Date: 25th March 2005
Game played: Amazonas ( Kosmos ) BGG Id: 15157

Amazonas is the latest game to be released by Stefan Dorra and is published by Kosmos. The game is set on a map of the Amazon basin and players are attempting to travel from village to village to set up research stations on five types of research project. You also have a secret goal of reaching four particular villages dotted around the map. Points are awarded during the game for setting up a research station on each of the five projects and at the end of the game for those projects where you have set up research stations in at least three villages. If you have not visited your four secret destinations, you lose three VPs for each village you missed.

The game lasts 18 rounds and at the beginning of each round a special event card is revealed. Some of these have positive and some negative effects for the current round. Players then simultaneously select an income card for the round (there are 7 of these and you play a different one each round, only getting all the cards back after rounds 7 and 14). The income number also dictates turn order. Once these are revealed, players collect their income and have the opportunity to spend this to build research stations in turn order. The first research station in a village is cheaper to build than subsequent ones and each village is only able to support 2 or 3 stations. Turn order can, therefore, be quite important in preserving cash, especially as cash is very tight. Often, all you can do is collect income without building and there aren’t that many turns to achieve all you would like to achieve.

In our game, we thought 18 turns would take some while to complete but the game flew by, taking us just about an hour. We were all wary of our destination cards and tended to spread ourselves across the map pretty quickly. I made the mistake of placing my initial village between two of my secret destinations and then not linking into them straight away. Consequently, others got in there before me and meant it cost me more than would otherwise have been the case. There is also a dilemna between concentrating on one or two project types to boost income during the game and establishing a presence in all five projects. Mark K and Nige both went down the specialised route and this worked well for them. Chris managed to block both me and Mark K at key times and this meant Mark K only managed to connect to his final secret location on his very last turn. This proved crucial and gave him the victory. We all enjoyed this, Nige especially, as it is quite tactical but turns are short and there is very little downtime. Good stuff.

 
Player
Rating
Score
Position
Winner
Mark K
7
14
1
Nige
8
11
2
Garry
7
8
3
Chris
6
8
3

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