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 Reviews - Burrows |
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by Demian Katz
The market for tile-laying games is pretty saturated, but it's probably safe to say that this is the first one about tourists seeking out multi-colored gophers. The premise is that the gophers of Gopher Gulch each favor a particular root vegetable (radishes, carrots or turnips), and this has resulted in animals with distinctive coloration. Tourists come by the busload to see them, and the players are ranchers attempting to encourage the exotic gophers to take up residence. Through the course of the game, tour buses will come to visit, and players will earn "disappointment points" if their ranches lack the gophers the current group of tourists hope to see. In the end, the player with the least disappointing ranch is the winner. Gameplay Burrows has three different colors of gopher, and at the start of the game, each color contains one fewer gopher than there are players in the game. This ensures that there is always a disappointing ranch for any given color of gopher at any given time. Players each start with an assortment of gophers determined by their ranch boards. The small schedule page tiles are laid out face-up in a pattern so that players can see what types of gophers tourists will be seeking throughout the game. The burrow tiles are turned face-down, shuffled and stacked, and two random tiles are turned face-up. The tour bus stand-up is placed on the first space of its track.
At the start of any player's turn, there will be two face-up burrow tiles available. He or she turns a third tile face-up and then takes one of the three available tiles. The selected tile may either be played immediately or held in reserve for a future turn, though only one tile may be reserved at a time. Some tiles feature a bus icon; these tiles may not be reserved, and when they are played, they cause the tour bus to advance a space on its track. When the tour bus reaches the end of its track, it is reset and the next set of schedule pages are scored. Each schedule page shows a gopher color and a number of disappointment points. Each page is given to the player who does not have the pictured gopher color in his or her burrow. When no schedule pages remain to be scored, the game ends, and the player with the fewest disappointment points wins the game. Presentation Conclusions Burrows is unlikely to win any awards or become a timeless favorite, but it's a nice variation on a popular theme. Also, gopher meeples! It's something of a niche product, but if it sounds appealing to you, it probably won't disappoint. Links:
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Burrows
The burrow tiles are the most important part of the game. They are
rectangular, exactly twice as wide as they are tall, and they picture
various tunnels and vegetables. Vegetables mark the endpoints of
tunnels. The tiles are designed in such a way that any even arrangement
will result in properly connected tunnels, and players are allowed to
lay them out however they like – even at 90-degree angles to one
another. The important thing is that burrows are only valuable if they
are closed off at both ends with the same vegetable. By building the
longest such burrow, a player can capture a gopher from the player with
the shortest burrow of the same type. However, a player can only
capture a gopher from another player if he or she does not already have
that color of gopher – this ensures that there is always exactly
one ranch missing each color of gopher. If a longer tunnel is built on
a ranch that already has the corresponding gopher type, that gopher
simply moves up to the longer tunnel, and the rancher with the shortest
occupied tunnel gets to keep his or her gopher.