OUR REVIEW
Land Ahoy
SANTA CRUZ
Let us explore this island
According to the introductory text on the back of the box we plough the waves with her majesty’s explorer ship. How could it be otherwise than that we want to discover rich raw material resources, fertile landscapes and exotic animals.
At least, this is the announcement; let’s see how much of what is promised in those two sentences is kept in the game
After months full of privation, the text tells us, we catch sight of land. We have discovered Santa Cruz. Which Santa Cruz? The rules keep us in the dark on that point. Let’s surf through Wikipedia and learn more. Maybe they are talking about an island in the Galapagos archipelago. To be more exact, the second biggest, but the one with the most population. This island has a similar silhouette to that of the island on the beautifully designed board, and is also dominated by a volcano in the center of the island and with a certain importance for the game. Two smaller islands, at the bottom and top left of the board, can also be explored. The main island and the two smaller islands are covered by a network of roads, and three rivers thread their way across the big island.
The reddish volcano tiles, the beige land tiles and the blue coastal tiles are shuffled and then placed face down on the spots of their kind. The round bird chips are shuffled too, but placed next to the board. Finally, the coastal tiles are turned up. Now the scoring cards are dealt to players, in numbers depending on the number players, 4/3/2 players receive 2/3/4 cards; players may look at those scoring cards. Then one player chooses one of four different sets of building cards, the others follow in clockwise direction. Each set is made up from seven cards: Set A is the River Set and contains 3 river cards, 2 path cards, 1 ship and 1 double move card. With his you will - or at least should try to - predominantly at river locations. Then there are the Path Set, the Ship Set and the Balanced Set. The player who took the last remaining set now begins the game, he disembarks. This first disembarkation is free. Each player in turn chooses a coastal tile, takes the building pictured on the tile from his stock and puts it on the coastal tile. For this he immediately scores the number of points marked next to the building and marks them on the track. When a building has been placed you turn up the neighboring face-down tile.
Now the game starts; a turn is really simple: You choose a card from your hand, play it, for instance a ship card, choose a free coastal tile and again build the building shown on the tile, mark your points, and you are done. Next player. Again in clockwise direction. In order to build next to a river bed you must …. Correctly guessed! You must play a river card, but in addition to that you must already have built a building at this river. Then you can build in any location along this river, even if the chosen tile should still be face-down. In this case you turn it up and place the appropriate building. Should you be out of buildings of this sort … tough luck! Next player, please! In case of a Path card you build more more reliably and with less risk, because you can only build adjacent to buildings and those tiles - correct! - are always turned over immediately. Or you play a scoring card.
The goal in Santa Cruz is to have collected most victory points at the end of the game. On the one hand this is achieved by building on tiles with high yields of points, up to 6 points, or on the other hand you try to play your scoring cards “at the right” time, that is, at a point in the game when you score best with them and your fellow players very little or not at all. It very rarely happens but can happen that another player scores more victory points than you do yourself. A scoring card, for instance, shows a sheep; if you have built a settlement showing a sheep you advance the number of points shown on the scoring cards. In turn all other players score that number of points, if they also did build this symbol. Finally, but only at the end of the game, you score points for the bird chips you did collect. Each of these chips has a value between 1 and 3 points. Those bird chips are acquired by building on a tile showing a bird symbol.
Can you still remember the first lines of this review? The exotic animals? Here they are at long last, the parrots, cockatoos and seagulls. More exotic animals are not available in this game, unless you have never encountered a sheep. Joking aside, some players have laughing fits because they enjoy it so much when they play a scoring card and are the only ones who can score. But, in all earnest, Santa Cruz is not that funny!
To be on the safe side and to avoid such paroxysms of laughter, you try to see through your fellow players and build wood, sugar, gold, fish and sheep just in case or four houses or three different buildings and so on and so on ..! But not everything is possible, definitely not. But you can try to interpret the moves of one’s explorer competitors - ah, fellow players - in order to copy a move or in order to preempt a certain scoring card. For this the volcano tiles are a very nice tool, as they often show high numbers of points and, much more important, double symbols. Nice, but there is one certain, one and only one „evil“ scoring cards that makes the volcano erupt. This destroys all buildings on the volcano tiles, which cannot be placed again in this stage of the game. And as if it would not be enough to lose all symbols, each destroyed building loses you 2 points, too. This results in aghast groans of all fellow players!
