Threading the needle
CARAVAN
Designer: Joseph Huber | Publisher: Rio Grande Games
If Caravan had been published in the early-to-mid 2000s, we might be talking about it alongside other classic gateway Euros. It has a robustness of a game which when it sets out its rules, for anyone, it does so with no pretext of you ever having played a game like it before. Like allthe best gateway games do. It also, as an aside, has an art and component style which these days seems antiquated. This is just another reason it won't look out of place next to Carcassonne or Catan. Quaint or tired, your mileage in this desert may vary.
The desert is full of treasures, and handily it’s laid out in a grid. You want to move those goods to the city that wants them (luckily these places only want one thing). The best way to do that is to place camel meeples between the good and the place you want it to go. Players have four action points to spend a turn, placing a camel on an empty space, picking up goods, moving goods along a camel chain, and stealing goods all cost one. Moving a camel onto an occupied space costs two. The game has a chess-like feel to the blocking of the other player. Placing your camels in the way of where they want to go is going to slow them down. It’s even better if the route helps you later in some way.
Moving your goods, and delivering them uses the camels like a conveyor belt – players can move a good to any camel orthogonally connected. As camels with goods can’t move themselves, it’s important to snake across the desert and do a little bit of ‘to me, to you’ to efficiently deliver goods where they’re needed.
Stealing is a matter of being on the same space as the ‘victim camel’ and handing your theft marker to your opponent. Consider it like a fancy highway bandit leaving a calling card. The thief stores the item under their camel where it is safe until it is moved (at which point it goes back on top). It’s a good way of regulating the thievery as when someone has been stolen from enough, they’re able to call and end to desert piracy – unless they want to start it up again.
You restock the desert every now and again, and then there’s a scramble for this or that resource – as some are worth more. Players are faced with the flipping of their whole caravan of camels over a couple of turns to get a high-scoring resource across the map, or the slightly less exciting hoovering up of lesser resources. These choices are agonising in the way you want from a good gateway Euro, and they zip along as fast as a cantering camel.
It feels extremely satisfying to create a good chain, or block your opponent, and yes, even stealing the little wooden cubes. It’s elegant and hard not to recommend fully. If you were looking for ‘the game’ that you’re going to come back to again and again, Caravan is no mirage.
CHRISTOPHER JOHN EGGETT
WE SAY
A reminder of a simpler kind of gaming which is often overlooked simply because we’re all a lot more used to playing complex systems than we once were. A real treasure in the desert that won’t disappoint if you come to it with an open heart.
WHATS IN THE BOX
► 24 Camel meeples
► 4 Theft markers
► 48 Goods
► 1 Cloth bag
► 44 Demand markers
► 1 Game board
► 4 Player boards
TRY THIS IF YOU LIKED SETTLERS OF CATAN…
Somewhere between Settlers of Catan and Carcassonne this game sits as a kind of long-lost brother – while it’s slightly ‘out of time’ it is charmingly competitive and will remind you of the early days of the Eurogame explosion.