Katmai

We all know what bears do in the woods but apparently when they are in the river they fish for salmon! This being the Brooks river in Alaska where thousands of sockeye salmon come at the end of the season to spawn and as they fight their way upstream provide a vital meal for the Brown Bears eager to fatten themselves up before their long winter sleep.

Katmai puts you in the paws of two dozen named individuals who jostle for position along the banks to get the biggest catch. It’s a lovingly made little game with the top production values you expect from Osprey and once you get over the sickly sweet calling of the playing pieces Beeples (Bear Meeples- geddit?) you’ve got a tight, cut and thrust 2-player game with the focus on the prey in Osprey!

Go Fish!

So how do you sock it to a Sockeye? First you lay out the 7 river tiles to make up the Brooks River. These can be laid in any order as long as the river edges meet and the direction of flow marked on them is constant. (that’s factorial 7 variations – 7! = 5040, that’s enough). You then add objective cards of one of two levels of challenge to the upstream end of the river and you’re ready to go.

The two players sit either side of the river banks and take one deck of 12 Bear cards. These decks are identical in function but each have 12 unique bears. These are based on real life bears recorded by the observers and Rangers in the Katmai National Park. Whilst they are all Brown Bears, for game purposes they are divided into the Sandy deck and the darker Cinnamon deck.

Hey Cinnamon where ya gonna run to?

Players first remove, unseen, 2 Bears from their deck and put them aside for the round thus giving some slight asymmetry in their deck of 10 cards. They then draw the top 2 to form their hand (Claw?) Starting initiative is determined by flipping a wooden token with a Bear Claw on one side to the call of “Claw” or “Naw” (really?)

The player with the initiative token places one card face down against a tile on their side of the river whilst the other player responds similarly. Both cards are revealed simultaneously. Each Bear will have a Dominance value from 1 to 4 and may have a special ability. Female bears (sows, apparently, who knew?) are also marked as such.

The special abilities are of two types: Immediate, marked with a blue lightning flash or Dominance phase, resolved when placing Beeples. As the cards are revealed any Immediate special abilities are resolved and then both players draw another card. This continues until all 10 cards have been played along your river bank. You can play more than 1 card against a tile, indeed some abilities require you to do so, but no more than 3 against your side of any tile.

After You, No, After You!

Whilst it is the player with the Initiative Token who plays their card first, the player with the Token can decide to give it the other player before a card is laid to make them go first and thus see where they are going to play though not the value of the as yet unrevealed card.

The token can be given in any round after you have drawn a card but before deciding where to play. Note: it can’t be given straight back in the same round.

Whose your Daddy Bear?

Now we see who is dominant on each River tile, starting from the top and working your way downstream. Against each tile add the dominance factors of the Bears on each side, including any Special Ability advantages and determine who has the highest total. In case of a tie if there is a sow on one side or the other a Bear Cub token can be played to break the tie. You only get one use of this per round, the player with the Initiative token gets first to decide to play and the other player can not play against the same tile.

The Dominant player then places one of their Beeples in any unoccupied 1 of the 4 squares on the tile.

What’s the Catch?

Here’s where we catch salmon!

As you place your Beeple check the configuration of your beeples against the Objective cards. If you have met the criteria on the card you get to put 1, 2 or 3, dependent on the difficulty, of your Salmon on the card to represent your catch. You may also get a Bonus Salmon if the piece just placed was on the terrain shown on the card.

Many of the criteria involve matching geometric patterns with places where you must have a meeple and places where you must not. Note these patterns can be rotated or mirrored when meeting them as long as their relationships are not altered.

The Circle of Life (for the Bears!)

When the last downstream tile has been reconciled you then move to a new Round. All your Bear cards are collected, adding back in the 2 previously removed cards. Then shuffle, remove the top 2 cards again and deal two new cards for your hand. Note all the Beeples placed on the river stay in place.

You then repeat the placement of Bear cards procedure followed by the Dominance Phase as before. Play continues until at the end of totalling Salmon caught in a Round either: one player has 4 more Beeples placed than the other (unlikely) or either player has 2 or less of their original 12 Beeples left.

Net result

All of your Salmon tokens on the Objective cards are then totalled and the one with the most is the winner – and most likely to survive that long winter sleep!