Move Monks to Achieve Ananda, Hawk Goods in the Highlands, and Swim to the Beasty Bar Anew | BoardGameGeek News

Balance is the most important thing at Ananda, balance between body and soul, meditation and work, but above all between building and getting new building blocks.

In Ananda, players build a temple with domino-style tiles and let their monks meditate there. The larger the colored area built, the more karma points the player can collect. More specifically, at the start of their turn, a player must move their monk to a new colored area on the game board. They then play as many tiles from their hand as they wish, as long as at least one of the tiles is adjacent to their monk, all of the placed tiles expand the color area, and each tile covers precisely two tiles that are on the same level. (Tiles do not need to be on the same level to be part of the same color area.)

After you finish placing tiles, count the number of squares that comprise the color area to determine your area value. You may then discard meditation cards of this color from your hand that sum to this number or less. Next, you draw face-down tiles from the reserve equal to the difference between your area value and your meditation value, with your rack holding at most eight tiles. Finally, if you have more tiles on your rack than cards in hand, draw cards from your personal deck to make those numbers match.

Once all the tiles have been built, the player who has scored the most karma points with their played meditation cards wins.

As dawdlers from the Highlands, players travel from village to village to collect and sell goods because what is useless old junk for one person is very useful old junk for another — and therefore worth its weight in gold.

In Die Trödler aus den Highlands, the players use their carts to transport their junk over mountains and among villages. To set up, each player starts their cart in a different village with a route card, a goods request card, and a special feed card in hand. Goods are placed at random in other villages. A deck of route, goods request, extra good, and special feed cards is shuffled, and at the start of a round the dealer creates piles of four face-up cards, one more than the number of players, then players draft piles in order.

On a turn, you play as many cards from hand as desired. play a route card to move your cart over the matching path (mountain, bridge, etc.), then optionally pick up a good from that village. If you play an extra good card, you can take a second good. If a village has no goods, you can play a goods request card and the matching goods from your supply — placing those goods in the village — then placing the card face down in a personal “value” pile. You can even do this in a village that you just emptied — that’s a testament to your powers of persuasion!

Each time you play a special feed card, you can travel on the route of your choice, pick up an extra good, or fulfill a goods request card with a mismatched good. All of these played special feed cards go into your value pile.

When a player has completed a certain number of goods request cards, the game ends — then players compare how many special feed cards they used and how many goods they have left over. Whoever has the most has exhausted their horses and busted their cart and cannot win. Of the remaining players, whoever has the most points from completed goods cards and remaining goods wins!