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Main Catalogue |  Board Games & Card Games |  Abacus |  Darjeeling Darjeeling Price: £33.99 RRP - £39.99 Board Game; 2-5 Players by Abacus/Rio Grande After the British East India company established a commercial office near the city now called Darjeeling, it used its influence to tell the world of the flavorful tea found in this region. Searching for the best teas, you cross the region picking such cargoes as you can until you have something ready to ship. The quantity, freshness of the supply, and popularity of the tea determines your success or failure! +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ REVIEW BY COUNTER MAGAZINE 2-5 players, 45 minutes designed by Günter Burkhardt reviewed by Ben Baldanza The best thing about Darjeeling is its nifty bonus scoring contraption. Unfortunately, this clever addition to a nice family game is not nearly as important as other scoring issues in the game. So while the 3D device looks nice and certainly adds some strategy, you\'ll really need to know more about this design to see if it\'s your cup of tea (sorry about that). Players win points by loading tea crates onto boats. Points are earned at the time they are loaded through two bonuses. Players also earn points, and the greatest number typically, from having crates on ships at the start of their turn. From the time they are loaded on your turn until the beginning of your next or a later turn, things can happen to reduce the value of your shipment or force you to lose it completely. The playing area is made up of tiles, each showing partial sections of tea crates. The crates are identified as one of four different tea varieties. Various tile layouts can be used and three are suggested in the rules though there is no reason one couldn\'t try other layouts as well. Up to three city markers are placed among the tiles and these are relevant for when completed crates are loaded onto the boats. Each player has a tea collector\'s piece that is shaped like the profile view of someone pushing a crate around. If someone ever develops a DHL sorting facility game, these pieces could work well. The ``teaples\'\' (that makes two bad puns in one review) are moved through the tile grid in order to take the tiles. This aspect is similar to Trapper, last year\'s quiet Kramer/Kiesling release. Moving further than an immediately adjacent crate away is possible but this costs victory points. This is almost always essential since same-style tea crates must be collected. Once a tile is selected, a new one replaces it so unlike Trapper, the board doesn\'t slowly vanish through play. Loading the shipping crates is the heart of the game. Loading is possible only after a tile is taken, and at this point a player can take tiles they\'ve been collecting and assemble them into number of completed crates of a single tea style. This puzzle aspect of the game is fun and drives your choice of tiles to collect. The number of completed crates you make determines how many crates will be loaded onto the ships. If your teaple cannot draw a straight line to one of the cities, one less crate is loaded. This adds to the movement and tile selection strategy as this penalty is significant. The wharf holds several ships, depending on the number of players, and these are positioned in a hierarchy with the higher ships offering an increasing multiplier for the crates they hold. When new crates are loaded, the lowest level ship is removed and any crates on it are lost. The new crates are loaded onto this ship and it becomes the highest ship while all others move down one rung. At the time of this loading, two different bonuses can be earned. The first is from the device mentioned at the beginning. This ``demand barometer\'\' is an inclined trench that holds eight round markers, two for each tea type. When a shipment is made, the lower of the two markers matching the shipment type is moved to the top of the incline, as all others roll down one position. Victory points are then earned for the size of the gap between the two tea markers of the same type. Timing this device would be great, but it is not practical and typically you\'ll just end up getting what is available at the time you have the right set of tiles to assemble. The second bonus is controllable, and it comes from loading four or more crates at one time. When this happens, the player earns a victory point for each crate loaded. At the beginning of each player\'s turn, they score for the crates on ships times the multiplier value of the ship\'s position. Since each load changes the position of the ships, you score the most if you can arrange to ship during a round when no one else is. Crates on ships can score multiple times and often do, as they are only removed when they are on the bottom ship and then someone else loads. Each player has a limit to the number of crate cubes they hold, so if a new shipment is made but a player doesn\'t have enough to load, they can take crates from their lower-level boats if desired. Three tiles of each tea type shows three half-crates on a single tile. When a player takes one of these tiles, he also gets an action tile. This tile can be used in one of two ways. It can be used negate the need to be in sight of a city when loading, or can be used to double the demand barometer bonus. Darjeeling plays quickly and on any given turn the actions to take are straight forward. Collect the right tiles and build up shipments as fast as possible, trying to lose as few victory points through movement as possible. Getting the demand bonus on shipping is interesting but the opportunity cost to optimize this is almost always too high. The tiles are sturdy and the crate-assembling puzzle works well. As a family game or after a brain burner, this game is enjoyable and looks good, too. It comes in an absurdly large box, however, and anyone with game box space constraints (is there a Counter reader without this problem?) should note this. 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