review
Daily Life of a Mississippi farmer
RIVERBOAT
Plant, Harvest and sell arable crops
Michael Kiesling has now been entertaining the games community since more than 20 years. That his games are appreciated was also demonstrated in this year’s nomination of Azul for Spiel des Jahres 2018, and winning this prestigious award it in July. Riverboat, however, would not be a suitable candidate for that award, it is far too complex for it. Judging by the name of the game alone one might suspect that the topic is mainly about ships, it could even be a racing game. But this is not the case, boats have a significant role in the game, the main focus, however is on arable crops, from sowing and planting to harvesting and selling!
Riverboat is a very straight-lined game. The aim of the game and the path towards that goal are easily understood. At the core of the action are the arable crops. To enable their planting, you first and foremost need workers that are send into the fields. Then the crops are growing and developing and are then harvested by the same workers and loaded onto boats, which action immediately yields revenue. And this more or less explains the game; but this linear flow of the game is enriched by several option to accrue additional victory points. This results in an alluring combination of a simply flow with the interlocking mechanisms for the scoring of victory points.
In a game of Riverboat, you play exactly four rounds which all are played in the same way. Each of the rounds comprises five phases that are resolved, always in the same order, but with their individual starting player. There is one phase card for each phase. At the start of the round, beginning with the starting player of the round, each player takes one of those phase cards. Inevitably, at the end of this phase, at least one player ends up with two phase cards, while others will only have one. Whoever owns the phase card of a phase is the starting player of this phase. Furthermore, each phase cards offers an individual unique bonus for the owner of the card. Therefore, when selecting the phase card, you need to weigh being starting player for the phase carefully against a desirable bonus, because usually both advantages are not on the same phase card.
When all phase cards are distributed, all players play one individual phase, then the next one, etc. The first phase, Cultivation, is dedicated to the workers. You have 13 workers in stock at the start of the game. From this stock, you must now place up to eight workers on your player board, unless you have less than eight in total. The board is designed to represent an area divided into hexes, the field cases. This area is divided into five planting areas of different colors; for all players, the shapes of those planting areas are identical, but the color arrangement is not! Those colors have influence on the placement options for workers, because in every turn of this phase, you draw eight Cultivation cards; each area card defines the color of the planting area where you must place a worker on a field.
As in most games, there is money, too, in Riverboat. Money, however, is not used for buying things in this game, but you spend it to be allowed to bend or ignore the rules. In this Phase One, you can pay to be allowed to ignore the color of the current area card.
All players, one after the other, place their workers; the starting player is allowed to place an additional ninth worker, as he receives an additional worker from the central board as his bonus for the phase card. He can place him anywhere he wants, albeit before the area cards are drawn.
Those workers now till the field on which they stand, so that arable crops will grow on the fields.
The type pf crop that will grow on a fields is determined in Phase Two, Planting. In this phase, players in turn take a crop tile from the central display and put it underneath one of his still free workers on the player board. This phase continues, until there is a crop tale under every worker on every player board.
Crop tiles can have a size of one, two or three hex cases; cases of sizes two and three give you additional victory points immediately. On each hex case of a crop tile, there is the image of one of five different crops, usually different ones on the bigger tiles. Of course, you can only place a bigger crop tile, if all hexes that would be covered by the tile can be filled with a worker. This, in turn, is of course only possible if you managed to place workers accordingly in the previous phase.
The central display is, however, restricted and is usually only replenished at the start of the round. There is a selection of exactly four tiles of three hexes, four tiles of two hexes and ten tiles of one hex size. If nothing suitable is available, an option might be to pay money to select a tile from general stock; this action option is in general much favored in the last round.
In Phase Three, Harvesting and Shipping, you can know deliver arable crops to the river boats. Every player can do this twice, and even three times in the last round. River boats are available on the central board in nine different versions, albeit only one boat of each version. This scarcity can be avoided, again by paying money to be able to buy a boat from general stock instead of taking one for free from the board.
The active player now takes a river boat, a free one or a paid one, and places it on the top edge of his player board at the indentions intended for the boats. To be able to take a boat, you must be able to put a full load on it. Every boat has its individual load capacity, ranging from One to Seven. This means for a player, that he must remove the necessary number of workers from his crop tiles, and from only one type of crop. At that point, you can win an extra bonus if you were able to harvest a total of minimum nine pieces of a type of crop from your player board.
To load up river boats has, on the one hand, the advantage that you take back workers from your fields, and on the other hand, each type of boat offers two units of income that every player receives instantly. The income can be money or victory points or, also very important, steps of the harbor master.
