We then decided to try a new abstract game from Reiner Knizia, which could be described as hexagonal dominoes with the scoring of Euphrat & Tigris.

This is a nicely produced game by Kosmos with rules for 1 to 4 players. The board is a hex grid onto which a player on his turn places one of his tiles. The tiles are shaped as two hexagons joined along one edge and each half tile shows one of six symbols - some tiles show different symbols on each half; some show the same. After playing a tile, the player scores points for each of the two symbols on the tile. For each symbol of the same type that is adjacent to the played tile, one point is scored and if further symbols can be traced in a straight uninterrupted line from the starting symbol, further points are scored. The points are recorded separately for each symbol and a player's final score is determined by the lowest amount in each of the six symbol types. The person with the highest final score is the winner. If there is a tie, the next lowest symbol score of the tied players is compared until the tie is broken.

In our game, we played in a very friendly style. This is a game where you can extend lines of symbols which can help the next player if they can then extend the line further, or you can play to restrict the next player's opportunities to score. We tended to favour the former but, next time, I suspect things will be more defensive. I managed to engineer a position to guarantee that I couldn't be overtaken, even though we were a few turns from the end which made the conclusion of the game a bit anti-climactic. However, overall it seemed a nice exercise in maximising your position on each turn with little opportunity of setting yourself up for later turns. Each turn seemed a bit of a mini puzzle. The scoring was taken straight from Euphrat & Tigris but worked pretty well in this abstract setting. Even though I'm not an abstract fan, I liked it, as did the rest of the group.