Main Catalogue |  Board Games & Card Games |  Rio Grande Games |  New World: A Carcassonne Game

New World: A Carcassonne Game Price: £22.99 Tile Game; 2-5 Players; Ages 8+ by Rio Grande Games The New World has been discovered! Now it is time to explore and settle it. The players explore and develop the New World beginning on the east coast and moving ever westward, and deploy their settlers on the trails, in the towns, in the farms, and on the plains. The skills of the players to develop the area and use their robbers, shopkeepers, trappers, and farmers will determine who is victorious. The players place land tiles turn by turn. As they do so, the trails, towns, plains, and farms emerge and grow. On these, the players can deploy their settlers to ern points. Players score points during the game and at the end. The player with the most points after the final scoring is the winner. GAME REVIEW BY COUNTER MAGAZINE Hans im Glück / Rio Grande 2-5 players, 30-45 minutes designed by Klaus-Jürgen Wrede reviewed by John Humphries Yes, another game from the Carcassonne stable. This time the theme is the westward migration of settlers in North America. The small game board contains a scoring track and ten starting squares superimposed on a map depicting the Eastern seaboard of North America from Plymouth to Jamestown. The basic Carcassonne rules apply. Players must lay a tile and may then place one of their settlers on it. Settlers on towns are shop keepers, those on trails are robbers, farmers on farms and trappers on plains tiles. The latter are placed on their side and remain in situ for the whole game. Scoring takes place when towns, trails or farms are completed. Some town tiles also contain a flag and some trail tiles have trading posts. Shop keepers on a completed town score two points for each tile in the town plus two points for each flag. Completed trails score one point per tile plus two points for each trading post. Only the player with the majority of shopkeepers or robbers scores points; however, if two or more players tie, each earns the points. A farm is scored when it is completely surrounded by other tiles and the farmer gains nine points. Scoring settlers are then returned to the players. Sound familiar so far doesn\'t it? The additional feature in this game are the two Surveyors. Each begins on a starting square and when a scoring takes place, the active player moves one of the Surveyors one tile westward. Always move the eastern most Surveyor so that they are never more than one column apart. A scoring settler in the same column as one or both Surveyors earns four bonus points for each Surveyor. In addition, all settlers, except trappers, on tiles to the east of the Surveyors are returned to their owners without scoring. When the last tile has been placed, final scoring takes place with points awarded for incomplete towns, trails and farms. Trappers score one point for each animal shown on the plain segements in the area. The Surveyors certainly add to the need to plan ahead when placing settlers, for with early scoring, they can move westward surprisingly quickly. In many of the games that we have played so far, it is the farmers who are the most likely victims as it takes time to completely surround a farm and they are often left stranded. It makes for interesting strategy as some players try to postpone scoring to prevent the Surveyors from moving, while others attempt to complete towns and trails as quickly as possible to gain low but regular scores and maroon their opponents\' settlers. The rules do not state whether or not tiles must be placed only within the rows formed by the original ten starting squares. We have assumed that this is not the case, otherwise there would be too many incomplete towns and trails and so allow tiles to be placed both north and south of these rows. To help with planning and reduce the luck factor, we play with each player taking three tiles at the beginning of the game and maintaining a hand of three until the end of the game. This is a stand alone game and I would certainly recommend it to anyone whether or not they already have a collection of Carcassonne games as it makes a good family game as well as being an ideal introduction to games playing, as it can be played straight from the box. The rules suggest 2-5 players; I find 3 to be the ideal number. More ...

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