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Longboard
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1565 Victory Points
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Description
It's a beautiful day at the beach, and the surfers are out shopping for new boards. Create the coolest and biggest longboards to establish your surfboard-shaping shop as the best in town. Surf's up!
In Longboard, players draft and trade surfboard pieces as they attempt to build the tallest and most surfboards. More specifically, on a turn you take two actions, with three types of actions being possible:
Add a card from the deck to your personal supply, that is, cards lying face up in front of you.
Take a card from your supply to start or lengthen a board; all cards in a board have to be the same color (or wild) and each new card on a board must be equal to or greater in value than the card below it.
Place one or more cards in your supply in an opponent's supply, then take a single card from their supply of value less than the sum of what you gave them and use this card to start or lengthen a board.
Each board card features 1-3 stickers, which count as points when the surfboard is complete, that is, when it contains at least four cards. When a player has 3-4 complete boards, at least one of which contains 7+ cards, they can choose to end the game. If that doesn't happen before the deck runs out, the game ends at that point. Players then score sticker points on completed boards, lose points for incomplete boards, and score bonus points if they have the longest completed board or the most completed boards or if they have completed any of the four random objective cards put into play at the start of the game.
I love Reiner Knizia small box card games from amazing classics like Lost Cities or ingenious auction games such as High Society. Publisher 25th Century Games have also been making me very happy recently with the brilliant Kohaku and Ghosts Love Candy Too featuring in my top 20 games of 2022 partly due to their excellent production values. So, surely this dream team has made a game I want to shout about? Read on to find out if Longboard rides the waves and hangs 10 or crashes into the sea.
Surfs Up
One of the things I love about Reiner Knizia games is the simple rule set. He condenses his games to the purest form which often hides the fact that there is a lot of depth and re-playability. Once again he has done this with Longboard as there are only two pages of rules and on a players turn they may carry out two actions out of a possible three. This means that you can teach new players within minutes and get a game going quicker than you can say Surfs Up Dudes.
The object of the game is to score the most points by creating boards that are at least 4 cards long (enabling you to score every sticker that is on the cards). You also score points for shared objectives as well as for having the longest board and the most boards. Negative points are obtained for having boards that are not ‘shaped’ (having at least 4 cards in them) by the end of the game.
To play the game you deal two board cards to each player face up in front of them. This is known as their supply. Then four scoring cards are dealt to the middle of the table. These objectives are obtainable by all players and ties are friendly.
On a players turn they get to carry out two actions which could be:-
- Increase your supply. Draw a new card and add it to your supply
- Start or extend a board. Take one card from your supply and create a new board or add it to an existing board
- Swap a card and use it. This enables you to swap some of your cards in your supply with one card from another players supply and then immediately play that newly obtained card
You can carry out two different actions or the same action twice. Then the next player takes a turn.
The game continues like this until a set number of boards have been ‘shaped’ at which point the player who has achieved the end game condition can choose to stop the game immediately if they want to. The game also ends if the last board card is taken from the deck (the player that took the last card gets to finish their turn).
Wipeout
What are these boards I am creating? I hear you say, well let me explain.
There are four colours of board (red, blue, green and orange) as well as multi coloured wild cards. All of the colours have two sets of 1, 2 and 3 value cards, three sets of 4 and 5, and two sets of 6, 7 and 8. The wilds have one card of each number 1 through to 8.
When you create a board you must not start with a wild but can place any numbered board. Then every card placed on that board must be the same colour (or wild) and each one must be equal to or higher than the last placed value. This aspect of the game feels a lot like Lost Cities.
Each normally coloured board has between one and three stickers on it (wilds have no stickers) and you will score these if the board is ‘shaped’ at the end of the game.
The final action of ‘swap a card and use it’ has a very clever rule. You may use any number of your cards in your supply to take only one card from an opponent’s supply. The value of the cards you give must be higher than the value of the card you take. This is both good for your opponent as they may get better cards than they had but also bad as they may have just lost the perfect card for one of their boards. It also means a good player will read the table and only give away cards they think you won’t be able to use.
Off The Hook
I really like this game due to the open information (all players supply cards being shown as well as the boards they are working on), the positive player interaction (I take this value 4 card but you get my value 2 and 3), the production which is excellent with lovely clear artwork and good quality cards, the speed in which the game can be taught and played and finally the variety between plays which is due to the different objective cards that will be used each game.
