Havalandi

• Designer: Reiner Knizia
• Players: 2-4
• Age: 8+
• Time: 45 minutes
• Played with review copy provided by Edition Spielwiese

You stand at the railing of the viewing pavilion, your gaze wandering into the distance. The soft colours around you glow in a soft light. From this beautiful location, fleets of your hot air balloons will soon dapple the sky with radiant hues. You couldn‘t be prouder, but as the horizon fills with these graceful flights of fancy, it will take careful planning to make sure that your balloons attract the most attention.

You are trying to score as many points as possible with clever placement of your balloons. Points are earned by launching the balloons of your fleets and forming the largest possible groups of your own balloons within the different regions. The launch sites at the pavilions are also highly coveted and offer you further opportunities to earn points. Choose the right launch site at the right time and score lots of points for your fleet!
The player with the most points at the end of the game wins.

To set up, place the board on the table, choosing either the A or the B side. The airship starts in the appointed space near the top of the board.  Each player gets the balloon tokens in their color; these show a grounded balloon on one side and a flying balloon on the other.  Each player places a scoring marker at the start of the track and a sandbag on the 40 space.  Each player should also take their 3 special balloons.  Two end-game score cards are drawn at random and placed on the board.

Players now that their three phase turn

1] Roll the die and move the airship – roll the d6 and then move the hot air balloon that number of spaces clockwise around the track.  Wherever it stops, there will be two straight lines of sight from that track space

2] Place a balloon – Now, you may place a balloon on any free space in either line of sight.  Alternatively, you can also extend a group of your own balloons that is in the same colored region as one of your balloons in the line of sight.  You may choose to use one of your special balloons if you want, but are never obligated to use one.  If there is no legal placement for a regular balloon, move the hot air balloon ahead one space and look again; continue doing this until you find a legal placement spot.  As you place balloons, you will create fleets and groups of your balloons.  A fleet is a contiguous set of balloons that span several regions (colored areas on the board) while a group is a set contained within a single region.

3] Score points for your balloons.  There are three ways to score during your turn

• Launch a fleet.  All of these balloons must still be on the ground. The launch must start with a balloon on the tan gravel path area. You score 4/8/12 points for launching balloons in tan+green/+red/+brown areas.  Flip any launched balloons over to the aloft side.  You do not have to flip over all balloons in a fleet, only the minimum needed to score.  It is possible to launch  multiple fleets (in different directions) from a single balloon in a gravel area.
• Extend a group – a group is 3+ balloons of your color in a single region – these balloons can be either on the ground or in the air.  Each time you form or extend a group, score points equal to the number of balloons currently in said group.
• Pavilions – score 3 points for the first time you place directly adjacent to a pavilion.  On the A-side of the board, you score a 7 point bonus when you have one balloon adjacent to every pavilion on the map.

When you are done, the next player then takes their turn. Continue this until all players have placed all of their regular balloons.  If you have any special balloons left at this point, they are forfeited.  

At the end of the game, each player looks at the two end-game scoring cards and scores points based on how well they met the criteria on those cards.  The player with the most points wins. Ties broken in favor of the player with the most special balloons left over.

My thoughts on the game

So I’ll admit, whenever I see a game from Dr. Knizia coming from a “smaller” publisher, I always approach it warily.  This year, I’ve been glad to have tried all of them thus far.  At the Office is a delightful roll and write from Trefl, and Havalandi is a clever game of tactical tile placement.  Each turn, you have two different options on which row to place your balloon, and depending on how you’ve set stuff up, you might be able to extend a group from that row in a somewhat unexpected location.

The different ways to score also give you lots of good options on where to place your balloons.  There is a bit of risk in waiting to launch a fleet; if you go too early, you may not maximize your score, especially if you can travel in different directions.  If you wait too long though, you might not be able to place in the fleet, and then you won’t be able to launch at all! Be sure to use your three special balloons wisely to get the best benefit from them.

Though it’s hard to set up, I’ve found that players who are able to set up good region scoring are often able to continue scoring incrementally more.  These big blobs are sometimes hard to block, and even if they could be blocked, it’s hard to convince an opponent to use their entire turn to just block.  In future games, I’ll always be keeping an eye out for an opportunity to do this.  The different bonus cards make each game play different as well, and trying to figure out which scoring method to pursue is a big part of opening strategy for me.

The components are well done, and thematically, I love the way the balloons look on the board, and I really like how the sandbags work for the scoreboard lapping mechanism.  What I don’t like is the huge balloon that is used to show which rows you play from.  It is so big that it obstructs your view of the actual board.  In this case, form definitely trumped function, and I’m to the point where I don’t even take the balloon out of the box, and we just use an extra cube to show the valid rows to play on.

Games take just over half an hour – and this is a good length for this moderately complex game.  A great find for Edition Spielewiese as this is definitely the kind of game that I could easily see from a much larger publisher.  It will certainly get a few more plays here over the winter.

Thoughts from Other Opinionated Gamers

Craig M. (3 plays) – Leave it up to Knizia to bring back roll and move as a mechanism with a single shared piece being moved. This has been one of my favorite games of Essen ‘23 so far. My first game I fumbled around. After my third game I saw a lot more in terms of possibilities in managing my pieces, using the special balloons, and exploring the limited scoring options. My first play was with four while the next two were with three players. Those games were tense and interesting from the start. The oversize balloon piece does get in the way a little and is top heavy and easily tipped over, but that is a minor nit for an excellent game. 

Joe Huber (4 plays): So – when I discover new games (whether through purchasing them or playing them at conventions), if the first play is appealing, I push for more, and soon.  I do this because I’ve found that games that don’t hold up to a lot of play initially aren’t generally games I need around in the long run.  The problem is – I don’t know just where Havalandi will end up for me.  So far, I like it; I’m looking forward to my future plays.  I _think_ “I like it” is the worst it’s going to manage for me – but I also have good reason to see this as a game I might grow to love, with more play.

Dan B. (4 plays): Havalandi is a solid B-level Knizia game – but as I have said a number of times, a B-level Knizia is better than a lot of recent games (maybe most of them). It riffs on the basic connectivity mechanism we have seen a lot from him, but it’s different enough from his other connection games to be worth playing, and I rather like it. (My main complaint is that the pavilion scoring should be printed on the board, as there’s plenty of space.)

Mitchell T (3 plays) I played this at Lobster Trap, including two games with Craig. This was also my favorite game from the event. It’s another in a long line of Knizian semi-abstracts that are notable for their interesting scoring, high interactivity, and interesting random factors that demand improvisational thinking. It amazes me how he continually refreshes his ideas and presents games that are familiar yet with features that you’ve never quite seen before. I’m not sure how it will play with 2 but I will surely pick it up when it’s available.

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

• I love it! Craig M., Mitchell T.
• I like it. Dale Y, John P, Joe H., Dan B.
• Neutral. Mark Jackson
• Not for me..,