Seven Bridges: Preview

Seven Bridges: Preview

Information:

Mechanics: Roll and Write, Drafting

Player Age: 10+ 

Player Count: 1- 6 Players

Time to Play: 15 - 90 Minutes 
Game Designer: Ronald Halliday
Game Artist:  Ronald Halliday,  Michael T Schroeder

Publisher: Puzzling Pixel Games

Disclaimer: A preview copy for the game was provided by the publisher.

Objective:

Time to explore, at a leisurely pace, the city of Konigsberg through the uniquely detailed and professionally cartographed map. Build your own path through the city and explore different sites to gain points. By incorporating the bridges you can increase your points exponentially to become the ultimate city trekker.

Dice Actions:

Throughout the game, you will be drafting dice to draw paths throughout the city. Each die will let you draw a different section of path with either four, three or two points of connection. Each path section you draw can only go across one square in the map grid, except for ‘Get on your horse’ and a path section that is a half a square. there will be six dice one half of the dice will have a two get on your horse and the other half will have a three get on your horse.
In these instances performing the move ‘Get on your horse’ can move you across two or three full squares all in the same direction, whereas the half square section can be placed into another half square to finish the whole square.

If at any point you draft either of the dice below, you will get on your horse and draw a straight line starting at half a line and running up to 2 or a 3 grid lines. This line can start in the middle of a grid or end in the middle of a grid but must follow all other existing rules of drawing.

If you cannot place a die due to the paths you have created, you can downgrade the dice (following the order below) until one of the patterns can legally be placed. Once able to play a map section after downgrading, it must be placed anywhere it can fit.

Setup:

- Hand out a map and pencil to each player.
- At the bottom of the map, there are thirty spaces to track the five rounds (30 spaces for the possible six players). Cross out spaces so there are only spaces the number of players in each round. For example, if there are four players then cross out two spaces in each round.
- All players will now agree where the players will start, this can be any location as long as there are streets (full lines) or a footpath (dotted lines).
- The first player is the player who most recently crossed a bridge.

How to Play:

Each round the active player will roll all six dice. Following this, starting with the first player, each player will draft (choose) one of the dice and then draw that path on their map). When drawing a path there are certain rules that must be followed:
- The whole path must be drawn otherwise you must downgrade the path section.
- Unless using the horse, it can only be drawn in one grid of the map.
- Each path drawn must connect to a point on a previously drawn path.
- Footpaths (dotted lines) can not be drawn on until the specific upgrade has been chosen (more on this soon).

If at any point you walk in front of a landmark (the building with letters on them) you can gain an action on the left-hand side of the sheet. This will either be an immediate path that you can add, a reserved action that you use to create paths on the footpath , or an action that can be used later to re-roll the remaining dice before you draft one. Each of these abilities may only be used once and the  shape and triangle beside them must be filled in once used, so be careful which one you gain from a landmark and when. A round will end when six dice have been drafted for each player.

Scoring:

The game concludes once there have been five rounds and then scoring will commence. There are several ways to score at the end of the game so I am going to begin with the easy methods and then move over the more advanced scoring.

Bridges:

Tally up the bridges which you cross and then apply that to the bridge track at the bottom of the sheet. For example, four bridges crossed will give you 16 points where six bridges will give you 36 points.

Landmarks:

These work the same as bridges but have a unique score track above the bridge track.

Drafting:

Total the point values next to the triangles on the reserved and immediate actions that you used throughout the game.

Grid Squares:

For every path that connects to the edge of the map add the value next to that edge, it will be any number between 1 and 6.  in the example below if you reached the 5 with your path you would gain 5 points at the end of the game.

Trees:

Time to go and explore nature! For every tree your pathway goes in front of, score one point.

Building:

The buildings score the same as the trees and the size of the building do not matter, it is simply one point for each building. So visit all the small buildings possible.

Street:

You can score any ONE closed loop on the sheet. The score will equal the amount of corners multiplied by the amount of bridges crossed in this loop.

Once the scoring is completed, whoever has the largest total will be the winner and greatest city trekking sightseer.

Who's it for:

If you are a seasoned veteran of roll and writes then 'Seven Bridges' will be easy to jump into and give you numerous scoring possibilities to try and perfect. This game has engaging and fast game play but due to the sheet being professional cartography, the game can look daunting to new players. However, once you wrap your head around the scoring opportunities, Seven Bridges is a leisurely stroll around Konigsberg for new and veteran roll and write players.

Click...feed the addiction: 

Puzzling Pixel Games
Seven Bridges on BGG
Seven Bridges on Kickstarter
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