1655: Habemus Papam

19th October 2019

Saturday evening at Matakishi's means board games.

Tonight we played '1655: Habemus Papam': 'Habemus Papam means 'We have a Pope', you don't actually have a Pope at the start of the game, but you will do the end!
1655: Habemus Papam is an wholesome, clean and fun auctioning game about influencing and manipulating various members of the Catholic church to control the election of the next pope.

What's in a game?
1655: Habemus Papam is a fairly compact card game with some nice little components

• Clergy cards: There are cards to represent members of the clergy, whether they're based on historical figures or entirely fictitious, I could not tell you. These cards have shields to indicate which influential family they belong to.  
• Action cards: As the name suggests, when these are acquired by players, they can be used to performs the relevant actions.
• Secret objective cards: As described.
• Smoke cards: There is a black smoke card and a white smoke card, as in real life, when the white smoke appears, it means an agreement has be found. In game terms, it triggers the endgame.
• Gold cards: 1655: Habemus uses card to represent gold.
• Precious stones: These little trinkets are made of acrylic and come in different colours to represent different types of precious stones, diamonds, rubies etc. Hang on a moment! Why do we have precious stones if we also have gold? It turns out that some people aren't interested in mere gold. It turns out; if you absolutely, positively have to bribe everyone in the room: There's diamonds! Accept no substitute.
• Screen: Each player has their own screen to hide their stash of precious stones.

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How's it play?
Setup:

• All the game cards are put into 3 decks and shuffled, the smoke card are placed into one of the decks in the later part of that deck.
• Each player is given a screen, some precious stones, gold and a secret objective card.
• Cards are randomly dealt from the 3 decks face-up and equal in number to the players.

Play can now begin.
1655: Habemus Papam is all about collecting sets of clergy cards, this is done via blind bidding.

• Every player makes a blind bid at the same time by taking precious stones from behind their screen and putting them in their closed hand. Everyone then opens their hands and reveals their bids at the same time. When bidding, it's not just ther number of stones that are bid that matters, it's also the type. For example, diamonds trump all other stones. It's also possible to bid nothing.
• Bidding determines the order in which players get to take a card. Highest bid goes first and so on.
• Action cards can be used when specified to get extra gold, swap cards with other players etc.

The key to doing well in 1655: Habemus Papam is when to get a card you need. Knowing when to bid high to get what is key to this. But precious stones are not too easy to acquire and it takes a turn to get more precious stones.
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Endgame
​Play continues until the white smoke card is drawn, then players get a final chance to acquire cards. Then it's time to see who has the most points and will choose who is elected pope

• Points are earned for each clergy card acquired. Some clergy cards have double shields, these are 'family leaders' and are worth double points.
• Points are earned for meeting secret objectives. These tend to be about collecting 4 cards with certain 'shields' on them.
• As well as shields, some cards have other symbols on them. If a player manages to acquire clergy cards with 2 or more matching symbols, they will earn bonus points. These (I kid you not!) are called 'old boy network​' bonuses!

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Overall
So what to make of 1655: Habemus Papam?
​Apart from the slightly unique auction mechanic, nothing stands out about this game or is special. It's all just unremarkable. If someone else wanted to play this, I would be happy to do so, but it's not one I'd choose.

I can't with all fairness say that it's a good game, but equally I can't honestly say it's a bad game either. It's just a set collecting game, and there's better ones out there.
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To say it's mediocre is a little bit harsh, but that's what it is. It's all definitely a bit 'meh'.