review

Karma and Tactics

Rajas oft he Ganges

That’s how you get rich and famous

Chips for victory points, a Kramer track, all water under the bridge, two Kramer tracks are the hype of today, one track for fame in clockwise direction, one track for money in counter-clockwise direction. The winner is not, who is furthest ahead one of those tracks, but the player who manages first that his markers on the track meet or even pass each other. As the game title already announces, we are Rajas or Ranis in India who try to acquire fame points in their provinces by - among other things - constructing of the maximum possible number of valuable buildings, and to earn money my multiple use of various markets.

Essentially, the game is a Worker Placement game, in which the placement of workers sometimes costs money - is marked on the money track - or must be paid for by placement of dice of a certain color, regardless of the value, or of dice of certain value, regardless of which color. By the way, we begin with three workers and can acquire a maximum of five in the basic game - one of them sits on each of the tracks, one on the River Ganges, and if you already own five, you must remove an eventual 6^th from the game. And NO, workers need not to be fed or paid in whatever way. Furthermore, we begin with one dice in each of the four colors; dice that you receive are immediately rolled and placed on one of the maximum ten cases on your own Kali statue.

The large game board shows the river Ganges in the middle, complete with various high-yield bonus cases; during the game we advance our ship on Ganges to acquire one or other of the bonuses in those cases. The rest of the board is divided into a Quarry, a Market place, a Harbor and the huge Palace. Even if not recognizable at first glance, I have counted 37 cases offering options to place my workers, 19 of them in the palace alone. This is getting near to “Ein Fest für Odin” or “Arler Erde”. In addition, each player receives a province board, also featuring bonus cases at its edge (for new dice, fame points, money or similar things), for bonuses, provided those cases are connected by paths on province tiles, which we will acquire.

Exactly this, that is, acquiring those tiles, can be done, by the way, by placing a worker for money into the quarry. We select a tile and discard one or more dice of the required color to achieve or surpass the indicated value of 4 to 10. The tiles show either buildings - there are four different ones - or markets - there are three different ones. Of course, the tiles with more buildings and/or markets of higher value are more expensive. Especially important are the paths, the more of them lead to each edge of the tile the better, because there must always be a path leading to the residency in the middle on top. Money remuneration from markets are paid out immediately, and maybe several times later again due to the market action; buildings give you fame points according to the respective upgrade level of the player. Each building begins at upgrade level Two and the level can be raised due to upgrade cases in several places, which is rather important as you definitely will end up with several buildings and thus fame points during the game.

As I have already mentioned, the market actions enable you to score markets again that you have already acquired and thus acquire some not altogether unimportant sources of income. On one of the “mixed goods” cases you score exactly one market - of course the most valuable one - of each type of good. With maybe three different markets Three, you accumulate a tidy sum with a revenue of 9 money units = advance on the money track, albeit achieving three different markets of value three money on your province board is a feat that is not easy to achieve. The other market cases allow you - for discarding any die, the number of pips is the deciding factor - to score the corresponding number of markets for one type of good, that is, maximum six markets.

To focus on all the possible action in the palace, would be too much of a good thing and to beyond the scope of this review. Let me say, that there are cases which allow you to re-roll a number of your dice, then there are of course cases to acquire additional dice and others to swap one die of a certain color, regardless of its value, for two dice of the same color in another color. But most important are the six placement cases of the palace chambers; they require a die of a certain value, in any color. You are rewarded with such fantastic things lice scoring two fame points and be starting player of the next round; or you might receive two Karma points and a new die, or a building is upgraded, and you get three money units, or have the option to cover a province tile with a tile of higher value and only having to pay with dice for the cost difference

By the way, the board also shows a Karma track of 0 to Three, which enables you to shed a Karma point to turn a die to its opposite value. The chamber case with value 6 - unfortunately very expensive - lets you move your ship forward on the Ganges exactly by six free cases and cash the bonus of the arrival case; it is important to know that the river cases further back offer higher revenues than the cases at the beginning of the river.

This takes us to the last area of the board, the Harbor. Here the lower values of dice, from 1 to 3, are in demand. With a value 1 you can move forward by one empty case, for a 2 you can move one or two cases accordingly and a 3 gives you movement between one and three cases. As already mentioned, each river case awards you a certain bonus, for instance upgrades of buildings or various market scorings.

Again, the various bonus cases if you reach a certain position on the track and the bonus tile for each player on the money track, which is always moved on to the next bonus case when you reach it, and is turned over there, and all the other details must remain unmentioned in detail, as that would be beyond the scope of this review.

Conclusion:

Yes, there is, a bit of luck in the rolling of dice and higher dice values for buying the valuable province tiles are more in demand than the lower ones for the harbor, but, still, there is the option to use Karma points to turn dice over to their opposite side.

Unfortunately, there is no option to change the value of a die by exactly 1. It you urgently need a value of 5 (builder to build over a tile) and the dice, round after round, do neither show 5 or 2 (to turn them with Karma), you can talk about unlucky rolls. And this can leave you feeling rather frustrated. But if you can live with this and love Worker Placement games, as I do, then I can absolutely and warmly recommend Rajas of the Ganges to you, you can’t go wrong here. The two scoring tracks that run in opposite directions are a very interesting details and something new in a „big“ game. I would also like to mention two variants - one of them enables you to improve bonus cases on the province board; the other version lets you change the pre-determined cases on Ganges randomly by placing tiles.

Gert Stöckl

Players: 2-4

Age: 12+

Time: 75+

Designer: Inka and Markus Brand

Artist: Dennis Lohausen

Price: ca. 40 Euro

Publisher: Huch! 2017

Web: www.hutter-trade.com

Genre: Worker placement

Users: For experts

Version: multi

Rules: de en fr

In-game text: no

Comments:

Challenging game

Enormous amount of options

Gaming experience necessary

Some element of chance due to dice

Compares to:

All worker placement games, e.g. Russian Railroads

Other editions:

999 Games (nl), Egmont Polska (pl)

My rating: 6

Gert Stöckl:

A worker placement game with some luck of dice and a very interesting determination of the winner, which invites you to experiment

Chance (pink): 1

Tactic (turquoise): 1

Strategy (blue): 3

Creativity (dark blue): 0

Knowledge (yellow): 0

Memory (orange): 0

Communication (red): 0

Interaction (brown): 0

Dexterity (green): 0

Action (dark green): 0