Even though I have never been, I would love to take a trip through a desert and see all the sights and sounds and experiences. Not on foot, but definitely on a camel. So it’s time to grab a camel or two, check out the landscape and look for some beautiful oases out there.
Through the Desert is a route-building and area-enclosure board game designed by Reiner Knizia and published by Allplay. It plays 2-5 players for 45 mins.
Overview:
In Through the Desert, players expand caravans of camels across a hexagonal desert map to score points through multiple methods. Camels make routes to different oases to claim watering holes and score fort he largest caravans. The player with the most points wins!
Gameplay:
The game board is a hex grid that you can either use the mountain or river side to play. Waterhole tokens are placed face-down or randomly distributed across designated spaces, and a subset of oasis spaces is filled. Each player controls five caravans, one in each camel color. At the start, each caravan consists of a single leader camel.
Players take turns placing their leaders on empty hexes, with placement restrictions, as leaders cannot be placed on waterholes or adjacent to other leaders or oases. On a turn, you can places two camels onto the board. These camels may be of the same color or different colors. Each camel must be placed adjacent to an existing camel of the same color belonging to that player, extending that caravan. Caravans cannot merge with other caravans of the same color, and placement must follow adjacency and blocking rules for every turn.
Caravans expand outward one space at a time. When you place your camels it’s important to remember that they cannot be placed on occupied spaces or inside enclosed regions. Once an area is fully surrounded by a continuous chain of camels it becomes enclosed and cannot be entered again for the rest of the game.
Points are earned in several ways as your caravans expand:
- Placing a camel onto a waterhole space allows the player to collect the token, which is worth points.
- Extending a caravan to reach an oasis grants a fixed point reward, typically once per caravan.
- Enclosing an area awards all waterhole tokens inside that region and points for any newly enclosed oases.
The game ends immediately when the last camel of any one color is taken from the supply and placed on the board. After the game ends, additional points are awarded. Each enclosed area scores one point per empty space within it and the player with the largest caravan in each color receives a bonus. All points collected during and after the game are totaled, and the player with the highest score wins!
Impressions:
Through the Desert is a great strategy game that really challenges you to determine how and where to build your tribe’s caravans to maximize your points. I like that there are many ways to gain points-do I build the longest caravan or do I go after all the oases and win those? I found myself constantly watching my opponent to see what they were doing as well to make sure I could stay ahead or at least not fall behind them.
The game well-designed, I really like this implementation from Allplay and thought that the art style and the camels were well made. They did a good job of bringing this classic from the late 90’s back to the forefront for gamers everywhere.
Overall I would play this anytime and would bring it to game night if I knew the players were looking for a game that would be easy to understand and play with a focus on area control and tile-laying in the form of camels. It’s fun, easy to play and one that is sure to get the same love it did when it first hit tables around the world. So pack the bags, grab a camel or two and let’s venture into the desert together!
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