think you would buy this and instead buy a more famous board game or just play monopoly, because a lot of people know how monopoly works.
There are a few ways to get points in this game, like action tile multipliers can be very overpower in one vs. one games, and if you get the black colored visitor and have the majority in that street you pretty much win the game. The board has a lot of details to it and is nice to look at, especially when you have all the colored market stands out on it, it looks very appealing. It has some balance issues like in a two player game it is really easy to fall behind if you make one mistake, but the games are short so I guess you could play several times. None of the game components feels useless; they are easy to use and easy to understand. That is what can make anyone win even if you plan your moves, someone can ruin it making a district where you have the majority of market stalls, by putting two grey visitors there, but you can counter that using action tile giving quadruple points for every market stalls in the district and that way making a lot of points. It’s moves like these that are making the game so exciting.
The thing with moving around the bobbyn can be slow at first for a group of beginners, because you are not really sure of what to do with him and if it will benefit you, but after awhile or after a few games it becomes naturally and you can see the advantages of moving him around. For example to be able to first start on a district can make you have majority of it which is great.
I would recommend playing it for its simplicity.

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