River of Gold

In River of Gold we are rival traders, sailing the fictional Rokugan river and hoping to establish ourselves as the best – read richest – make-believe captain of industry.

The board itself shows the river and the various shore spaces – basically, building sites – along its banks, which begin the game vacant. Players each start the game with a bit of cash, and two boats on the river somewhere. Despite the ornate appearance of the board, the rhythm of the game is relatively simple: on your turn, you roll a die and choose one of three ways to use it. You can move your boat along the river, and gain rewards from each of the shore spaces you stop beside (there will be at least three, possibly as many as five). Empty shore spaces give you money, shore spaces with buildings in them give other rewards, such as Silk, Rice, and Porcelain tokens, or money, victory points, or the all-important Influence. We’ll come to influence shortly.

A second action you can choose is to construct a building. As long as the symbol on your die matches a shore space next to one of your boats, you can construct there, paying the required cash shown on that space to add one of the four available buildings to it. You’ll get an instant reward – usually Influence – and your building will now give a benefit of some kind to anyone who moves their boat adjacent. As the owner of the building, you get a special benefit of your own when someone visits – even if it’s one of your own boats.

The last action is to Deliver to a Customer. You always have two Customer cards in your hand and they want a particular combination of the previously-mentioned silk, rice and porcelain. If you have their demands in your supplies, you ‘deliver’ by revealing the card and taking the rewards on it: all of them have some instant/ongoing reward, and many also give you points at the end of the game.

So those are the three actions, and as you take them – especially building – you’ll be pushing markers up six different Influence tracks. These are important not only because reaching certain spots gives you a benefit, but because the player or players with the most influence in them will score points at the end of the game. You can lag behind during play and then bound into contention in final scoring if you’ve spread your influence well.

The last thing to bear in mind is the Divine Favor – tracked on your player board – which lets you manipulate dice rolls up or down: keeping some ‘favor’ in your pocket is always a good thing, as having some flexibility in what the dice let you do can be critical. Everything else in the game revolves around this die-roll/action-selection, with the positions of your boats obviously important as well. The number of buildings is limited, and when you reach the bottom of the pile the endgame is triggered: whoever triggered it gets 5 points, and then every other player gets one last turn. You’ll then score the six influence tracks (first and second places, sometimes third as well) and any Customer cards that you delivered to. Most points is the winner.

There is also a Patrons mini-expansion included in the box you can mix in, giving each player their own special ability.