presentation
Rukuni
group in hausa language
Groups, or Rukuni in the language of the African Hausa, are the topic of this game. The board consists of 61 dents in a hexagon arrangement, thus having six corner slots that are equipped with one tower each at the start of the game. Each player begins with 25 tokens of one color, in stock outside the board.
Players alternate turns. The active player must move one tower of is choice over any distance in a straight line, into an empty slot, maximum so far until it is stopped by a token or another tower – jumping over a token or a tower is not possible. When the tower has ended its move, you place one of your tokens into an empty slot that is directly adjacent to the tower you moved. The rules do not define if you can relocate a token that was placed earlier – my interpretation is that you cannot.
When all towers are blocked, the game board is scored for groups. Groups are tokens of the same color, directly adjacent to each other and not interrupted by a tower or opposing tokens. You count the tokens in each of your groups and multiply the total for each group with the number of towers directly adjacent to the group. with the number of directly adjacent towers. You win with most points, in case of a tie with the largest group. A possible end-of game variant – both players have placed all their tokens – is probably to rare to be mentioned.
Despite those tiny gaps in the rules, which are easily resolved, Rukuni is another splendid game from Spiel & Design – marvelous components, very simple rules and lots of tactics and in-game depth, a must-have for fans of abstract placement games.
Players: 2
Age: 8+
Time: 30+
Designer: Andreas Kuhnekath-Häbler
Artist: Ludwig Gerhards
Price: ca. 35 Euro
Publisher: Gerhards Spiel und Design 2018
Genre: abstract, placement, groups
Users: For families
Special: 2 players
Version: multi
Rules: de en fr
In-game text: no
Comments:
Classy components
Simple rules
Very tactical
Compares to:
Abstract placement games with group formation
Other editions:
Currently none
Chance (pink): 0
Tactic (turquoise): 3
Strategy (blue): 0
Creativity (dark blue): 0
Knowledge (yellow): 0
Memory (orange): 0
Communication (red): 0
Interaction (brown): 3
Dexterity (green): 0
Action (dark green): 0