Games Session
|
|
| Date: |
8th October 2004 |
| Game Played: |
Dos Rios |
|
|
| Players |
Result |
Win |
Ratings |
| Garry |
|
P |
6 |
| Mark G |
|
|
5 |
| Mark K |
|
|
6 |
| Nige |
|
|
6 |
I've
had this game for quite a while but we have only just got around to trying
it out. It's by Franz Benno Delonge, who designed the excellent
TransAmerica and Goldbrau which we tried and quite liked a couple of weeks
ago. The game is produced by Kosmos and Mayfair Games.
The board consists of a map of hex
tiles depicting different types of terrain and two rivers flowing from the
mountains at the top of the board to the lakes at the bottom. Players try
to earn income from having their pieces in the correct type of terrain,
but only so long as one of the rivers flows through that space. The income
is then used to build houses and a palace and the first player to build 4
houses and a palace wins the game. You can also win by building a palace
and three houses provided they are all built in spaces where the river
flows.
Each player's turn is made up of two
elements: Actions and Harvesting. Each player has 6 movement points to
allocate to his 6 farmers, plus the option of building houses, palaces and
dams. Movement involves positioning your farmers on the terrain that will
bring income during the Harvest phase. If other player's farmers are in
the way, so much the better if you can chase them back to the village by
the lake. Building a house gives you a permanent presence on a terrain
space and a palace also eases movement around the board, protects your
farmers from desperadoes and stops other players moving across that space.
Building a dam across the river enables you to divert the river across
terrain spaces more favourable to your cause. Once you have completed the
actions you choose to take, Harvesting takes place. A deck of tiles show
the areas that can be harvested and a row of five tiles gives the players
advance warning of what Harvesting could take place imminently.
"Could" because the current player can choose either to proceed
with the harvest or delay it for a number of turns (whichever is more to
his advantage).
The game is all about trying to make
the most out of the actions on your turn. Between turns, you can do
nothing to affect play and the board position is usually totally different
when you next get to play. Hence you can do no forward planning and there
is a lot of downtime (particularly with our group of deep thinkers). Our
game took well over two hours and we were all relieved when it finished.
Because of the nature of the play, with everyone trying to knock opponents
back while setting themselves up for income, progress was very slow. I
think if the cost of the houses/ palaces was set a bit lower, this might
help but as a four player game we were not overly impressed. This was a
shame because there are some good ideas in the game, especially the way
you can divert the river to help your score. As a two player game,
however, it may work a lot better, due to the lesser downtime. I
eventually managed to stock up on enough dams and accumulate sufficient
money to build my palace and divert the river through it and my three
houses to claim the victory (despite everyone picking on me, especially
Mark K, early in the game. But I would never whinge about things like
that!)
