- Publisher : HUCH!
- Designers : Inka Brand, Markus Brand
- Artist(s) : Dennis Lohausen
- Players : 2–4
- Playing time : 45–75 Min
- Weight BGG : 2.89
What's this?
In 16th century India, the powerful empire of the Great Mughals rose between the Indus and Ganges rivers. Playing as rajas and ranis, the country’s influential nobles, players in Rajas of the Ganges compete to support the empire by expanding their domains into rich and magnificent provinces. Players must use their dice wisely and carefully plan the placement of their workers, while never underestimating the benefits of good karma. Success will bring them great wealth and fame in their quest to become legendary rulers.
How do you play?
During each round, you’ll take turns to strategically place your workers and perform various actions, having two key resources: money and colored dice. When you get a die, you must roll it and position it on your Kali statue.
The different areas of the board offer distinct opportunities:
🔸 The career: This area allows you to undertake construction actions, acquire tiles that you will place in your province to unlock various bonuses. These tiles can feature buildings, generating glory depending on your influence, or various types of markets.
🔸 The market area: It offers the opportunity to earn money by adding value to the market tiles you have placed in your province.
🔸 The Grand Mughal’s Palace: This area offers various benefits, such as first player status, dice recovery, river progression, increased karma, etc.
🔸 The port: Use this area to move your boat towards lucrative spaces, allowing you to acquire new dice, earn money, perform market or palace actions, obtain new workers, etc.
The lower area allows you to collect new colored dice. In addition, the Karma track offers you the possibility of turning a die over to its opposite side.
What makes Rajas of the Ganges unique, a feature taken up by other games (hello Ark Nova), is the triggering of the end of the game when a player manages to cross their score marker with that of the money.
Is it good?
Rajas of the Ganges stands out as an excellent game that skillfully combines worker laying, tile laying, while effectively exploiting dice management.
After their remarkable creation Descendance, the Brand couple once again manage to design a game whose rules are simple, but which proves to be deep and rich in varied strategies.
In this frantic race, you will have to optimize each turn by wisely using your workers, your bonuses, your dice, as well as the strategic placement of your tiles. The competition to line up your two tokens on the two tracks before your opponents gives the game a pleasant tension, constituting the very essence of its appeal, a concept taken up brilliantly by Ark Nova.
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Review Rajas of the Ganges
Positives
- A fluid, fast but tense game
- The twist of the end-of-game trigger
- Easy to access but strategic
- A game that will please both expert and casual players
Negatives
- A DA that won't please everyone (but I like it 🥰)
Breakdown
- Components and illustrations 7.5
- Mechanics 9.0
- Thematic 7.5
- Replayability 9.0
- Handling 10.0
- Interaction 8.0
- Originality 8.5
