Scott Tepper: Review of Down Under

Some people can resist the wily charms that tile games exude.  I am not one of them.  Maybe it’s because this genre of game generates a different board each time you play it, or maybe it’s because at the end of playing you are left with a mini work of art, or maybe it’s the experience of seeing the gameboard develop and evolve during a playing.  Whatever the reason, I am eternally enamored with games that allow the non-artist in me to feel like I’ve contributed to the final resultant tableau.

Down Under is the sort of newest tile laying game by Bambus Spieleverlag.  I say “sort of” because Down Under seems to be a reworking of one of its first games, Schlangennest.  Apparently, the final tiles for the game weren’t finished in time for Essen, so Günter Cornett made the decision to release a limited number of preliminary copies with thin card-type tiles instead of the final cardboard version. 

When writing the rules, Cornett made no effort to tack a theme onto this obviously abstract game.  The players take turns adding tiles to the board in an attempt to create a very long path.  When the board, the size of which depends on how many players are playing, is complete, the player that has the longest road wins.

The game comes with only a handful of different components.  Each player, up to four, receives a set of 18 tiles consisting of:

• Seven tiles that have two straight paths that cross,
• Nine tiles with two curved paths that don’t cross, and
• Two terminal tiles.

Four Billabong (pond) tiles are included in case some special situations arise.  As mentioned before, the tiles I received are made of a thin laminated plastic.  They should hold up pretty well, although the eventual thick cardboard tiles that will come with the later edition of the game should last even longer.


The different tiles in Down Under


The game play is simple and straightforward.  On your turn you add a single tile to the board.  For the first round, after the first player has played his first tile, the other players must add one of their tiles so that it touches a previously played tile either orthogonally or diagonally.  In all subsequent rounds, added tiles must touch other tiles orthogonally.  Each of the tiles (not including the terminal tiles and the Billabong tiles) displays two different paths: a colored path and a neutral path.  Each player’s set of tiles at the beginning of the game should have the same type of colored path, either red, yellow, black or green.  Bambus Spieleverlag did the good deed of giving the colored paths different textures so that players who have trouble differentiating between colors will have no problem discerning the different paths.

When adding new tiles to the board, you must extend your own path, but you may never play a tile that connects the roads of two opposing players.  If you choose to play a tile so that you’re extending your existing road with the colored path of the new tile, the neutral path of this new tile will undoubtably be exposed for other players to use.  If your opponents are clever, they will try to connect to this exposed neutral path so they’ll extend the length of their road with tiles they didn’t play, thus giving themselves an advantage.

A full board


The game ends when the board created by the tiles reaches a set dimension.  With two players, when the board reaches 5x7, the game ends; with three players, the game ends when the board is either 6x8 or 5x9; with four players, 7x9 or 6x10.  These are the recommended dimensions, although the rulebook offers slightly smaller dimensions for a more challenging game, and larger square dimensions for easier games.

In the basic game, when the game ends, the player whose road is longest wins.  As you might guess this will likely result in tied scores with more experienced players.  So I recommend that anyone except non-gamers should play with the optional special scoring rules right off the bat.  Using the more advanced rules, at the end of the game, a player’s base score is equal to each segment in the road plus some additional bonus points.  Looking closely you’ll see that every tile has an animal illustrated on the neutral path.  Every set of emu, kangaroo, and duck-billed platypus on a player’s route gives them an additional 5 points.  If a player has no dingo on his route (and each player has only one tile with a dingo), each rabbit on his route subtracts 2 points from his score.  At the end of the game, any player who has not played their dingo tile automatically loses.

It is with these additional scoring rules that Down Under becomes more challenging.  Each turn you have to decide what is the best way if to extend your path.  Strategically, you want to connect your path to as many neutral tiles played by your opponents as possible.  But if you use too many curved path tiles too early, you will definitely be limited in your options later on.

Although I mentioned them earlier, I haven’t explained the use of some of the tiles because they aren’t necessarily used in every game.  Every player gets two small terminal tiles that do count as segments of your road at the end of the game.  They are the only tiles that can be played at the end of your road on the “outside” of the normal confines of the defined board.  Basically, these two tiles allow you to stall when it’s your turn and placing a tile with a path will help your opponent more than it will help you.  A terminal tile can also be placed at the end of your road “inside” the board, but this prevents your road from elongating in that direction.  Each terminal tile has a half road printed along the side opposite the one that terminates your road.  This ½ road still acts as a connector for other roads that reach the top or bottom of this tile.  So playing a terminal tile on the inside of the board should be used only as a last ditch effort to increase your route by one final segment.

Occasionally, the board may develop where tiles from three different players may lead into an empty space.  Since roads of opponents may never join together, this would normally result in the space remaining blank.  This is where the Billabong tiles come in.  When this situation arises, the player who just took his turn plays a Billibong tile into the empty space.  This counts as a terminating tile for the other players, BUT the player who just played the Billibong can now play an additional tile off the open end of the Billibong.  For this player, the Billibong counts as a segment in his road.

If four different players’ roads lead into an empty space, a Billibong tile is placed in the middle, and this counts as a termination for all the players.

In the rare instance when two players’ tiles lead into an empty space and one of the players doesn’t have an appropriate connecting tile, the last player to go plays a Billibong tile in the empty space and it counts as a segment for both players.

Like a lot of good abstract strategy games, Down Under has a pleasant underlying tension where you want to play offensively and defensively at the same time, all the while trying to maximize your score with the highest possible quantity of animal sets.  You have a good, but not overwhelming number of decisions to make when you play a tile: Are you blocking off the expansion of an opponent’s path?  Are you connecting to open neutral paths your opponents have played?  Are you wasting any of your colored segments?

Since the board layout is not preset before the game, you can affect the other players by expanding the board in a particular direction.  I like tile games that do this because it adds a variability—and sometimes a viciousness—that you don’t get in a tile game where the playing area is pre-printed on a board.

Gameplay in Down Under is surprisingly quick, so that it feels like a meaty filler.  With two players, a game will last 5-10 minutes; with four players, the game lasts about 20.  Supposedly, if you bought the pre-production version, you can contact Bambus to request the cardboard tiles, but I haven’t done this yet and probably won’t in the future.  The game plays fine with the thinner cards and also stores perfectly in the small plastic case.

So far, the people I’ve exposed to Down Under have liked it.  It takes a while to wrap your head around optimizing your turns and wanting to play offensively and defensively at the same time.  In general, scores tend to be pretty close, so every point counts, and that adds a nice little tension to this quick little game.  If you have played Legend of Landlock before, you may notice a similarity between the two games.  The plus side with Down Under is that it can be played with more than two players.

One more interesting thing about Down Under is that it actually contains an additional game using the reverse side of the tiles, called Sturt’s Stony Desert.  On the other side of the tiles are printed paths of double curves, forks, and triple curves in black and white.  The tiles are grouped by type, and players take turns adding the tiles to the board (with roads NOT needing to connect).  If a player is able to make a connected path between his pre-designated sides (East-West or North-South), he wins. 

Sturt’s Stony Desert


If the board becomes 5x5 and no one has won yet, then the players will take turns playing triple curves OVER existing double curves.  If a player is able to make a connection between his sides, then the opponent has one turn to play a triple curve to interrupt the route.  If he cannot do this, then the other player wins.  If he is successful in interrupting the path, then the game continues.

Sturt’s Stony Desert is much more of a brain burning exercise than Down Under.  Between the two, I think Down Under is the better game, but it is a nice to have the option.

© 2008 Scott Tepper

---

Comments:

No comments yet.

To comment, you must register with BGN. Registration is free, but donations are greatly appreciated!