One of the very tired myths about being the VP of Acquisitions and Development at Mayfair Games is that you play games all day. My life would be much simpler if it were; things like grammar, creative composition, and e-mail could be confined to my real life activities, and the fullness of my days could be filled with rolling for damage and acquiring grain tokens. No, the thrill of the job isn’t the number of games that I get to play, but the nature of the opportunities offered. Such as the time that I was at Hanno Girke’s house in Germany as part of a Lookout Games work week, and he casually mentions “Oh, and Michael Kiesling’s going to bring over a prototype for game night this evening.” Michael Kiesling is a two-time Spiel des Jahres (Game of the Year) winner, and has been a part of my gaming history for a very long time. Tikal and Torres were both games I spent a lot of time with when they were released, and over the years Mayfair has had the opportunity to publish two of his games (Maharaja and Bison). So, game night arrived along with a very excited player in tow. My German is poor, but my “spieldeutsch” (game German) from years of exposure to German rulebooks was enough to understand the game. And, I was very glad it was, because I experienced another of my job’s perks. Sometimes, when you play a prototype, there’s a sensation that starts in the back of your head that begins a chant: “This is good. You like this. You WANT this. Others want this. You should make this. This is GOOOOOOOOD.” That game we played is about to be released by Mayfair: Riverboat. It’s an exploration of growing crops on the Upper Mississippi River, and increasing your farm and finances through careful harvesting and efficient shipping. The game lasts four rounds, and during each round you’ll encounter five different phases of the game. Players choose which phase they would like to go first in (and gain a small advantage by doing so). The first step of each turn is planting. You start the game with 13 workers, and if you go first during this phase, your bonus is to gain one of only four extra workers in the game. Crop planting is simple: each player has a map (different for each player) with five colored areas broken up into hexagonal spaces. Eight crop cards are revealed, determining which areas on your board you may place workers to prepare the land for crops. This might seem chaotic, but there’s an important tool in the game to mitigate it: money. Money allows you to break the rules in almost every phase of the game, and during the worker placement phase you may ignore one of the cards per coin spent and, instead, place your workers anywhere on your board. Careful and effective use of coins is critical to your success! Next comes planting. On the main board, a variety of 1-, 2- and 3-hex tiles feature a mix of the five crop types in the game. Players take turns choosing tiles and adding them to their boards wherever they have workers. For a coin, you may ignore the display and go into the unused stacks of tiles to select exactly the tile you want (if it’s still available). Shipping comes next, and it’s one of the most important parts of the game. Starting with the player choosing to go first during this phase, you select a boat of the size that you want, harvesting crops of one type equal to the boat size. So, if I wanted to choose a 4-boat, I would harvest four corn hexes from my fields by removing the workers on them (and freeing those workers to be placed again next turn). The competition for boats is fierce, as there’s only one of each type flipped per round, but for a coin, you can choose a type already chosen. Boats also come with a variety of other bonuses, including one important one: moving the harbor master on your board. There’s only nine regions for you to place boats on your board, and the harbor master follows a path that runs next to the boats. At the end of the game, if your harbor master hasn’t reached or passed a particular boat’s space, it won’t score at all, and only the player whose harbor master has traveled the farthest will receive full points for their boats! Phase four involves claiming opportunity tiles, which are nice scoring conditions you can meet throughout the game and the final scoring phase at the end of each round, where you can trigger a variety of scoring elements. I look forward to sharing the fun part of my job with the world at a game store near you soon! About Riverboat: Riverboat was designed by Michael Kiesling with art by Klemens Franz for 2-4 players ages 10+. Games take approximately 90-minutes to play. |