Designer: Andreas Steding (Firenze, Gugong, Hansa Teutonica, The Staufer Dynasty)

Artist: Andreas Resch (Firenze, Great Western Trail, Gugong, Istanbul, Istanbul: The Dice Game, Lorenzo il Magnifico, Mombasa, Pictomania, Rialto, The Speicherstadt, Tinners’ Trail)

Publisher: Game Brewer (Chimera Station, Gentes, Gugong)

Genre/Mechanisms: civilization, hand management, set collection, worker placement

Funding Status: At the time of this posting, Gugong: Panjun Deluxe Expansion is already fully-funded.  In fact, pledges currently total almost 12x the initial funding goal with 7 days left to go on the campaign.

Player Count: 1-5

Solo Mode: yes

Complexity: medium-heavy

Risk: medium-low

What It’s About:  The expansion to Gugong, a worker placement game with amazingly well-produced components and a myriad of different mechanics, adds 4 modules with even more mechanics.

How It Works: Gugong is a worker placement game with a variety of areas and different point-scoring mechanics for each. Most important is The Palace of Heavenly Purity– if a player has not reached the top step by the end of the game, they are ineligible to score points in the game or to win the game; they will finish the game with a score of 0. Instead of detailing the entire gameplay of Gugong, I’ll simply be focusing on the 4 new modules included in the Panjun expansion.

The Summer Palace adds a new area to the base game’s 7 areas. Place servants on the piers of the pond, and score a majority during the Night Phase. Doing this or playing the Favorite of the Emperor will net a bonus: extra neutral Servants, Jade, or a Court Lady.

The Peasants Revolt also adds a new area to the game. Take an action to gain extra servants from the General Supply or from your Servant Pool. But peforming this action, playing a Gift Card with a value of 1, or collecting a brown Travel Token will feed a Peasant Revolt Token from the draw pile to the Peasant Revolt Track. Once the track has filled with 6 tokens, each player will select a Gift Card from their own discard pile. If the total from all of the Gift Cards exceeds the total of the Peasant Revolt Tokens, the revolt fails. However, if the total of the Peasant Revolt Tokens is greater then the revolt succeeds and all players but the one who played the highest-numbered Gift Card must move their Envoy one step backward on the Palace Track– the track that prevents a player from scoring any points if they have not reached the top step by the end of the game.

The Stairs of the Palace extends that same Palace Track to make it “more challenging, exciting, and rewarding.” Choose the path on the left side, which is shorter but has more conditions. Or choose the path on the right where you can gain bonuses but can also suffer penalties.

The final new module, Extra Decrees and Gift Cards, simply adds more Gift Cards, Travel Tokens, and Decrees to give the game more variety and tactical options.

Comparisons: Gugong is not only a point salad of scoring, but a menagerie of mechanics. The game that leaps into my mind is The Voyages of Marco Polo, which also features a variety of mechanics and different ways to score. But that game still has players primarily focused on a network of roads, traveling around the game’s map, and constructing buildings for various bonuses. Perhaps Neta-Tanka is the better example. Neta-Tanka is also a worker placement game, albeit lighter than Gugong, where players definitely need to choose and prioritize which mechanisms to focus on in any given game; there simply aren’t enough turns or workers to pursue everything and to do them all well. At some point, players need to choose which areas of the board to double-down on, and which ones to let slide. Vindication is yet another game where players ultimately need to focus on certain mechanics, though the game itself feels and plays much differently than Gugong. And finally, Great Western Trail, like Vindication, is a game that feels and plays much differently than Gugong, yet still serves as a good example where, at some point in the game, players need to pair tactics with strategy and choose one or two of the game’s several mechanical pathways to prioritize.

What Should I Pledge?:
Subscribers Only Pledge: this pledge level is variable, and depends which pledge level you’re pledging, at a 25% discount. Because you must first have purchased an annual membership at the Game Brewer website, the Subscribers Only Pledge is worthwhile if you plan on backing another game from them in the next 12 months, or if you plan on buying at least one more game directly from Game Brewer through their website. If not, you’d actually be paying more to purchase the game this way.
$50 Panjun Deluxe: the new expansion includes 4 new modules, an English rulebook plus a rulebook in a second language of your choice, and a paper sleeve for the expansion box.
$60 Panjun Deluxe + Slipcase: the rewards from Panjun Deluxe, plus a slipcase with velvet finish so that both the base game and the expansion can be stored together.
$65 Upgrade to the Big Box Deluxe: the same rewards as the Panjun Deluxe + Slipcase, except that instead of the slipcase backers will receive the Big Box with velvet finish that can contain all Gugong materials from both the base game and the expansion.
$125 Big Box Deluxe: the same rewards as the Upgrade to the Big Box Deluxe, plus the contents of the Gugong Deluxe base game contained within.

Add-Ons:
None.

KS Exclusives:
There’s really too much to list out in this section individually, but about 90% of the components in both the Gugong Deluxe base game and the Panjun expansion are upgraded in these Kickstarter Deluxe versions, and none of those upgrades are a part of the retail editions. Almost every aspect of the game and its components are much better produced in the Kickstarter Deluxe Editions: thicker game board and player boards, wooden components instead of cardboard, wooden tiles made via heat transfer, better card stock for the cards, custom shaped resources, etc. Comparatively, the retail versions feel like cheap knock-offs.

All-In Total: In the continental U.S. you’re looking at $125 for the Big Box Deluxe Pledge plus $15 in shipping for a total of $140.

Gugong: Panjun Deluxe Expansion completes its Kickstarter on Friday, September 20th and tentatively ships in May 2020.