19th Century farming along
the mighty Mississippi river.
Mechanics Tile Placement, Worker Placement, Set Collection
Publication Mayfair-Lookout Games 2018
Ages 10+
Time 90
Players 2 – 4
Description
Riverboat is a point salad kind of game where players
use vegetable crop tiles to help create the salad. The object of the game is to
score the most victory points. Points
can be gained by planting crops on a player’s board, by harvesting crops to
obtain riverboats, by activating various scoring elements (barns, wells, and opportunity
cards). By populating the city of New Orleans with agents, and completely
filling sections of their player board.
A game consists of 4
rounds with 5 phases in each round. Each
round starts with players selecting a tile representing 1 of the 5 phases until
all phase tiles have been selected. Some
players will end up with more than one phase tile. The player who took the Phase 1 tile –
Cultivation will now begin the round by taking the bonus indicated on that tile
and then performing the indicated action – – in this case turning 8 cultivation
cards, representing one of five color fields) one at a time face up. Every
player will place one of their workers on an empty hex space within the field
indicated on the cultivation card. Once everyone
has placed a worker, the next card is revealed and so forth until each player
has placed 8 agents. The key is to try
and group workers in configurations that will match the Planting tiles.
Phase 2 – Planting begins
with the player who took the respective tile receiving the indicated bonus and
then performing the indicated action – – taking 1 of the available crop tiles
and places it under a set of workers previously placed on their board. There are crop tiles of 1, 2, & 3 spaces. When placed, each crop tile space must have a
worker on top. So again, the placement
of your workers in Phase 1 is important.
Crop tiles have a combination of 5 different vegetables on them with one
vegetable type per space. In turn order
each player will select a crop tile and place it on their board continuing the
process until all workers are standing on a crop.
Repeat the same
process for Phase 3 – Harvesting and Shipping, Phase 4 – Opportunity, and Phase
5 – Scoring with the player who selected that tile beginning the phase. During Phase 3 players will take their
workers off their boards in groups by vegetable type to claim Riverboats that
can provide benefits. The more workers on
a type of vegetable allows players to acquire more powerful Riverboats. Players can acquire only 2 riverboats per
round. During Phase 4 players will select
an opportunity card from one of the slots on the New Orleans board. Each slot
has an immediate bonus. Each Opportunity card provides a special scoring bonus
that is not realized until it is activated during the Scoring phase of any
round.
In Phase 5 – Scoring,
players will use their surveyors to score up to 2 elements, per round. Each player begins the game with 2 surveyors. More can be gained during the game, but are
somewhat challenging to gain. The types of scoring elements are barns, wells,
and opportunity cards that were gained during the previous phases.
In summary bonuses are
awarded in a variety of ways throughout the game: taking a phase tile,
acquiring a riverboat, taking Opportunity cards, and harvesting 9 crops of a
single vegetable type. These then allow
players to gain barns, wells, additional surveyors, move their harbor master next
to their acquired Riverboats, and placing agents in New Orleans.
At the end of each Round,
the various tiles and cards on the central boards are replenished. Players
begin again by selecting the Phase cards.
Play continues until the end of Round 4 when a final scoring takes
place. Additional points are awarded for
remaining coins, completed areas on your player board, boats passed by your
harbor master, and for having the most agents in New Orleans.
Riverboat is a game with easy to understand mechanics,
but some serious depth in game play.
With a little bit of luck and some good decision making, you could be
the winner of Riverboat.
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| Riverboat |
We have an open copy of Riverboat available in our Demo Games
Library for you come in and try.
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Continue to check in for the latest in board games.
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Come and visit us at 30 NW 2nd Street in Historic Downtown Gresham. We have a full range of family games, strategy games, Euro-style games, war games, card games, dice games and more. Also for the puzzle enthusiasts we carry quality puzzles from Ravensburger, White Mountain, and Cobble Hill.
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