Canal Mania
Designed by: Phil Kendall,Steve Kendall
Although the words canal and mania don’t often coincide, you don’t have to have a psychopathic love of serene waterways to enjoy the game. Canal Mania harks back to the eighteen-hundreds, when industry barons sick of transporting their goods by horse and cart realized that canals were to revolutionize everything!
The board shows a map of England with the landscape broken up into hexes. The players represent canal builders with three aims: to build canals, to complete contracts (i.e. canal routes from one city to another) and to deliver goods along the completed canals. All of these pursuits result in victory points.
Each player begins with an identical set of canal counters made up of standard canals, locks, aqueducts and tunnels. They also get an engineer. The game commences with players picking up contracts, then choosing whether to build canals or pick up cards – the cards give you the power to build, so, very much like the popular Ticket to Ride, more cards give you more freedom, but this must be balanced against not letting the other players build everything whilst you’re developing your hand. The cards come in different types and some of them will add goods to certain towns – be careful on how these are played, as you don’t want to be helping the other players by giving them goods to deliver!
The game is broken into phases, with each player choosing first whether to take another contract or change their engineer. Then there’s a building phase where players can either take cards, or build. Finally there’s a delivery phase for those who have goods to deliver.
Over the course of the game the board becomes busier and busier and you also have the option of linking into other players’ networks to make deliveries. After a certain amount of points are reached (it varies depending on number of players) the game end is triggered, and after a last round scores are counted up.
Sam says
I must admit I’ve only played Canal Mania twice, but I thought it was fun – lighter on the rules than the more renowned captains of industry build networks-type game (Brass) and considering it’s rather staid appearance, threaded with tension. These 90’s and 00’s titles often look a little drab compared to modern games, with their emphasis on aesthetics, but in terms of play they’re sometimes a significant improvement in some ways – hailing from an era when interaction was king, and gentle, largely solo-puzzle type games were a just a distant dream – or nightmare, depending on your perspective.
-
Take That!
There's not a huge amount of Take That in Canal Mania, but you can tamper with each other's plans a bit.
-
Fidget Factor!
It depends who's playing. Young children may find the board and theme rather bland anyway (although building networks is often a hit with kids) but older players may pause to work out their best move.
-
Brain Burn!
See above. It's got a bit of luck in the mix, but managing your cards is key to doing well in the game.
-
Again Again!
Cards assure randomness, and for 2 or 3 players who've played before you can be sure you'll be finished in an hour.
