Gaming in Pearland

Melissa and I played a game of Through the Desert for the first time last night. I have owned the game, the new Fantasy Flight Games/Kosmos Version, for a couple of months now and decided it was time to play. Through the Desert is a euro game by Reiner Knizia in which you try to get the most points by building caravans in the desert. We had a good time playing the game, read on for a review and the results of our game.

Through the Desert is one of the Fantasy Flight Silver Line games. It comes in a slightly larger than normal Silver Line box, although its just taller not wider. The box is a bright Yellow with a picture of 3 camels and there riders making way through the desert. Opening the box you find a nice sized game board, depicting a desert with numerous watering holes, oasis, and a couple of mountain ranges. The board is divided into a grid of small hexes. My board did not lay perfectly flat right out of the box, but a bit of light flexing and weighting it down with the rest of the game for a few minutes solved that problem. The box also contains 5 sets of pastel colored camels (34 of each color), the main playing pieces of the game. You get 5 grey camels which are used to denote the player colors of each player. The player colors, which are very similar to the camel colors, can cause some confusion in the initial reading of the rules. The game comes with 6 player pieces in each of the five player colors. You also get a variety of tokens for scoring, all of very sturdy cardboard, 5 palm trees (why not just include 7) which are aesthetic, and the rule book. This game is for players 10 and up, plays 2-5 players and the box lists the play time as between 15 and 45 minutes.

I have to say, that I bought the game knowing very little about how it played. I purchased the game for 3 reasons: 1) Its a Knizia game, one of my favorite designers, 2) its gotten good reviews on BGG and was highly anticipated as a reprint, and 3) its got great bits. Having played the game, I was not disappointed.

Setting up the game is a fairly quick affair. Set out the game board, randomly distribute the palm trees onto 5 of the oasis, sort the camels into piles by color. Each player chooses a player color, and takes the 6 riders of that color. Players then take one of each of the five colored camels, and one grey camel and place one of there riders on those camels. The water hole markers, valued 1 - 3, are placed face down on the table and mixed. Players randomly place the water hole markers face up on the board, one on each of the blue marks on the board. Once the board is set, the first “phase” of the game begins.

I didn’t think this part of the game would be as important as it was. Melissa managed to get both a very small caravan, and a very large one because of her placements. I managed to box myself into 2 very small caravans based on my selection. In the first phase of the game players take turns placing there caravan leaders on the board. The caravan leaders are the 5 camels that have the players riders on them. Play begins with the youngest player, and in turn each player places a single leader on the board until all 5 leaders are placed. The rules for placement are:

• Cannot place on a water hole, oasis, or occupied space.
• Cannot place adjacent to an oasis, or another caravan leader.

After all of the leaders are placed, the main phase of the game begins. Turns are very simple, and this makes Through the Desert a fairly good intro game. I think you could be up and playing in about 15 minutes of rules discussion. Players place 2 camels on the board each turn (the first turn is a bit different). You can place either 2 of the same, or 2 different colored camels. When you place camels you will place them adjacent to your caravan leader of the same color or you will expand your caravan by touching other pieces previously placed of the same color. You can only play on your own caravan. When you place your camels you cannot place them if they are adjacent to camels of the same color from another player (it would be hard to keep things straight for scoring if you could). The idea when you are placing your camels is to get points by:

• Extending your caravan to an oasis (5 points).
• Extending your caravan to a watering hole (1-3 points).
• Having the largest caravan of each color (worth 10 points at the end of the game).
• Having an area enclosed off with your camels (worth 1 point per space at end of the game - see below).

Building the caravan, touching oasis’s, and finding a path to water holes is easy. The hard thing, but one of the most profitable, is to enclose an area with your camels. Basically, using your camels, and the board edges, you can enclose an area. If you are able to do this you get a couple of benefits. First, you get to collect all of the water hole markers, and points for any oasis that are in the enclosed area. Second, you get to score one point for each space inside of the enclosed are at the end of the game. Finally, you prevent any further camels from being played inside of that area (yours or your opponents). You can get a huge number of points at the end of the game, especially in a two player game, by carefully planning out an area to enclose.

The game continues until all of the camels of any one color have been placed. Once that happens the game is over and points are tallied. At the games end you determine who has the largest caravan in each of the camel colors. The largest caravan gets 10 points, again this is done for each color, so a total of 50 points are up for grabs. The points from enclosed areas are tallied as well. The player with the most points is the winner.

For such a simple game, you really do have a lot of choices to make. The decisions you make from the very first time you place your leaders on the board determine how well you can do on subsequent turns. I found myself torn between building two camels each turn onto the same caravan, or spreading things out. I did manage to get a lot of points by connecting to oasis’s, which could be a good strategy. In our two player game we had quite a bit of room to maneuver. I imagine that a 5 player game would be much tighter, and the decisions would be even tougher. I will be bringing the game to work to try a lunch time game with the guys.

Melissa and I had a very fun time playing. Melissa managed to get a huge area enclosed, and I underestimated how much it would help. I won 3 of the 5 for largest caravan, and had a few small enclosed spaces, but Melissa ended up winning 142 to 126. The picture below shows the game board at the end of the game. Melissa ranks the game between a 7 and 8, and I think I agree. We will certainly be playing again in the near future.