Our Review

Walk the paths of the gods

Mangrovia

gain majorities to become chief

We see this often in our games playing universe: We belong to a tribe that makes a quiet living on a wonderful archipelago of islands and spends its days in harmony with nature, making sacrifices to gods and constructing huts. But our sweet-tempered, honorable Chief is old and will not be able to stay in office for much longer. And lo and behold: Straight away the civilized way of living among mangroves turns into bitter rivalry for the succession to the Chief, a contest that will be one by the tribesman who will build most hut. Sounds a bit funny, but that’s how it is.

But before the title of Chief the gods demand some sweat from you. And so we need to cleverly plan over the course of the coming 60 to 90 minutes, on which landscape we will build our up to ten huts, depending on the number of players. And to decide that is not really is, as in each round only two of the four landscape types (mangroves, reed, sand and water) are declared to be building areas, indicated by two Birds of Paradise, made from wood, that make their nests there and thus tell you where to may build. But, evidently, this is not enough, because we must also discard a card that corresponds to the type of landscape and also pay the price that is indicated on our intended building site, and pay it exactly with so-called valuables, which are either also depicted on cards or are drawn – in the guise of cardboard tiles – from a bag.

You see: The aim of the game in Mangrovia, is to have always enough and suitable landscape cards and valuables at your disposition in order to be capable of any action at all – because victory points are only accrued from the placement of huts in the course of the game and in a rather comprehensive majority scoring at the end of the game. And if you do not keep your eyes firmly on this final scoring from the start of the game, you usually do not have a change at all to win.

Easily accessed mechanics:

At which point we have arrived at the central mechanism of the game, which is really easy and simple for a rather complex game, but not banal at all. At the edge of the board a little island archipelago is depicted, showing six places of worship; a little wooden ship is circling those islands. At each stop of the ship a player is allowed to implement one action, if he has placed on of his sacrificial bowls there. This, as a logical consequence, gives an advantage to the starting player, as he has the choice of all available actions; all others must choose or take whatever is left for them.

As the boat arrives at each place of worship twice, each candidate for Chief has two options at his disposal. Usually the placement of a bowl allows you to draw one or several cards, either from an open display of cards or from a face-down stack – or you construct hots or draw amulets, marked with different values, from a bag. Another place of worship allows you to relocate the Birds of Paradise in order to determine the building sites for the next round and to secure the starting player advantage for yourself.

Placement of your huts also needs careful consideration, because the location is a deciding factor not only in securing the victory points stated directly on the landscape case, but, for instance, also to raise the probability of finding more valuable amulets in the bag: The more huts you construct on amulet cases, that are cases circled in red, the more you amulets you can draw from the bag when you choose the corresponding action. IF you did not construct any huts on such cases you must be content with the meagre stock of amulets on open display, which all are only worth 1 point.

Speculative to the end

Thus, in turn, each player diligently builds, draws and curses, when one of those dear opposing players snaps up the long-intended building site at the last minute. This is fun, this is full of go and even has a certain degree of interaction, or at least provides a sound amount of vexation. Towards the end of the game, when the board fills up, it becomes evident that individual player turns take more and more time, as each player is keeping his mind on the remunerative final scoring and tries to plan the best possible placement of his remaining huts.

This final scoring, however, depends on many different criteria and is fraught with possibilities. Building sites belong, depending on their assignation, to different scoring areas, so that you have to take a really close look to accrue the maximum of Chief points. The game board shows four god sculptures each in a vertical and a horizontal line. The landscape cases, that are level with those statues, belong to one of those divine paths. Some of the paths intersect, so that a hut that is therefore placed on more than one path is also scored more than once. To achieve this a player must hold the majority of huts on the corresponding divine path; the player in second place scores half of the available points, and all other players do not score at all. A tie is resolved via hit placement, the scoring goes to the hut that is next to the respective god statue.

As if that were not enough – there are eight landscape cases that are grouped around a neutral stone mosaic that does not represent a building site. Those eight cases form the so-called “Stone Area”. On this square the Chief points are calculated from the number of your own huts, multiplied with the number of all huts on the square. So there are quite a few points to be had there, especially if you remember that some of those stone cases are also situated on divine paths at the same time and therefore score points for those, too.

And, last but not least, there is the „Pole Area“, which also comprises eight cases, which in turn are, partially, part of a divine path, and on which you can accrue a rich total of 12 points. And, finally, you transform remaining amulets 1:1 into victory points. Should, after all this score calculations, really occur a tie, it is resolved by giving the Chief position to the player who owns amulets with the highest total value.

Variant included

If you want to spruce up the rather linear flow of the game, then I recommend you to try the variant that is included, with the necessary components. In this variant you place eight of 16 small tiles at random on the stone area. If you then, in the course of the game, build on those cases, you receive the respective tile, which you can use once in the game, similar to an action card. You might use such a tile, for instance, as a valuable or amulet for payment or to construct a hut, completely independent from the current position of the Birds of Paradise, on n actually currently prohibited landscape slot. Other stone are tiles may show statues of the respective divine paths. It is very practical to own those, as they make the above mentioned rules for a tiebreaker redundant – you own the tile, an eventual tie is resolved in your favor. That’s it. Absolutely.

Especially at the end of the game there is the danger of it developing into an orgy of deliberation, as all try to permanently calculate where one should have to build in order to overtake the player in the lead in the final rounds, thanks to one of those double-scoring cases. Luckily the board by then is usually very full so that remunerative lots are snapped up under your nose or you just don’t have the necessary payment hand or that then, when you could pay, the Birds of Paradise prohibit building of huts on that type of landscape.

Components are above any doubts, thanks to the many wooden elements and the very felicitous graphic design of board and cards, as usually is the case with games from Zoch, and thus ensure pure fun in playing. The small variant introduces some additional tactics to the game, so that even more experienced chiefs-in-waiting should not run out of fun too quickly.

Conclusion

Mangrovia is, basically, a purely abstract game. You plan your actions, set up huts and speculate on majorities in varied and various combinations. That the topic, all the same, does not come across as artificial is due to the spectacular wooden components, the attractive design by Victor Boden and the more than plausible integration of the planning phase into a sacrificial ritual at places of worships which are circled by a small ship. The nice, short duration of the game, which never exceeded the 60-90 minutes mentioned on the box, easily leaves room for a return match. Why the amulets that you need to collect over the course of the game, do look like Christmas baubles will probably remain a well safe-guarded secret forever.

Stefan Olschewski

Players: 2-5

Age: 10+

Time: 90+

Designer: Victor Boden

Artist: Eilif Svensson

Price: ca. 30 Euro

Publisher: Zoch Verlag 2014

Web: www.zoch-verlag.com

Genre: Worker placement, majorities

Users: For families

Version: multi

Rules: de en it fr

In-game text: no

Comments:

Excellent design and components

Topic well implemented despite the game mechanisms being abstract

Variant introduces more tactic

Compares to:

Various worker placement games

Other editions:

Currently none

My rating: 6

Stefan Olschewski:

Among the plethora of new releases at Essen 14 this is a positive highlight– simple rules, good game flow, excellent components, a bit heavy on pondering at the end, but always challenging.

Chance (pink): 1

Tactic (turquoise): 3

Strategy (blue): 2

Creativity (dark blue): 0

Knowledge (yellow): 0

Memory (orange): 0

Communication (red): 1

Interaction (brown): 1

Dexterity (green): 0

Action (dark green): 0