Targi: The Expansion

Players 2 (Best with 2)

Playing Time 60 Mins

Age 10+

Complexity 2.5/5

Type Card Drafting/Set Collection/Worker Placement

The expansion of the tribe goes on in Targi: Die Erweiterung, an expansion for Targi. With water as a new element, the tribe has more flexibility in how it will extend itself. More specifically, in the game water functions like a joker, e.g., you can swap two water tokens for any one goods token. Many of the new tribe cards, which replace the set in the base game, allow players to choose to spend gold or water tokens, which can make it a little easier to build.

The Targia — a Tuareg woman — is a special pawn like the robber, but has a more positive effect for players. She starts in the opposite direction of the robber and moves each turn one edge card. When you place one of your Targi on the same card, you receive a favor: Either take a goods token of your choice or spend one good to reveal the top card from the draw pile and receive what it shows. Now a less attractive edge card might be more interesting because the Targia offers an additional reward.

Finally, shifting sand cards give the players rather strong immediate advantages when they place a Targi on them — but since these shifting sands are placed next to the central playing area, you lose an intersection on the central cards.

Targi Gameplay:

The board consists of a 5x5 grid: a border of 16 squares with printed action symbols and then 9 blank squares in the centre onto which cards are dealt. Meeples are placed one at a time on the spaces at the edges of the board (not including corner squares). You cannot place a meeple on a square the opponent has a meeple on already, nor on a square facing opponent's meeple. Once all meeples are placed, players then execute the actions on the border squares the meeples are on and also take the cards from the centre that match the row and column of the border meeples.

The game is predominantly scored and won by playing tribal cards to your display. These give advantages during the game and victory points at the end. Usually cards are played (or discarded) immediately once drawn. A single card can be kept in hand but then requires a special action to play it (or to discard it to free the hand spot for another card). Each card has a cost in goods to play. Goods are obtained either from border spaces or from goods cards.

The display (for scoring) consists of 3 rows of 4 cards that are filled from left to right and cannot be moved once placed (barring some special cards). There is also a balance to be found between the victory point score on the cards themselves (1-3 VP per tribal card) and in the combinations per row (a full row of 4 identical card types gets you an additional 4 VP, and a full row of 4 distinct card types gets you 2 VP).

The winner at the end of the game is the player with the most victory points.

 

AWARDS & HONORS
2014 MinD-Spieletipp Nominee
2013 Golden Geek Best 2-Player Board Game Nominee
2012 Spiel des Jahres Kennerspiel Nominee
2012 International Gamers Award - General Strategy: Two-players Nominee
2012 Fairplay À la carte Winner

- $23.89