Get Your Friends Hooked on Board Games With The River

By Christopher Guyton | December 20th, 2018 | Categories: Board Game Reviews, Board Games, Tabletop Gaming Products

Looking for an exercise in planning and worker placement? Don’t miss The River, an easy starter game is perfect to get your friends hooked on board games!

Publisher Days of Wonder is known for releasing only one big game each year. This year we welcome the release of The River designed by Sébastien Pauchon and Ismaël Perrin.

The River: $39.99

Get yours for less at Miniature Market

A new world opens before you with untouched land as far as the eye can see. Your boat glides up a river and you examine the banks, appreciated the beauty of your new home. Expand your territory, cultivate your land, and exploit your resources to construct the buildings that will make your settlement the most impressive in the region. But keep an eye on your opponents! If you aren’t careful, they’ll claim the richest land before you even have a chance to set foot on the bank!

In The River, players struggle to make the most amazing settlement of this new world. In order to outmatch your opponents, construct valuable buildings and cultivate your river banks into harmonious and product tracts. Reserve resources, enlarge your territory, and block your competitors…

Every decision counts in this fast and streamlined tile-placement game. But be careful, some of your pioneers will decide to settle along the way and the lack of a workforce could cost you the victory.

Contents:
1 Double-sided Main Game Board
4 Double-sided River Boards
4 Boats
20 Pioneer Meeples
44 Resource Tokens
65 Terrain Tiles
1 First Player Pawn
33 Building Cards
20 Bonus Tokens
1 Rules Booklet

Ages: 8+
Players: 2-4
Game Length: 30-45 minutes

Get Your Friends Hooked on Board Games With The River

The River is a 2-4 player worker placement game that plays in 30-45 minutes. One thing to note, this is an excellent gateway game and perfect for teaching the worker placement mechanism. The fast, straightforward play-through, combined with beautiful components make this a must for newer players.

In The River, you are a group of settlers trying to develop the land along a riverbank. You will build structures, create production tiles, and eventually, some of your workers will decide to settle down and make a life for themselves.

The main board features multiple spots for workers to be placed and take actions from. Each player will have their own river player board to which tiles can be placed to increase your production and scoring. You can take new tiles, build new buildings or gain resources in order to build with.

The four resources are brick, stone, wood, and food. The food tokens are turkey meeples and look amazing. Anytime at the beginning of your turn, you may trade any three resources for a turkey. This is good because the turkeys are a wild resource. You also have barns that can hold resources, but only one each. So when you gain resources you have to respect your storage capacity.

There are two ways to trigger the end game in The River. First, when a player builds five structures, or once they have completely filled their settlement board with twelve tiles.

There are a few opportunities for bonus points as you play. Each time you build a structure you gain the highest point token available which diminishes as players take them.

Another major way to gain extra points is by creating sets of matching territories in your river colony. Each column with two matching biomes is worth two points whereas a fully matched column of three tiles will net you six points! These can really turn the game in your favor easily.

I really enjoy worker placement games more than any other genre. The River presents this mechanism very well with easily defined spaces for your actions. I highly recommend this for those who are interested in learning how worker placement games play.

The good things about this game are the quick playtime, beautiful artwork, and nice components. My only real negative would be that perhaps it’s slightly too simple. Some more advanced players might not get much out of this one. But for an entry-level worker placement, it hits all the right spots for me.