The River of Gold: All That Glitters

Lthe legend of the 5 rings is originally a collectible card game, as well as a role-playing game. The Rokugan universe is very rich and conducive to other works. The river of gold by Keith Piggot at Office Dog takes up this universe, but in a Eurogame of medium weight, a strategy game where we play merchants who will travel the river, in order to construct buildings and deliver goods to customers.

Rokugan Merchants

We embody clans: clan of the scorpion, the mantis, the crab or the crane. We will compete to gain the most influence in each region in a majority game. Mid-game the emperor will come to monitor our progress, which grants us resources and victory points.

Let's go down to the river

In our turn we have 3 possible actions, build one of the buildings on the river by paying in Koku (the game currency), go down the river with one of our boats in order to collect resources for each building present on the banks around the box. Finally spend these resources to deliver goods to customer cards, which will give us victory points but above all immediate and permanent powers.

Be careful, there are still constraints which are managed by a 6-sided die. We build in the area indicated on the die or we deliver to a client represented by the die. As for the boats, we will have to respect the value to move our boat from space to space.

Obviously we are in a Eurogame, so we will have a way to control this mischievous cube. How ? By spending divine favors on our board. This prevents us from being in a planning that induces neuronal constipation and from still having a little decision space and dilemmas.

The construction of these buildings grants influence on the region, that is to say an advance on a track which gives resources, immediate points and points at the end of the game depending on the progress on the track (a majority system like any other).

But above all, these buildings will be able to give us resources when we bring one of our boats there, and better yet, we will also gain resources for the buildings of other players, but the owners of these buildings will also have compensation which depends on said building. A little positive interaction mechanism that I particularly like.

When our boat arrives at the end of the river, it starts back upstream, and off we go again for a new tour. But this still has two consequences, first we gain a bonus resource or several if we have delivered certain customers and we discard the building tile furthest to the left of the market which speeds up the game. It ends when the last building tile is placed in the river of tiles, we will end the current round and we will move on to the counting made of majority calculation, collections of character cards, without forgetting some characters which have end conditions.

Delivering customers brings the combinatorial side of the game. Some customers offer discounts, others allow you to double the points, still others allow us to replace our frail walnut shell with our imperial ship with a significant bonus each time we 'we will use it. These cards allow you to gain points also at the end of the game depending on a condition, this can be money, resources or constructions, etc.

And in the middle flows the river

If you like the world of L5Ryou risk being disappointed, here it is only wallpaper, pretty wallpaper in fact. This is probably one of the most beautiful trays I have ever seen with the use of selective gold varnish for the river that runs through it. If you play clans from the series, this is a very weak thematic justification. We have a mini extension which allows us a little asymmetry with powers and a little “lore”, but that’s all.

The river of gold is absolutely nothing new, we are in ultra classic, but it all runs like clockwork. Our die is rolled at the end of our turn so that we have time to anticipate our turn during that of the others. Interaction level the race to the majority on the slopes requires you to look up and watch out for others. I haven't talked about it yet, but we have maps Masteries which are objectives which will give points to the first to achieve them and here again we will monitor ourselves and make our choices according to this parameter.

Who says majority, often says weaker interaction between two, well not really, because if the second scores points on the slopes he must still remain at a reasonable distance, we must therefore invest in it and it is not rare that you decide as the first to continue your advance so as not to benefit your opponent.

If at the beginning we choose the buildings according to their type according to the objectives, once these objectives are achieved, we will mainly target the buildings which advance a lot on the tracks, and leave aside the effects of the buildings. All the more true since the game is going too fast to build a real engine and hope to benefit from it. This is more of a game where we jump on the right opportunities than a game where we build a long-term strategy.

Especially since the game is not meant to be frustrating, the installation of workers (boats) is not blocking, you gain bonuses on the tracks even when you go after the others, etc. A blessing in disguise because you can think out of turn without having to redo your entire thinking, even if perhaps an opportunity will push you to change Paul's rifle ????

In the end, the river of gold is one of those games where we say to ourselves that there is nothing innovative in themselves, simply repeating existing formulas, but it does it well, there is no real hiccup, everything runs smoothly , it's fluid, a little interaction, timing all in a compressed time. I didn't fall in love with it and I think I'll get tired of it quite quickly, but it's still a good euro that's not too complex for introducing players, for example.