When all players have played their last card, the first turn ends.
Dear reader, how often in your life did you wish for a second chance to do everything differently, if only you could? To get that second chance would be wonderful, but happens very rarely in real life. Here in this game, on Santa Cruz, Mister Casasola Merkle makes this possible, game after game, even if the logic of it escapes me.
In the second stage of the game players remove all their buildings from the board. All tiles remain in place in their current status, open-faced or face-down. And now players start the game again, including the choosing of card sets, albeit with one new scoring card drawn by each player. The player in last position on the scoring track chooses one of the card sets, including the scoring cards that go with it. He is of course allowed to take the set he played in the first stage of the game. It is possible that a player thinks that the result of the first stage was rather good! Finally, each player discards one of the scoring cards, of course face-down. So eventually four new scoring cards could be in play, which of course ruin an explorer’s life, or more exactly, the second chance to do better.
The second stage of the game is played exactly like the first one. At best you have remembered all scoring cards of your opponents and target certain scorings with your game, but it might happen that you waste your efforts because this scoring card has been taken out of the game. When the last card has been played in the second stage, you turn up and score the bird chips, beginning with the player who did play that last card. Whoever is in first position on the scoring track wins the game. In case of a tie the player who reached this position first, wins the game, because the others must line up behind him.
Conclusion
Santa Cruz plays nice and fast, there should be no large down-time. It is ideally suited for families and once-in-a-while gamers; therefore it will probably not attract many experiences players. But it is rumored that there are some experiences players around who like to play shorter games or games which contain a certain element of luck. To be lucky to a certain extent is not bad at all on Santa Cruz, for instance as regards to the bird chips, or when I build gold without any idea of what is to come and then another player plays his scoring card for gold! But luck or chance is not the dominant feature of the game. Each player must try to implement his strategy as best as he can with his cards in hand. You should try to cover as many eventualities as you can - wood, sugar, sheep … etc.
The our explorers settle everything in sight and then, from one moment to the next, leave everything as it is, just to return and settle the island again, escapes my grasp and my logic. Maybe there is a virus on the rampage among the explorers … malaria, smallpox, the plague … Maybe hostile natives have driven the explorers off the island, or maybe an eruption of the volcano threatened. I do not know. And you also look in vain for rich natural resources of raw materials, fertile landscapes and exotic animals.
Nonetheless I like the mechanisms with the different sets of cards and the second turn of settling the island. Due to some surplus tiles not all tiles are used in every game and not all of the scoring cards are in play as well. So there is always a certain factor of imponderability which makes each game a little bit different which enhances the allure to play again. Not a classic, but a game that one, none the less due to the simple set of rules, will always like to take off the shelves and put on the table. The game plays best with four players, or even with three. Two players should, as we have found out, not attempt to play. Have fun with exploring and settling the island!
Players: 2-4
Age: 8+
Time: 45+
Designer: Marcel-André Casasola Merkle
Art: Michael Menzel
Price: ca. 25 Euro
Publisher: Hans im Glück 2012
Web: www.hans-im-glueck.de
Genre: Placement and collecting game
Users: For families
Version: de
Rules: de
In-game text: nein
Comments:
Spiel der Spiele 2012
Plays fast
Easy rules
Two fantastic mechanisms
Beautiful design and components
Compares to:
All games with turning up and then using tiles to build and score
Other editions:
Currently none
My rating: 5
Christian Huber:
Santa Cruz scores with giving you a second chance to settle the island better at the second try!
Chance (pink): 1
Tactic (turquoise): 1
Strategy (blue): 2
Creativity (dark blue): 0
Knowledge (yellow): 0
Memory (orange): 1
Communication (red): 0
Interaction (brown): 1
Dexterity (green): 0
Action (dark green): 0