Occasionally, I don’t have a board gaming dilemma or issue that I am specifically grappling with, so in those cases, as I do wish to continue writing at approximately weekly, I instead go back to the well of games I have played recently (or not so recently) and enjoyed a bunch. Because at the end of the day we actually just want to play games right?
I got to get Through the Desert by Reiner Knizia back to the table recently and I know may be well behind everyone in this particular pickup, with the game already being out for almost thirty years and the new reprint hitting the street about a year ago. While I enjoy the up-and-coming Knizia’s other titles such as Ra and Tigris and Euphrates, Through the Desert (or TtD from now on) was not one that I was rushing out to try to find. I happened to acquire it in a trade shortly after the new Allplay edition came out and I was able to get my hands on the first edition Kosmos German Edition. The trader was even more kind to provide a printout with the original rules in English so I didn’t have to go looking for it. The best part of the early editions is I get to enjoy the pastel camels in all their original glory!
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The Obligatory rules explanation
Even ignoring how much the camels are fun to look at and play with (and not eat….definitely not eat) the game is a delightful little puzzle that gives you a lot of options and even more ways of getting in each other way. Each player is vying for control of areas using your caravans of coloured camels. Each caravan must be of only one colour and cannot meet up with another players caravan of the same colour (you have little riders of your player colour to make sure this doesn’t happen). So from game to game the colours of camels that become prevalent depend purely on how players choose to first distribute themselves and then to expand. One player remarked that this game brought back vivid images of them playing Dots back in high school but with some increasingly complex rules. It’s not Go for sure in terms of area control but it does feel like you are fighting for areas as you can only put down 2 camels in a turn and you often have multiple different potential options and avenues to score points where you are hoping that all other players don’t take away all your favourite spots. At the end you get points for linking up to Oasis on the map, picking up watering holes, having enclosed land is explicitly yours, and having the longest caravan of any given colour.
Why I’ve been thinking about it (and playing it)!
There is just so much game here. You have many choices at the onset of the game and while your choices close off some of your potential future moves you never feel like you have only one avenue to get points (unless you really messed up). So you always have choices but ultimately the game goes by at a very fast clip. Even at 4 or 5 players it never takes too long to get back to your turn because ultimately all you are doing is taking two camels and putting them down. Even in the most complex of times when someone has to make a big decision that will end up opening some doors and closing others, I have never seen this process take more than a minute at most. More often a players turn takes under 15 seconds as they have already identified the best move that they want to pursue and are just hoping that no one messes it up before it gets back to them. To make it even more interesting no game is ever quite the same. You have several choices of where to put the initial Oasis and the randomness of the initial watering hole placements means that everyone will start with a different setup of what areas of the board are “juicy” and based on how the players set up their initial camels you could have a single camel colour be more or less important just from the get-go.
What can I say? I just like it!
Till next time!