The Ruhr: A Story of Coal Trade

EvEvanstar4,6

So far I've only played on the Ruhr map, and not the new map that comes on the front side of the board for this edition. In this game you are trying to get points by placing houses and unlocking technology tiles. This is fueled by getting money from shipping coal down the river, represented by dice. The value of the coal fluctuates as the die face changes up or down through player actions. The locations you deliver to determine which technology tiles unlock at the end of the round. The technology tiles are what allow you to place your houses and amass endgame scoring criteria. Money is very tight in this game, and the game in general is fairly low scoring so getting 1vp per dollar is actually a pretty ideal ratio. The map itself is laid out in a somewhat confusing manner, but it's manageable. One or two of the icons could have been a lot better, but I've forgiven other games for worse. The board was printed with a fairly uniform lack of vibrancy and contrast, which leads to the colors looking dull and blending visually with the map features. This is unfortunate, since Khole and Kolonie by the same designer has a similar looking map, but looks so so much nicer. The game gives you a few interesting decisions here or there and is generally an ok game, but it fails to have any mechanisms that get me really excited. You sail your boat up and down the river, back and forth, trying to keep your money level high enough to improve your position, but it feels samey throughout. The game is very low scoring which also pushes it to feel a little bland. There are some places you can put a house that do a +1vp majority scoring at the end, which is pretty meh, but then a tie in those boxes means nobody gets the bonus, which is pretty unexciting. The technology tiles you plan your strategies around run one fewer than the number of players, so you might set yourself up for a tile, and lose it to turn order. I'm interested to play this more to see if it grows on me. In particular I'm curious about the new side of the board, which seems to have some substantial variation from the version I played. ★ Art, Iconography and components functional ★ Clever or interesting mechanisms ★ Reasonably low downtime between turns with mildly AP players ☆ Multiple plays stay interesting ★ Low or mitigatable luck elements ★★☆☆☆ Raw enjoyment