Alpina

• Designer: Luc Remond
• Publisher: Helvetiq
• Players: 2-4
• Age: 10+
• Time: 20 minutes
• Amazon affiliate link: https://amzn.to/4f8ILGO 
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

In Alpina, you explore the Swiss National Park with a camera around your neck to photograph animals in their natural habitat. The spotted nutcracker, grass frogs, and more are waiting for you and offer you a unique opportunity to collect points in an original way that is related to the landscape and interaction with your neighbors.  Do you play a card to score more points, or do you use the opportunity to deceive your opponents? Find the card that allows you to strike a balance between these two objectives, and victory will be yours!

To start the game, randomly pick one of the chamois goat cards and place it on the table; this card will serve as the starting card for a 5×5 grid that will be built over the course of the game.  The rest of the 55 cards are shuffled and each player gets a starting hand of 6 cards.  Each player gets their equal share of 16 pawns (rounded down) in their color. Someone goes first.

On a player’s turn, a card must be played from their hand to the table, orthogonally adjacent to a previously played card and not exceeding a 5×5 footprint.  Then, a player may place a pawn on the card they placed or a card which is orthogonally adjacent to the card they played.  Each card can only have 1 hiker on it.  Finally, the player draws a card to bring their hand back up to 6.  The next player goes.  This continues until the 5×5 grid has been completed.  Regardless of player count, all players will have had an equal number of turns (there are 24 player turns total).

The game is then scored – each player scores the cards that have been claimed by their hikers in their color. Each card has a specific scoring rule at the bottom of the card.  Unless stated otherwise, the card itself does not score for its own rule.  While all the rules are different, the three types of card follow general guidelines:

• Spotted Nutcracker cards – score based on other animals in the grid
• Chamois Goat cards – score based on hiker pawns
• Grass Frog cards – score based on landscapes in the grid

Keep track with a scoring pawn (a disc with a slit cut in it) and the lip of the bottom of the box. The player with the most points wins. No tiebreaker is listed.

My thoughts on the game

Alpina is a gorgeous game, another in a stream of games that seem to be trying to capitalize on Cascadia’s Spiel des Jahres win.  Beautiful art, Nature theme, low rules overhead, etc.  Here, players are working together to build a 5×5 grid of cards, trying to maximize their scoring opportunities.  

Regardless of player count, you’ll have fewer meeples than turns, so there will be a few turns when you only play a card.   You might just not have a high scoring card to play, or maybe you’re waiting for the right opportunity to score a card later – don’t forget that you can play your meeple on the card you play or on any orthogonally adjacent card to the one you played.  Some cards are perhaps  best left to the end so that you can take advantage of the board situation without giving your opponents much notice to choose other plays.

As the total number of rounds in the game is 24, Alpina is nicely set up to give an even number of turns regardless of player count.  The icons are fairly easy to understand though it may take a game or two to learn them all without having to refer to the rules.  With each type of card having a different scoring focus, you’ll certainly be examining and re-examining the board to figure out what will score best for you.

With so many scoring options, I find it easier to not worry too much about what my opponents are doing and just concentrate on my own scoring.  This is obviously not the optimal way to win this game, but it feels right for a game that wants to be 15 minutes and light.

Alpina firmly sits in the target family weight range that most Helvetiq games strive for.  The art is fantastic, and it certainly makes a beautiful tableau as you build your grid.  The scoring criteria are actually on the complex end of Helvetiq games, but none are so complicated to prevent newbies from playing.   For me, this is a game that I’ll most likely want to play 2-players as I prefer the immediate back-and-forth nature of the lower player count as well as having proportionally more control over which cards are in play. 

Amazon affiliate link: https://amzn.to/4f8ILGO 

Thoughts from other Opinionated Gamers

Doug G: Shelley and I enjoyed this shared tableau builder. As Dale says, it’s quick and doesn’t out-stay its welcome. We covered it on Episode 957 of the podcast.  (doug, add a link here to the podcast please)

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

• I love it!
• I like it. Doug G.  Dale Y
• Neutral. Steph H
• Not for me…