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Main Catalogue |  Board Games & Card Games |  Queen Games |  Indus Indus Price: £17.99 This item usually ships in 2 - 3 days. RRP - £19.99 Board Game, 2 - 4 players ages 8+, by Queen Games. An exciting, easy-to-play game for all the family. There are fascinating secrets hidden in the fertile valley of the River Indus - discover artefacts from the ancient Harappa culture. Each game is different as the board can be put together in a variety of ways to produce different excavation sites. 45-60 minutes Author: Wolfgang Panning. ********** 2-4 players, 60 minutes designed by Wolfgang Panning reviewed by Ben Baldanza They could be taller and thinner. Or they could be shorter. But in their current size, this box size from Queen doesn\'t fit anywhere well and wastes a lot of space. Yet this box size, which holds last year\'s SdJ in Alhambra, continues with Indus, a majority-based archeology game from the inconsistent Wolfgang Panning. Panning is Queen\'s second-most published designer after Dirk Henn, and the two have also collaborated on a few Queen titles. I just hope that they run out of these boxes eventually and go back to the more useful Showmanager size. Each player gets a set of researchers, whose job it is to scope out and stake their claim onto an archeological dig that contains six different types of ruins. The researchers come in three sizes: professors (big), assistants (medium), and workers (small). Each has the same value when scoring, but the bigger you are, the more chances you have to land where you\'d like to. The board is cleverly made from a small square center piece bordered by four framing boards. Around this square site is a border with spaces for the researchers to begin their trek into the site. The completed site is divided into a six-by-six grid, but different archeological features can exist in the same space and most extend through several spaces. A building, for example, may encompass just a few or many spaces and the same spaces that hold the building may also feature all or some of gravesites, city walls, canals, wooden paths, and stone alleys. The research teams begin with two researchers on the border at the beginning. On a turn, a player adds a third researcher to an open border space, then rolls a die and decides which of their three researchers to move into the site. With a single roll, any of the three types of researchers can be used. If the die roll does not result in a desired move, a player can re-roll but this time could move only their assistants or their professors. If they opt for a third roll, only the professors can move. Since a researcher must be moved into the site on each turn, a player would be forced to use their first roll if all three border researchers are workers. Researchers take only one move into the site: from the outside border, straight-lined to one of the six grid spaces in front of them based on the die roll. Multiple researchers can stack on a single space. Placement of the researchers drives the scoring. At the game end, the buildings score based on the majority and second majority positions based on all researchers in the spaces holding the building. The other five features are different, though. For these, only the top-level researcher in each space counts for scoring. Say that a specific space on the board holds part of a building and part of a city wall. The first player to move a researcher to this space sets their researcher on the space. If, later on, a second researcher moves to this same space, it is placed on top of the first researcher. Both would count for scoring of the building, but only the latest-arriving researcher would count for the city wall scoring. End scoring drives most of the action, but a clever intra-game effect causes both scoring and positioning changes. Whenever two researchers from the same player land on a single space, they ``capture\'\' any other single researchers there. These researchers are removed from the game, and the capturing player scores based on the size of the researchers. From this point forward, any piece that lands on the twosome is also swallowed. This of course would never happen intentionally, but may be the result of a fatal die roll. With four players, each gets just 12 researchers and so with 36 spaces on the board the placement of each is critical. Having even one captured can be difficult, and yet while you can narrow the choice to six for where researcher will end, you rely on the die to pick which of the six. You can increase these odds by placing researchers on opposite sides of the same line, but the opportunity costs can be high. Some spaces are significantly more valuable than others, holding pieces of several of the higher-value ruins. The buildings are the most valuable, but also the most contested since even lower-positioned researchers will be tallied. Canals can be quite valuable if they are long, as their value equals their length. Gravesites have fixed values of three, four, or six. The walls, alleys, and paths are worth only two points no matter their length, and the longer ones are harder to win since there are more options for placement. In practice, these can be ignored at least until the final few researchers, where the chance to easily secure a few points that have been ignored may be the best bet. With three players, each gets 16 pieces and so more options are available to each. The different-sized researchers, with the multiple die rolling options, is not as influential as it may seem. Given that you must live with the final roll, it can be risky to take a decent but not optimal roll in favor of limiting your researcher choices on the next one. Once two different researchers are on a space, both are at risk of capture by the other and these attempts can be expected especially if the space is valuable. The resulting effect of the researcher movement is that you don\'t have enough control to consider this a strategy game, but it makes a very decent family game. The production of the game is of interest. The game offers multiple replay options by using seven different center spaces and seven different border pieces, which can be combined in multiple ways to create different sites with different scoring potentials. Sites with a huge city or one with only small cities will be played differently, as will sites with relatively equal opportunities everywhere versus those more concentrated. The most curious part of the production is the elaborate scoring pieces. Each scoring chit is a differently shaped and colored type of archeological find. These look very nice but are overkill for the game, though they do add to the games\' family-friendly nature. If you can accept its strategic limitations, Indus is a reasonably enjoyable game that plays quickly and works for two, three, or four. 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