I don’t have many negative comments about the game except it can be heart wrenching for another player to take a card you really want to play but haven’t yet had a chance plus the end game can sneak up on you if you are not paying attention to how well other people are playing (note, there is an option to play with beach cards which go beneath any board that is ‘shaped’ and this really helps see how close your opponents are to ending the game).
If you like small card games like Lost Cities or Jaipur or you are a fan of Reiner Knizia then this is the game for you. If you haven’t played any of those games before then get Longboard as it is a great introduction to what Reiner Knizia can do with just a small set of instructions and some cards.
Anyway, the waves are picking up so I am going back in dude.
Longboard is a new game from Reiner Knizia and you can see it has routes in some of his previous smash hits like Lost Cities. I have been loving playing and teaching this game so I have written a how to play to help you learn the game.
Set Up
Set up is incredibly easy. Shuffle the board cards and place 2 cards face up in front of each player near the centre of the table. These cards are considered a players supply. Next you need to shuffle the objective cards and place 4 on the table so all players can see them.
You are now ready for a great game of longboard crafting.
What Makes Up A Board Card
The longboards comes in 4 different colours (red, blue, green and yellow) and each board card has between 1 and 3 stickers on the top of the card. These stickers are worth a point each at the end of the game. There are also wild board cards which can be placed on any previously placed longboard but they do not have stickers on them.
All of the board cards have a number in the bottom right corner which is between 1 and 8. When building a longboard you can start with any number but any future cards must have the same number or higher. You cannot start a longboard with a wild board card.
Let’s Play
The player with the lowest total card value goes first and must take 2 actions. There are 3 possible actions and a player can repeat the same action if they wish to. The actions are:
- Increase your supply. Take a new board card from the deck and place it face up in your supply.
- Start or extend a Longboard. Take one of the cards from your supply and place it in your build area (directly in front of the player). You can either use the board card to start a new longboard or extend a previously placed longboard.
- Swap a card and use it. Take one or more of your board cards from your supply and swap it with one of your competitors board cards in their supply. This board card is then immediately placed in your build area. The value of the board card taken must be lower than the combined value of the board cards you gave. This only counts as one action.
- Once a player has taken two actions the next player in a clockwise order takes their actions. This carries on until a player calls for the end of the game once they meet the requirements.
Game End Trigger
The game ends when a player has a certain amount of longboards ‘shaped’ and one of the longboards is at least 7 board cards long. In a 2 to 3 player game they must have at least 4 longboards shaped. In a 4 player game they must have 3 shaped. A longboard is considered shaped if it has at least 4 board cards in it. To assist with working out who is closest to ending the game Longboard includes some beach cards which you can place below a longboard once it is shaped. I use these every time I play.
When a player has met the end game conditions they can immediately call for the end of the game. However they may also choose to allow the game to continue if they feel the need to complete more longboards or to meet some of the objective cards. Be aware it could also give other players the opportunity to meet the end game conditions and call for the end of the game before the turn order gets back to you.
Final Scoring
To find out who won the game you need to compare your scores made up of the objective points, longboard scores (stickers) and shop achievements.
The objective points are obtainable for all players who meet the requirements. Most are self-explanatory such as using no wilds or having the longest red longboard. Some are certainly are lot easier than others with one in particular proving very difficult to achieve (Big Wave Gun – having a board with all numbers represented 1-8).
The points for the stickers are just added to the final score. Remember if you used a lot of wild boards these do not include any stickers.
Finally the shop achievements are scored (once again they are shareable) and 5 points are awarded to the player(s) with the most shaped longboards and 5 points are awarded to the player(s) who has the longest longboard.
Any longboards that were started but not shaped score minus points. Longboards with only 1 card are minus 2 points and longboards with 2 or 3 cards are minus 1 point.
The player with the highest score wins. In the event of a tie the tied player with the highest wild board card in a shaped longboard wins.
Conclusion
I hope this has helped you to learn the rules and how Longboard plays. Obviously I would always recommend people use the official rule book to learn the rules in depth but this blog should give you a really good flavour of how the game flows.
I really enjoy the game and if you want to find me on twitter to discuss how brilliant Longboard is please do @boardgamehappy.
Zatu Score
You might like
- Positive interaction between players
- Completely open information
- Easy to teach and play
- Multiple ways of scoring provides variety
- Has a feeling of Lost Cities but with 2 to 4 players and a cool theme
Might not like
- Can be horrible if a player takes a card from your supply that you need
- The end game can sneak up on you