Rauha came out earlier this year through Hachette and is a sort of spiritual successor to Nidavellir, although there’s no formal connection between the two games, merely sharing some similar scoring and artistic elements. It’s a very tight game where you’re working in a small space and will have to make some difficult decisions to undo things you’ve done before, fighting the natural attachment you might have to moves you made earlier in the game. It was co-designed by Johannes Goupy, who’s had a slew of games come out in the last 18 months (Elawa, Rainforest, Orichalcum); and Theo Rivière, who’s worked with Bruno Cathala on such games as Draftosaurus, Sea Salt + Paper, and Naga Raja, and also co-designed The LOOP.
(I’m currently giving away a copy of the game via Instagram, entries due by midnight, November 5th.)
Players place one “biome” tile per turn on their 3×3 boards, taking 12 turns in total – so naturally they’ll have to cover some tiles with later ones, which is where things get difficult, although I’ll get to that in a moment. Each biome tile has several features – a terrain, an animal type, possibly a water source, and possibly a power/reward for when the tile is activated. After you place a tile, you activate the current row or column on your board indicated by the round marker; thus you don’t activate the tile you just placed unless it happens to be in the row or column for the current round. After every third round, there’s a scoring round you activate all of your tiles with “spores” on them; some tiles allow you to pay crystals to place more spores, and you’ll have to get at least a couple of those to be competitive in the game. Those scoring round also give points to the player with the most water sources. After twelve regular rounds and four scoring rounds, the game ends.
The tiles are a little complex, with a lot of icons to learn, which was one of the drawbacks I found in the game. There are four terrain types, three animal types, and water sources on tiles; most tiles have some kind of power when activated, although some don’t. The majority of tiles don’t cost anything to take, but some cost up to 5 crystals, and some tiles later in the game can only be placed in specific spaces on your board. Tile powers can include straight crystals or points, allowing you to trade crystals for points, allowing you to pay crystals to place a spore, or granting you points based on the number of tiles of a specific animal type you have. When you place three tiles in a row of the same terrain type or same animal type, you can gain a God that grants you a power when you gain it and again in the scoring rounds. You keep a God tile until someone else claims it by making the required pattern, even if you cover up one of the tiles in the pattern on your board.
Rauha packs a lot of game into a little board, and it’s extremely well balanced within those player boards. The terrain and animal types are just symbols with no additional powers beyond what you get from the God tiles, so they all function the same way. You’re really at the mercy of the tile draws and the draft in each round, though, and it’s way too easy to end up, say, never getting a water source to stay competitive in that category, which is one of only two ways you’re really competing directly with opponents (along with the God tiles). It’s not a planning game, although it looks like one. You can do a little preparation, placing tiles so that you can complete a row/column two different ways, but that’s about it. It’s still more a game of skill than of chance, certainly, but it’s the kind of game where the chance elements can drown a less skilled player. That’s a whole style of game that has its adherents. I’m just not one of them, I think.