Designed by: Marco Teubner
In Sutter’s Mill the players play gold prospectors in the old (semi-wild) West. The board represents the town of Coloma during the gold rush, and the players are after the precious gold in the town’s locale – the mountains, hills and river.
The game kind of divides into two halves – the first being the scramble for gold, as players get what they can from the seam of gold tiles running around the board. The second half – the start of which is determined by the players strategies – is the decision to get out of town and abandon the fast-emptying seam while the going is good.
Players begin with some prospectors (little wooden people) and a set of cards. On your turn you’ll have two options – either to prospect for gold (using the wooden guys) or bid (using your cards) to control one of the buildings in town. What the buildings do is either help you improve your mining capacity, which is key to winning the game, or give some other in-game benefits such as movement. But in order to control them you need to have the highest value cards in the building, and this can count against you when the Tear-Down phase (the getting out of town) begins. For once one player starts to remove their cards from the buildings, a race is on, because having cards left in the buildings at the end of the game counts against you. So their is a balance in the game between trying to wrestle control of the buildings during the first half, but not expending so many cards that it is impossible to remove them later.
This element of trying to gauge when is best to vamoose gives Sutter’s Mill an interesting edge to it.
It's not heavy on the Take That factor but players may get into battles over controlling a particular building.
It really depends on the players. Sutter's Mill can be played with brow-furrowing calculation, or at a fair old lick.
It's not too taxing - after a first play you'll have a better idea of how to approach your strategy; whether to go for as much gold as possible for instance and risk penalties at the end, or grab a reasonable amount and try to end the game quickly!
The gold seam tiles have random values. The cards are the same for each player, but the idea that two games would play out identically is nigh on impossible.
2-4
Players
12+
Years
60-90
Mins
Sam says
I like the fact that Sutters Mill has two distinct halves, and the second one - getting out of town - is decided by the players. The bidding is clever too; the way higher bids are harder to remove. Beyond that the game doesn't seem massively thematic though: to me it feels like the workings of the game are on the surface - not necessarily a bad thing, but when the theme is all about panning for gold and pushing your luck, I'd want it to feel slightly more immersive.