OUR REVIEW

Beneath the southern Cross

Vanuatu

Catch Fisch, look after tourists

Object of the game is to collect prosperity points, which can be acquired with nine different actions, like for instance making sand drawings or transporting tourists. Those actions, which are only available in limited quantities, must be cleverly planned, as the other players have the chance to block you and your actions by cleverly placing their action markers.

Desperation and irritation on the one hand, from the player who could not resolve one action of all those he had planned; a superior derisive grin on the other hand, from the player who managed to resolve each and every one of the action he had planned.

You should agree at the start of the game that hitting, scratching and biting are out of order, because it is a real fight for the nine potential action spots which you can reserve in each round by placing your five action markers. And that happens during all of the eight rounds in the game while players try to amass most wealth and prosperity.

Vanuatu is not a game for touchy or sensitive people and also not for hotheads!

But, what is Vanuatu exactly and what do we have to do to acquire the above-mentioned prosperity? Vanuatu is an island state comprising 83 island east of Australia in the South Pacific, as learned from the introduction to the game rules and by a short check on Wikipedia.

Five of those 83 islands we will discover during the course of the game and land there with our ships. The currency of the island state is 1 Vatu and Vatus are rare in the game and very hard to earn. If you manage to amass 10 Vatus you instantly change them into five prosperity points, because these are the real goal in Vanuatu. If you have collected most prosperity points at the end of the game, you will win the game. In interesting fact: The population of the Vanuatu Islands communicates in 108 languages.

This factum was the reason that in earlier times the population without a common language has communicated with drawings painted on the sand.

In the game you are awarded three prosperity points for making a sand drawing; if you play with the character tile of Tourist Guide, you get 2 prosperity points for each sand drawing on an island where a tourist has been delivered to.

The economy of Vanuatu consists mainly of fishing, Tourism and agriculture. Those three branches crop up again and again during the game in the actions of Fishing, the action of Transport (of a tourist to an island) and the action of Buying ( in which you buy agricultural commodities which are produced on the islands, for instance Beef, Kava and Copra, and load them onto ships).

Players have, as already mentioned nine possible actions at their disposal in order to acquire most prosperity points in eight rounds of the game, using placement of five action markers. Sounds difficult and it is difficult! Because not every player will manage to implement all actions for which he placed a marker and all actions connected to those actions.

But before we can begin the game we need to set it up:

We start the game with one island (Efaté) – which the rules call an Archipelago tile - and three ocean starter tiles, which are shuffled face down and then turned over and placed next to the starting island. On the middle of the ocean tiles each player places his one ship. In the course of the game 11 more ocean tiles and four more island tiles will be added to the start layout.

In the Tourism Office the first of eight tiles is openly deployed; it shows the number of tourists (0-4), which are waiting in the Office in this round to be taken to one of the islands. The number of tourist pawns corresponding to the number on the tile is placed on the Tourism Office.

The marker for fish prices is placed on 3; for each sale of fish in a round the value decreases by 1.

All players start with 3 Vatus to their credit in the bank. Should your wealth rise to 10 Vatus, you are immediately reduced to 0 again and your amount of 5 (very valuable) Prosperity Points (PP) rises by 5.

Finally, we shuffle the 10 Ship Order Tiles for the Chamber of Foreign Trade and deploy the first three ones face-up on the Chamber. Now we can start!

Beginning with the starting player, each player chooses one of the 10 available character tiles, which offer certain facilitations or bonus points for some of the available actions to come.

The Navigator allows you a free sailing action. The Builder reduces the price of a Stall to 1 Vatu. The Diver offers a bonus of the same value as the prospected treasure. The Fisherman earns you one PP for each fish you catch. The Vendor allows you to sell without your own stall. The Buyer gives you double the amount of commodities. The Artist awards you five PP for each drawing instead of 3 PP. The Guide earns you 2 PP for each drawing on an island where you transport a tourist to. The Beggar changes up to 3 PP 1:1 into Vatus and the Preacher allows you to implement an action where you do not have a majority, but only if you do not have a majority anywhere else.

All those character tiles clearly and emphatically facilitate game play and the scarcity of funds is not so all-encumbering. In the advanced game those character tiles are not used.

After players have chosen their character tiles they place, in turn and starting with the starting player, the first two of their action markers on one of the action spaces. Then, in a second turn, again two action markers are placed and in a third turn you place your 5^th action marker.

In this phase you need good tactics in order to be moderately sure that you can implement your actions. In a game of three there is not much jostling for some of the action spaces, in a game of four it gets tighter and when five are playing it gets really really hard and it can easily happen that, at the end of the placement phase, you wake up to the fact that you will not be able to implement any action at all.

