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If you are looking for a brilliant game in a pocket-sized package, Oink Games are currently my go to. Their more well-known titles like Scout or Deep Sea Adventure tend to be the first people will pick up, but Rafter Five is one of the most enjoyably tactical dexterity games I have played for a while.
What is Rafter Five?
Rafter Five is a 1-6 player dexterity game where you are trying to build as large a raft as you can, however you want to be the only player to survive to board it. The set up is clever, using the box in an interesting and unusual way to create the centre of the raft, and each player takes their turn to try and add to the raft using new boards collected from the sea around the raft. This is very cleverly done through using double sided plank/sea cards, and using any one of the five “Rafters” to keep the new plank in place as part of the raft.
Sounds simple, right? The twist is, the five Rafters are all different sizes and shapes, and you can’t use the one the player before you used, so sometimes you’ll have to think about what you are leaving for the next player to use. And just to make it even more difficult to get through your turn safely, you also have to balance treasure chests too! When all put together, a simple sounding game becomes a game of strategy, tactics, and more than a bit of luck.
How To Play Rafter Five
Your task is to build the raft, without knocking more than 5 of the other players’ treasure chests off the placed planks.
On your turn, you will choose one of the five Rafters to pick up, this will be your counterweight. If there are any Rafters in the sea, they must be used one by one until there are no more Rafters in the sea. Then, pick up a card from the sea around the raft, and, with it lumber side up, place it on the raft and place your chosen Rafter on top of the end on the raft. Lastly, place one of your coloured treasure chests somewhere on the lumber card you have placed. If at any point during this process any treasure chests, lumber cards or Rafters fall into the sea, your turn immediately ends, you place any treasure chests that aren’t your colour on your penalty board, and the next player takes their turn.
The game can end in any one of three ways:
1. Someone has collected 5 or more treasure chests belonging to other players
2. There are no more lumber cards in the sea
3. All players have placed all of their treasure chests
Thoughts on Rafter Five
To put it simply, I really like Rafter Five. It’s easy to play, whether you are a seasoned board gamer or someone relatively new to the hobby, and every game is different depending on how many players you have and who you’re playing with.
One of the main attractions of this game for me, strangely enough, is its portability. Oink Games have cornered the market on small box games, and as someone who lives in Cornwall and therefore spends a lot of time either out walking, at the beach, or enjoying one of the many places to see down here, I always love to have a game or two in my pocket or bag so that I can coerce whoever I am out with into a board game whenever I have a chance!
One of the other attractions of this game is it is a relatively quick game to play, usually taking about 20 minutes. Sometimes you don’t have time for a more involved game which can take an hour or two, and being able to play a round or two of Rafter Five makes for a very fun use of 30-40 minutes.
I have played this as a two player, three player and four player game, though it has the capacity for up to 6, and each way of playing is different from the other. When played as a two-player game, strategy and tactics become incredibly important. Increasingly, I look for games which can be played with just two players, as I live with my partner and sometimes it is only the two of us, so having games that we can play together is something that has become a must when adding new games to my collection. When played with more players, Rafter Five becomes a game that relies more on luck and dexterity, which makes for a very enjoyable time.
The last thing which I have realised about this game, which isn’t necessarily part of the game but in my opinion just adds another layer to it, which I discovered when playing this with my family, is the ability to play this as a cooperative game should you want to, where you can work together to try and balance all your treasure chests as a team without losing.
To wrap this all up, Rafter Five is one of the lesser-known Oink Games, but might genuinely be one of the more enjoyable games they have created, so if you are looking for a fun, easy to learn, but devilishly tricksy game to bring along to your next board games session, this may be the one for you.
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