Carcassonne: Hunters and Gatherers
This is a new game (not an expansion) in the Carcassonne line. It has new graphics, a new set of components, a theme set in the stone age, and new rules to match the theme.
As in Carcassonne, players place tiles and put game figures on them, but with different strategies and results. Players have figures that can represent hunters, gatherers, or fishermen and place them in meadows, forests, or on rivers. They also have huts, which can be placed on rivers or lakes and are scored at the end of the game as are the hunters. Gatherers and fishermen are scored when forests or rivers are completed.
There are special forest tiles that give the player who plays a tile completing a forest an extra tile lay of special tiles with special features. Players will like this game that features the tile-laying and token placements of Carcassonne with many new twists.
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Any game which I, my girlfriend of the time, and my friend can learn to play at 3AM at a convention and play right the first time while having a blast, is well worth checking out.
A typical euro-game, Hunters & Gatherers comes with an assortment of meeple and wooden huts, a large number of ‘map’ tiles and the rules.
Play proceeds thusly:
On your turn, you randomly pick a map tile and lay it down connected to the others. Tiles can only be placed in such a way that they connect to existing map tiles – plains to plains, forests to forests, rivers to rivers, etc.
Different tiles have different things on them – some forests have mushrooms in them, some plains have prey animals (antelope or mammoths), while some have predators (tigers or sabre cats), etc. You place a tile and then decide if you want to place a meeple or a village.
Villages can only be placed on tiles with a lake or river; and you want to place them on a river system which will grow and grow. You’ll score pints at the end of the game based on how long your river system is. You can’t place a village on a river system which someone else has already claimed, but you can hook a river system you’ve claimed into one another player has claimed (by cleverly placing subsequent tiles) and force them to share their points with you.
Meeple are more flexible about where you can place them, but you only have so many to go around, so use them wisely. Some placements will allow you to score points immediately, and reclaim your meeple into your available pool, while other placements are permanent. Again, no placing one of your meeple into a region which someone else has claimed, but you can attach your region to theirs and force the sharing of points.
In a nutshell, that’s it. Play is relatively quick, and there are some ways that you can screw your neighbor – such as placing a grassland with a predator into contact with a grassland they already own (predators reduce the number of game animals, and thus points, for that region).
Since the ‘map’ is randomly generated by each player, there is a lot of replay value to this game. My girlfriend and I enjoyed it a lot with just the two of us playing, or with a full compliment of players (5).
Unfortunately, Rio Grande no longer in produces H&G (see below); I guess it sold poorly. If you find a copy, buy it at once!
4/14/15 News Flash Apparently, Z-Man Games (makers of Battle at Kemble’s Cascade and Pandemic) has made this game available again.
UPDATE: 7/10/17 Equally apparently, Z-Man (now a part of the Asmodee North America family) has ceased production of Hunters and Gatherers (again). And we’re back to, IF you can find a copy, buy it.