Rivages

• Designer: Joachim Thome
• Publisher: Pandasaurus / Catch Up Games
• Players: 1-5
• Age: 8+
• Time: 20-30 minutes
• Played with review copy provided by Pandasaurus

In Rivages, players explore the legendary islands of Myr, searching for remains of its long-forgotten wisdom. Each player starts with their own map of an island that’s divided into several colored areas. Every turn, they strike out the available symbols from one of the two cards in their hand, check matching fields on their map, then pass the cards along to their neighbor. By exploring certain areas, achieving goals on the island, looting treasures, and progressing on their own wisdom tree, they gather valuable parchments. Reaching a boat allows them to move to a new island full of new opportunities. Whoever has the most parchments at the end of the game wins.

Each player is dealt one of the 25 Island boards at random and the rest form a face down pile on the table. Each player also gets a Tree of Wisdom board at random.  Construct the deck with the Endgame cards on the bottom and the appropriate Exploration cards (based on player count) on top.  Each player draws two cards from the top of this deck to start.  All the Loot tokens are placed in the bag.  Each player takes a marker and chooses one of the two Ship spaces on their board; they cross it off to mark the start of their expedition.

On a turn, all players play simultaneously. Each player chooses one of their two cards, and they must use the top unused row on one of those cards.  They then can use all the colored hexes, in the order of their choice, by crossing off the matching hexes on their board.  If the row has icons on it, you take the effect of each icon (See below).  On your board, you can only cross off spaces that are adjacent to spaces already crossed off.  There are some bridges on the island board, and the spaces on either side of the bridge are adjacent.  A few spaces have white backgrounds and special icons on them. 

They can be crossed off with any color hex from a card, and each icon gives a special ability/action:

• Loot bag – draw a Loot token from the bag.  If you keep it until the end of the game, it is worth one point. Otherwise, you may use one Loot token per turn to take the effect of the icon shown on it
• Scroll – take a scroll token
• Spyglass – cross off a space of any type on your island; it must be adjacent to a previously crossed off space
• Statue – cross of the next space of your Tree of Wisdom, if it contains an effect, resolve that effect immediately.  Your first mark must be at the bottom in the red circle, then later marks must be connected by a path to a previously marked space.
• Area with a checkmark – completely cross of an area of the shown color
• Ship – When you get a new board, you start at one of the ship hexes.  When you cross off the second ship on an island, you leave it.  Place the board aside – you cannot make any more marks on it. Draw a new board and cross off one of the ships on it to start anew.
• Specific quest objectives – when you cross these off, they can be used to score for quests

Note that there are some exploration missions and quests at the bottom of each board.  Exploration missions require you to cross off all the hexes of one color in an area.  If you do so, you gain the scrolls shown to the right.  Quests require you to cross off specific sets of hexes or trace a specific path.

When you have used up all the hexes/icons on your chosen row, the turn is over.  Pass both of your cards to the player on their left.  Look at your new cards, if any of them have all their rows crossed off, discard that card and draw a new one to replace it.  

The game ends when any player draws an Endgame card from the deck.  All players play one final turn and then the game ends.

Players score for their collected Scroll tokens, each worth their printed value.  Each unused Loot token is worth 1 Scroll.  The player(s) who have visited the most islands win the Great Explorer award and gain 4 extra Scrolls, second most gets 2 Scrolls.  The player with the most scrolls wins.  There is no tiebreaker..

My thoughts on the game

Rivages is a very intriguing take on the XXX and write genre; here you are choosing a card from your hand of two to give you things to then write on your map.  Unlike most XAW games, there is not an identical board or shared choices each turn – and that adds a layer of complexity to the proceedings.  Also, you not only have your own board to write upon but also cards to write on.  This is one of those games that is really going to test the lifespan of your dry erase markers as they pretty much stay uncapped for the entire game!

From the moment you get your first board, you start making interesting decisions – i.e. which of the two ships do I want to start at.  I have found that most of the boards give you a choice of a starting location with more options for movement versus one with limited options but closer to scoring areas.  This isn’t true of all cards, but that’s the theme I noticed happening most often when I looked at a new map.  As you have to choose your starting ship space before you can see your cards, you’ll have to hope you have chosen wisely each time :)

It’s also pretty neat that each map is a different island with different layouts and different quests/goals at the bottom, so you get a chance to plot out a strategy for each new map board you see.  Depending on the cards, sometimes you’ll want to try to max out a card and see everything while other times you’ll want to just do one or two things and then head for the exit.

There is a bonus for seeing the most islands in the game, but the bonus amount of 4 scrolls is not enough to make you want to only race to the next island.  Final scores are in the 30-40 range, so 4 points isn’t a gamebreaking difference maker though can be an important contributor to the final score.  If you play on the back side of the Tree of Wisdom, you’ll also have important decisions to make as you choose which branch of the paths to follow.

So is there a downside?  Well, there is a BUNCH of erasing to do – I try to do it at the end of the game before we put it away, but I guess you could leave it for future you to do prior to starting the next game (and then you’d have prefilled in examples to use as teaching aids).    The only other thing I might wish for was for each player to have an aid describing the different icons and their attached abilities.  It’s all nicely laid out on the back of the rulebook, but when we’re all playing simultaneously, it’s hard to catch an error made due to a misinterpreted icon, and nearly impossible to roll things back once you’ve played an additional turn.

For those who like X and writes, this is a really neat implementation of that familiar genre with enough thrown in to make it feel fresh.  I personally love the challenge of trying to chart a new strategy with each different map board that I get.   The game still plays quickly, probably 20 minutes to play but there is certainly a lot of adventuring and exploring to do in that short time frame. 

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

• I love it!
• I like it. Dale Y, John P
• Neutral.
• Not for me…