Year of the Disappointing Beaver?

This week's Tuesday games were "In the Year of the Dragon" and "Niagara" both of which were from the second-hand table at the previous Saturday's game day.

We first set out the very attractive "pick-up-and-deliver" game Niagara, in which one collects gems placing them in small wooden canoes and attempts to return them up-river to safety. The movement is by sets of cards but the game has an interesting mechanism to simulate the flow of the river, which can result in the canoes (and contents) vanishing over the falls. The game board has been cunningly designed to lay across the two halves of the box in order to create an actual drop.

After an initial try which, if nothing else, taught me the value of getting both canoes in the river as soon as possible (i.e. Crabro won fairly easily) we played again, this time adding in the mini-expansion "Diamond Joe" and the more complex "The Spirits of Niagara" expansion this time I think I actually won, though no-one was more surprised than me to discover that as I seemed to spend a substantial part of the game just trying to survive rather than gaining gems.

 The Diamond Joe expansion, although made more attractive by coming in a little draw-string bag, is basically just a neutral coloured canoe which moves up and down the river and offers trading possibilities and another potential source of a gem.

The Spirits expansion offers several variations. It includes double canoes, three extra cards per player (a 7, a 1/2/3 choice card and a lasso which enables a canoe to temporarily leave the river) a cardboard set of Elk antlers which can add movement points the player controlling them and a little wooden beaver. There are also enough cards and canoes to add a sixth player. 

The beaver proved to be rather disappointing. Despite being a nice little miniature, all it does is add the possibility of resetting the weather once in a while (in fact it didn't happen at all in our game). I was rather hoping that it would do something much more interesting: like gnaw a hole in the bottom of a canoe for example.

The final part of the expansions consists of a sticker, representing a whirlpool, which sticks on one of the transparent discs which allow for the river movement. The whirlpool is an obstacle to player canoes and Joe, requiring extra movement allowance to pass and spitting one out downstream if landed on.

Our second game was another by Stefan Feld, designer of Notre Dame and Macao both of which we like. In the Year of the Dragon proved to be exactly as we had heard it described: Much simpler to play than it at first looked from the rules but much more difficult to play well. The reason is that it is beautifully balanced and always gives you several options. You feel there are several things you would like to do but you can only do one. Will you make the right choice? ...Well no, not if you're me anyway. You need to go for VPs but at the same time you need to make sure your palaces and men are protected from the coming events (famine, contagion etc)

It's one of those games that I really enjoy even though I'm not winning and one I can imagine always being happy to play. I can't remember the scores (probably a mercy) but I do remember I had a lot of fun playing both these games.

A really good Tuesday games day in my book.