Longboard Board Game Review

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.