How To Play Longboard

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.