It cost a gem to buy a new boat, it bloody hurts. I was also the only player who sent both boats over the falls - BOTH BOATS IN THE SAME TURN! I could not correctly time the various movements, get gems safely home, or get past my opponents without their thieving hands nicking my goods. You also need movement to collect the gems along the river, but miscalculate your position and you could find your boat swept over the falls, because at the end of each round the river moves a number of spots equal to the lowest card played. The numbers determine your movement, the weather affects the speed of the flowing river. You select a card to play each turn, either a number 1-6 or a weather card. Niagara is a very interesting game of take-that and random screwage that won the Spiel des Jahres in 2005. The board is also a hot mess of colour, too lurid for my tastes. The scores were really close, I am certainly glad I got to play it but I am not sure there is enough interest for future plays. however the end of game trigger is when the combined track scores total nine points, so you either want to race 1-2 animals as high as possible to get the bonus (like me) or you want a more even multiplier effect across sets (like Fee), or you are not really sure what you are doing (like Sos). Each animal starts with zero worth, but can get up to 5x the points if it is pushed high enough. As the markers move up, they gain multipliers for said animal. The animal collection aspect for us was a solitaire game, there was no real competition on the board, but the animal point-track is very interesting. In fact every turn you have to do all three of these, and herein lies one of the interesting decision points. Multi-use cards allow you to choose a special power, collect a resource, and push one of the animal score-tracks up. Animals can take 2, 3 or 4 workers, depending on their board position. La Isla is basically a set-collection game, you are collecting (endangering?) rare animals by surrounding them with workers on an decagonal board. I once owned a physical copy of La Isla, but it has since left my collection as it only attracted daughter-the-younger to play one time. Opacity in understanding a game on first blush is a good thing however, and certainly makes the game intriguing.

There doesn’t seem to be a lot of points on offer in this game, and at this stage I don’t have a clear idea of pacing - do you rush for the 7-point connection? Or focus on placing the postal service? Both?Ĭertainly Fee planned the optimal path the the last card and the end of the game, and Sos and I suffered serious negative points, yet we all had the same number of houses left. There are also points for area control, as completed routes also allow you to populate areas with your postal services (house meeples)…and you lose points at the end of the game for unplayed houses. As you build and claim routes of increasing lengths (starting with three sections) you claim points associated with that size route - but not accumulative, you simply get the point value of the highest card (longest route) you are on when the game ends, and that happens when the first player gets to the 7-route card. On a turn you must take a city card, and you must place a city marker to either start or continue a route. Thurn & Taxis is a route-building game ala Ticket To Ride…but the comparison pretty much ends there.

Leaf on the wind game