Review

Expedition in the rain forest

Costa Rica

wanted: exotic animals

Each player is an explorer and member of an expedition searching for exotic animals in the Central American rain forest, in Costa Rica.

The rain forest is laid out as a mixture of landscape tiles for forest, mountain/highland and coast/swamp terrain, the arranging of the tiles to form a hexagon with five tiles to each side is done randomly; depending on the terrain type, you find  Chestnut-mandibled Toucans (common) and Jaguars (rare) on the back of the mountain/highland tiles; Basilisks (common) and Red-eyed Stream Frogs (rare) on the back of the coast/swamp tiles and Capuchin monkeys (common) and Rhinoceros beetles (rare) on the back of the forest tiles. Common animals are present twice as often as the rare ones. Some of the tiles are also marked on the animal side with a danger warning, showing a mosquito in a red triangle.

Each player takes the six explorers of his color and places one explorer next to each of the six corner tiles of the hexagon.

The starting player is the first leader of the expedition and takes the marker for expedition leader. Now he chooses one expedition, that is a group of explorers, in which there is an explorer of his color, and chooses a tile adjacent to the group - at the start there is only one - and places the leader marker there. Then the tile is revealed and the leader marker placed on it again. Tile shows one or two animals and maybe a danger symbol. Now the leader of the expedition - he has always the right of first access to a tile - if he wants to take the tile of if he wants to pass. If the expedition leader passes, the other players who have an explorer in the expedition, have, in turn in clockwise direction, the opportunity to take the tile or to pass. When all players did pass, the turn goes back to the leader of the expedition. He chooses a tile adjacent to the open-faced tile, turns it over, decides to take - now all tiles revealed until now - or to pass.

When a tile that shows a Threat is turned over, nothing happens for now. But when later in the turn a second tile with a Threat is turned over, the turn ends immediately and the expedition leader must take all revealed tiles including those marked with Threat symbols.  

If you decide to take or if you must take tiles - expedition leader or another player - you take all open-faced tiles in your stock. If you had to take tiles due to a second Threat tile appearing, both Threat tiles are taken out of play and you can only keep the remaining tiles that were turned up in this round. After you did take tiles, you remove your explorer from this expedition group, he can no longer go exploring with this group. Then, if you took tiles voluntarily or had to take tiles, you move the expedition - minus your own explorer - to the site of the tile that was the last one turned over; this is the starting point for the next expedition for this group of explorers. The expedition leader marker is handed on to the next player in clockwise direction.

When a group is cut off from the rest of the display, all explorers in the group are removed from play. As the last explorer in a group you can go on turning over tiles until you stop voluntarily or until a second danger tile appears; this, of course, makes for a very good opportunity to score points.

At this point at the latest you must know when you score and with what you score! This question is essential, because you have exactly six opportunities and six opportunities only to take tiles. The game is scored at its end, either when all explorers have been taken out of play or when all tiles have been removed. You score each type of animal in your personal stock for the number of animals that you own, from 1 point for 1 animal to 28 points for 7 or more identical animals. And you also will score 20 bonus points for each complete set of one of each of the six animals that you can form from your animals in stock. Threat icons on animal tiles are of no importance in scoring.

Of course, there is quite some luck involved, but also quite some tactics - do I take the tile immediately when the Rhinoceros beetle appears so that I have him in the set for sure, or do I hope that nobody will want to take him because all the others do not want to remove their explorer from the group for just one tile? Damn, the beetle is gone, but my explorer is left in the group? Now there are only two of use. Let’s see, maybe I will manage to be the last one left and will have a free hand in exploring my corner of the rain forest?

As you can see, there are many options to consider and you need to keep an avid eye on what the other players are collecting; the better you remember this the more you can employ tactic - and don’t forget only those with an explorer left in the group can decide whether they want to pass or take tile(s).

This is a simple stop-or-continue, that is, push-your-luck game which surprises by unexpected depths; you can try to eliminate explorers by isolating the group, can decide by your choice of terrain where the group is moving to, say, I have enough forest animals, so let’s move to the coast. And, most and foremost, you must decide if you want to take tiles for a secure amount of points and thereby maybe leave the opportunities of being the only remaining explorer to another player.

Costa Rica is a thrilling and challenging, very well working family game in which you are sometimes glad to sacrifice your last explorer for the missing second Jaguar and the additional 22 points won by acquiring him, in the hope that the next player will reveal two threats and come away empty-handed. E

A special mentioning is due to the design, Klemens Franz has once again marvelously captured the setting; I do especially love the use of the film negative strips on the animal image and the camera-using explorer on the cover, reminding all that exploring for animals does not have to mean capturing animals.

The game is definitely one of my favorites among the crop of family games in 2016!

Dagmar de Cassan

Players: 2-5

Age: 8+

Time: 45+

Designer: Matthew Dunstan, Brett J. Gilbert

Artist: Klemens Franz

Price: ca. 28 Euro

Publisher: Lookout / Mayfair 2016

Web: www.lookout-spiele.de

Genre: Place marker, collect animal tiles

Users: For families

Version: multi

Rules: de en

In-game text: no

Comments:

Nice topic

Simple Stop/Continue mechanism

Fantastic design

Lots of in-game depth

Compares to:

Collecting games where you remove board parts, e.g. Packeis am Pol

Other editions:

Mayfair Games (en)

My rating: 7

Dagmar de Cassan:

A family game par excellence - thrilling, not too difficult, a nice balance of luck and tactic and with the potential to be a bit mean!

Chance (pink): 2

Tactic (turquoise): 2

Strategy (blue): 0

Creativity (dark blue): 0

Knowledge (yellow): 0

Memory (orange): 0

Communication (red): 0

Interaction (brown): 2

Dexterity (green): 0

Action (dark green): 0