How does this placement work in detail? Each player can place one, several or all of his action markers on only one of the action spaces. Why should he do this? Well, if he places one marker this does not mean that he will be able to implement the action; because the first to do so is always the starting player or the placer domination the action by having placed the majority of action markers in the respective action space.

After placing the action markers you implement the actions. Again, the starting player begins by choosing an action square in which he has the majority. He removes all his action markers from this space and implements the action. He is only restricted in his selection when other players have placed more action markers than he did on any of the action squares. In case of a tie in action markers the respective action can be done, for instance by Placer Three, only when Player One and Player Two already have implemented their action and removed their action markers. Then the path is clear for Player Three, albeit the action is still available, meaning that there is still fish left to catch or a building site free etc.

Now I will briefly explain those nine actions:

Sail: You can move your ship for 1 to 3 spaces on ocean tiles in a turn, at a cost of 1 Vatu per space.

Build: For 3 Vatus you can build one stall on one island on a free building site. Those stalls are necessary to sell fish and to earn Vatus by this. Furthermore, at the end of the game you score two prosperity points for each tourist and stall.

Explore: On ocean tiles featuring treasure chest symbols you can salvage treasures of the value printed on the tile; those treasures yield double the amount of prosperity points at the end of the game and can be changed during the game into Vatus at a rate of 1:1.

Fish: Works like the explore action; you receive fish tiles of a value equal to the number printed on the ocean tile.

Sell: With this action you can sell the fish you have acquired by the Fish action. To do so your own ship must be located on an ocean tile next to an island tile on which you have built your own stall. The fish price marker tells you how many Vatus you earn with your fish, maximum 3 Vatus, minimum 1 Vatu.

After each sale the fish price decreases by 1.

Buy: With this action you can buy commodities which are deployed on the island and loaded onto the ships on the Chamber of Foreign Trade. Kava (white cube) costs 1 Vatu and earns you one Prosperity Point (PP), Copra (orange cube) costs 2 Vatus and earns you 3 PP and Beef costs 3 Vatus and earns you 5 PP. If you load the last commodity cube onto a ship you earn a bonus of two PP.

Drawing: On each island there are between one and three drawing spots available for sand pictures. With this action you can draw such a picture and earn 3 PP.

Transport: Players can transport between 1 and 4 tourists from the Tourism Office to the islands. For this the ship must be located next to the targeted island and the maximum number of tourists which an island can accommodate (3-5, printed on the island tile) must not be complete. For each stall already built on this island you receive 1 Vatu.

Rest: For this action you can choose one of four round face-down tiles; you might get to choose the starting player, or 1 Vatu + 1 PP, or 1 Vatu or 1 PP.

In this way you collect Prosperity Points over the course of eight rounds by building stalls, salvaging treasures and drawing sand pictures etc. At the end of round Eight a final scoring is done:

You now add up the treasure tiles for two PP per treasure, add one 1 Vatu per fish to the bank and 1 PP for each Vatu in the bank to your score, and add also 2 PP for each of your own stalls and for each tourist on an island to your score. The number of stalls is the tiebreaker, if necessary.

My conclusion: Board and other Graphics are very nice; the squares for choosing actions could be a bit bigger, so that you can see which action square you are dealing with, even if lots of action markers are in this square (maybe we will see this implemented in a Vanuatu Version 1.1, who knows?)

Vanuatu recommends itself due to its placement mechanism, which can also result in disappointment if you do not manage to implement actions. As you always need to react to what the other players do, it is very hard to adhere to a continuous strategy over eight rounds. There are many ways to win the game: It is basically very good to build stalls on several islands to get lots of PP for tourists at the end of the game, but you can also collects many PP by successfully trading commodities and if you manage to collect a nice amount of treasure tiles this can also mean victory. It is this choice of options which make Vanuatu a game that you want to play again and again for the fun it guarantees.

Mario Breycha

Players: 3-5

Age: 12+

Time: 90+

Designer: Alain Epron

Art: Cédric le Bihan

Price: ca. 40 Euro

Publisher: Krok Nik Douil 2011

Web: www.kroknikdouil.fr

Genre: Worker placement

Users: With friends

Version: de

Rules: de en fr jp

In-game text: no

Comments:

Beautiful components

Flair of Southern islands well-caught

Several possible winning strategies

High replay value

Compares to:

Worker placement with weighting of worker numbers in a location

Other editions:

Asterion Press, Italiy, Coffee House Games

My rating: 6

Mario Breycha:

A game to tear your hair, to trumpet your triumph, depending on what you managed to achieve in actions, but in any case a game to play again and again and again!

Chance (pink): 0

Tactic (turquoise): 3

Strategy (blue): 2

Creativity (dark blue): 0

Knowledge (yellow): 0

Memory (orange): 0

Communication (red): 0

Interaction (brown): 3

Dexterity (green): 0

Action (dark green): 0