Game Review – Salmon Run

Salmon Run
Number of Players	2 - 4 (5 w/ Expansion)
Play Time	20 -30 min.
Ages	10 years and up

Salmon Run is a race to the finish game that features a deck building element.

The players take the roles of salmon trying to reach the spawning pool.  The first player to reach the pool wins.  The way that the players do this is to play cards from their hand to move their fish upstream.  There are a number of obstacles that are triggered as players hit a space on the board or can be triggered by cards that are played by other players.  If you use too many movement cards or jump rapids on the board you gain Fatigue Cards.

In addition to card the move your salmon forward there are a number of special cards that you can get during the game.

Fatigue Cards clutter your deck and will slow down your forward movement eventually if you get too many of them.  You get them by using three movement cards in a turn or by jump a set of rapids.  You can get rid of them by resting in a reed spot on the board or spending a movement phase playing them down.  Each action allows you to remove one from your deck of cards.

Bear Cards allow you to move a one of the bears on the boars up to two spaces.  If a fish is in the space that the bears end its movement in the owner of that fish gains a Fatigue Card.

Eagle Cards allow you to make a player discard one of the cards in their hand.

Current and Rapids Cards impede all of the players, including the one who played it, movement.

If a Current, Eagle, or Rapids card is played against a player they many play the same type of card from their hand to prevent the effect of that card on them.

Another feature of the game that increases the replay potential is the modular board system.  The game contains 8 double sided boards.  Usually six boards are laid out to make up the game board for that play of the game.  This makes it so that players do not have to play it on the same board all the time.

There are a number of expansions that were included with the Kickstarter sets like additional cards, boards, and the pieces to add a fifth player.  They are not available at retailers at this time.

The game plays quickly and lends itself to optional rules and expansions in the future.  There is just enough strategy in it to keep me engaged.  This is a great filler game if you need something that plays in 30 minutes while you are waiting on people to show up at the beginning of an event or finish up another game.

I give this game an A for its simplicity and the ability to replay it.  I would definitely play it again.

After Action Report – Strategic & Adventure Games Association @ El Toro Public Library, April 27, 2013

I attended the Strategic & Adventure Games Association (SAGA) on Saturday at the El Toro Public Library in Lake Forest, California.  This is an event that I host every 2^nd and 4^th Saturday from 10:00am to 4:45pm.  We have 15 people attend this time, which is a little below average for a 4^th Saturday, but still a reasonable number to get a variety of games out on the tables.  At the peak there were 5 games being played at one time.

I played four games during the day.

The first game that I played was a game called India Rails.  India Rails is a 2 – 6 player edition of the Empire Builder family of games that takes place in India.  In the game the players own railroad companies that are competing to build rail lines and move freight from one city to another based on a set of demand cards that they have.  Once a demand on a demand card is completed the player discards it and draws a new one from the deck.  Included in the demand card deck are a number of disaster cards which include things like derailments and river floods which impede the player’s progress to victory.

The unique feature of the Empire Builder family of games is the free form building of track that it allows.  The player uses special crayons that are included with the game to draw their track on the board.  Between games the marking from the previous game are erased from the game so that in the next play of the game the players start with a fresh board.

After a rough start to the game, having been derailed after delivering my first load.  I was able to recover and come in second out of four players.

The second game that I played was Salmon Run, which I played last Thursday at Paradise Perks as well.  Salmon Run combines deck building and race elements into a game.  Your goal in this game is to move you salmon up a river to the spawning ground using a deck of cards that you build up during the game.  The first player to the spawning ground is the winner 

There are obstacles in the river that make it more difficult to reach your goal.  They include immobile things like rapids and mobile ones like bears that can be moved on to you by other players.

I came in second this time as well.  I had a strong start to the game but my cards failed me in the end and I was not able to cross into the Spawning Pool first.

Next up was a game called The Hanging Gardens.  It is a 2 – 4 player game that has tile placement and set collection elements in it.  The players take turns adding tiles which are actually cards divided into six sections.  1 – 3 of the sections will have features on them that the player needs to combine in groups of 3 or more sections.  Once a player gets a large enough group of tiles together, he can then earn tiles that score points depending on the number of similar tiles he collects.

I have played this game a number of times in the past, but this is the first time I was able to play the game with only 2 players.  This can speed up the game and allows for more scoring opportunities and a 3 or 4 player game does.  I came in second on this game as well.

The last game of the day for me was Saint Petersburg. Saint Petersburg is a 2 – 4 player card drafting and set collection game.  Players take turns doing actions during each round, which include purchasing a card from a tableau of cards, play a card from their reserve, or activating a special power on a card until all the players pass. 

The goal is to get money in the early game because money is very tight throughout the game and then start generating as many victory points as you can as the game progresses.

I was able to come in second against some very experienced players, which was great considering I play the game maybe once a year.

My standings for this event are as follows:

Game	No. of Plays	1st	2nd	3rd	4th	5th	6th	7th	Avg.
India Rails	1		1						2.00
Saint Petersburg	1		1						2.00
Salmon Run	1		1						2.00
The Hanging Gardens	1		1						2.00
Totals	4	-	4	-	-	-	-	-	2.00

After Action Report – Thursday Night Gaming @ Paradise Perks, April 25, 2013

This week at Paradise Perks we there were 25 gamers in attendance with 6 games being played at one time at the peak of the event.  The event continues to maintain its friendly atmosphere. And mix of casual to hardcore game players.

I was able to play three games this time.

The first game I played was called Monolith: The Strategy Game.  It was a 30 minute game that we managed to take 90 minutes to play through analysis paralysis.  It coins itself as a strategic worker placement game, which I thought would be interesting since I am really into worker placement games right now.  I am not great at worker placement games, but I really like them.  Unfortunately it turned out to me more of a random luck of the draw worker placement game.

The game consists of a tableau of 12 cards called Runes that have special abilities attached to them that each player is supposed to place dice that they roll onto in turn order once everyone has placed their dice onto the cards each of the card effects are resolved.  To make things more random they add in special ability cards called Powers and Skills which are drawn from decks as the results of the dice placement on some of the Rune cards. 

Your flexibility and ability to succeed in the game is decided by your luck in drawing the Power and Skill cards.  If you get the right cards you will do well, if you do not, thank you for playing but you do not have a chance of winning.  I came in third out of four players in this game.

The next game I played was The Great Heartland Hauling Co.  A 2 to 4 player game, the players take the role of truckers in the Heartland of the United States moving loads from one point on the board to another using a hand of cards to pick up loads, move their truck, and drop off loads to score victory points.  The one who has the most victory points after a predetermined number of victory points is met wins the game.

One of the elements that makes the game interesting is that it has a modular board so that the pickup and destination point are not the same every time.  Even though I have played this game before, I only managed to take third place out of four players.

The last game that I played on Thursday night was Salmon Run.  This is a 2 to 4 player deck building game with a race to the finish.  You goal in this game is to move you salmon up a river to the spawning ground using a deck of cards that you build up during the game.  The first player to the spawning ground is the winner 

There are obstacles in the river that make it more difficult to reach your goal.  They include immobile things like rapids and mobile ones like bears that can be moved on to you by other players.

Two of us managed to reach the end on the same turn.  Unfortunately I lost the tie and came in second because I had too much fatigue.

My results for this event are:

Game	No. of Plays	1st	2nd	3rd	4th	5th	6th	7th	Avg.
Monolith	1	-	-	1	-	-			3.00
Salmon Run	1	-	1	-	-	-			2.00
The Great Heartland Hauling Co.	1	-	-	1	-	-			3.00
Totals	3	-	1	2	-	-	-	-	2.67