Every player has a harbor master on his board who walks along the loaded river boats. Only if the harbor master has reached or passed a boat on his way along the harbor you will score victory points with the boat at the end of the game.
Further possible income options from a river boat are Barns and Wells. Barns and Wells are solely used to generate victory points and must be placed on the player board immediately. Finally, there is income to be had in the guise of receiving a Surveyor or to use a worker as an Agent. Surveyors are special pawns and are used in the last Phase to accrue victory points; Agents are workers of a player who he sends permanently to the central board from his own stock, also exclusively for victory points only. Which, also has the unpleasant consequence that your stock of workers keeps on shrinking.
When all deliveries to boats are completed, Phase Four, the Opportunity Phase, begins. On the central board, there are four cards Opportunity on display which are exclusively used to generate victory points, in relation to the meeting of conditions on the card. In Phase Four, you only take them, they are scored in Phase Five. You should not neglect or despise the fact that each of those cards also yields an instant bones, depending on the position on the board. When you take a card, you need to consider both aspects - which bonus do I wand and which card gives me what number of victory points. For the last player in turn order there is a very limited choice, in case of four players he might be left, in the worst case, with one card. At that point, too, every player can spend many and can choose a card from the draw pile instead of from the board; in this case, of course, there is no bonus from the board.
After this short phase comes the last and fifth phase of the round, Scoring. Beginning with the starting player, every player in turn can place two surveyors - three in the last round - to score a Barn, a Well or an Opportunity and immediately score the points for this. Furthermore, each Agent placed so far, and each Surveyor yields one victory point, too.
When the fourth such round has been played, Riverboat ends with a final scoring. Now the Harbor Master, the Agents and the areas are scored. The Harbor Master yields victory points equal to the total of the capacities of all your river boats that he has passed, albeit only if he did move the furthest - compared to the Harbor Masters of all other players. If not, he only gives you half of those points.
There is also a majority scoring for the Agents. If you did send most workers as Agents to the central board, you receive 20 victory points, and ten and five points are awarded for second- and third-most, respectively.
Finally, players receive points for areas on their personal board that have been completely covered. Each of those areas yields seven victory points. If you happen to still have some money or unscored Estate features - Wells, Barns or Surveyor - you score a few additional victory points.
Riverboat is a game of medium complexity, featuring interesting mechanisms that provide a varied game, for instance via the phase cards which players can use to decide in which phase they want to be starting player. Of course, phase cards for phases in which turn order is important, are preferred in this selection process which of course means that not all phase cards are equally interesting; and yet, in each round there is the thrilling question - will I get my intended phase card or will somebody else grab it.
As regards to the Cultivation cards you might easily be out of luck, this is a feature over which you have little or no control, unless you have enough money to be able to ignore the color of the Cultivation card. The result of that phase has, however, tactical and strategic consequences: Tactical, because the taking of big Crop tiles can restrict your options, strategic as you should try to fill areas completely. Furthermore, the arrangement of the crops on the player board is important for the placement of Barns and Wells.
The mix between solitary play and interaction of players has been well implemented. While players fill their player boards independently of each other, you will often find that the necessary crop varieties have been snapped up before you could get at them. You should never ever ignore the progress of other players with the travels of the Harbor Master and their Surveyors. Those features can yield many points in the final scoring.
From my experience, I recommend a game of three players as the best; in case of four players, the last one often has only the choice of opening his purse if he wants to have a choice in his action, especially in case of Opportunities.
Bernhard Czermak
Players: 2-4
Age: 10+
Time: 90+
Designer: Michael Kiesling
Art: Klemens Franz
Price: ca. 45 Euro
Publisher: Lookout Spiele 2017
Web: www.lookout-spiele.de
Genre: Economy, Worker placement
Users: With friends
Version: de
Rules: de en es
In-game text: no
Comments:
Entertaining game
Simple rules
Many options for victory points
Compares to:
LA Granja for topic, worker placement games
Other editions:
SD Games (es)
My rating: 5
Bernhard Czermak:
Riverboat shines due to a simple game flow offering several options to acquire victory points. During the game you act relatively independently, but if you ignore actions of other players, you will face the consequences in the final scoring.
Chance (pink): 2
Tactic (turquoise): 2
Strategy (blue): 2
Creativity (dark blue): 0
Knowledge (yellow): 0
Memory (orange): 0
Communication (red): 0
Interaction (brown): 2
Dexterity (green): 0
Action (dark green): 0