If you haven’t played Trails of Tucana by Z-Man Games, you can check out the BGG page or this video by Gaming Rules!
Trails of Tucana is a flip and write game where you’re trying to make trails throughout the island of Tucana with the goal of connecting villages to each other and to the sites around the island. It’s a really simple game that can be played in about 15 minutes, yet still has a good amount of depth. I was really impressed with it!
Variable Starting Setups
In Trails of Tucana, one of the main goals is to connect villages with the same letter to one another, hopefully before the other players do. Before the game starts, a starting setup card is drawn and all players start the game with specific letters at certain places. This means that while each player is starting off at the same point, it can be more difficult to connect certain villages in certain games.
For example, in the above card, the B villages would be very close to each other, while the A villages would be about as far apart from each other as possible.
Each village gives different points for connecting it to its partner village, so each game is going to be a bit different, and you won’t be able to use the same plan for each game.
I thought that this was a wonderful way to add replayability to the game without adding a bunch of components. The sheets themselves are all identical, meaning they don’t require a lot of graphic design to make them unique, and people that laminate their sheets also will only have to laminate a few. Plus, there are already other cards with the game, so adding a few more to alter the starting setup shouldn’t have increased the overall game cost by too much!
Isla Petit and Isla Grande
There are two maps to choose between: Isla Petit and Isla Grande.
Isla Petit has a smaller map and only plays two rounds, while Isla Grande has a larger map and plays three rounds. I really like this about the game, as your choices over the game add up, so it’s nice to do a short learning game, then immediately play again and use all the things you learned on the larger map. It’s also just nice to have the choice to play a longer or shorter game depending on how much time you have.
Making the maps double-sided doesn’t add too much to the manufacturing cost, but it definitely makes the game a lot more flexible!
Two Cards per Turn
Each turn, players will draw a line from one type of hex to another based on the cards that come up.
In the example above, the players would all draw a line from a forest hex to a mountain hex. Using the cards means that the game is randomized and different, but not skewed too much in one direction or another like dice might be. Players can somewhat predict what cards will come up, but they’ll almost never be entirely sure as there’s also one card that isn’t used each round.
Each game will be different, but players should be able to make decent progress each game regardless of what happens. Yet they won’t entirely know what will happen either, making this turn method work really well.
It also means that there’s only a small number of cards that are needed, and players can simply shuffle the cards as needed until the game is over.
Graphic Design
The graphic design of the sheets is terrific and informative. I like that there’s a list of all the cards in the deck in the top-left corner of the sheet. This way, players know there are only 4 water cards vs 8 deserts and so on. As such, all the players know the chances of being able to draw between two water tiles is really rare.
The fact that you score all the vistas each round is also obvious, as each scoring area uses its own color and icon, as well as a round number. Once you’ve learned the game, it’s easy to pick the game back up, as everything is quite clear and uses more than one method to indicate what goes with what.
Overall
I thought Trails of Tucana was a really interesting game that did a lot and used its components wisely. There’s a lot of game in this box and it’s incredibly easy to learn.
Did you enjoy this entry? Have you played Trails of Tucana before? What did you think was the most innovative aspect of the game? Please let me know! I’d love to hear what you think and what kind of things you’d like to see from this blog. Feel free to send me an email or comment with your thoughts!
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