Noah - First Play!

21st August 2022

It's Sunday again and we're logged into Board Game Arena for some gaming goodness.

So there's this Noah guy who has to put groups of animals on to his ark but it turns out there's way more species than anyone would have thought!
He's quite busy now and has instructed his staff (The players!) to load the more mundane animals on to the ark.
​How should the players do this? Through the crucible of competitive play of course!

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Caveat: we've only ever played this game digitally.

​What's in a game?

• Game board: Noah features a circular decagon shaped board, that is a 10-sided shape.
  Around the perimeter of the board is a scoring track and along 5 of its 10 sides, the board also displays 5 docks.
  Despite the scoring track going over the artwork for the dock, there's no links between them.
• Cards: The game makes use of 2 types of card.
  • ​Animal cards: Each animal card has a cute, cartoonish illustration of its particular animal species, be it cat, dog, horse, bear etc. Each card also displays the following information.
    Weight: This is basically a numerical value from 1 to 9.
    Type: Animal cards are male or female as depicted by the text colour, being blue for male and pink for female unsurprisingly.
    Movement indicator: This is linked to animal type and affects the Noah token. More on this below.
    Penalty points: These are depicted as tear icons that run in a column down the left side and may have 0, 1 or more. The more a player has the game, the more points they lose.
    Ability: Some cards may have a special ability which will be indicated by an icon near the top right corner.
  • ​Ferry cards: There are 8 of these, they are all identical and in a landscape orientation, shown in the top left corner of every card is '21' which is the ferry's 'weight limit'.
• Token: Noah has a singular large token that depicts er.... Noah!

Colourful high quality artwork is used throughout Noah and the animal cards in particular look good and depict their subject matter well and clearly. There's not much else to say about it other than it's a style clearly aimed at younger players.

There's about half a dozen icons used in the game, the movement icons are pretty self-explanatory, as are the tears. The remaining 5 or so icons for card ability are a little small and will probably have to be looked up in the rules until learned.
​I can't imagine it being a problem.

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How's it play?
Setup

• Board: Put out the board and add 1 ferry card to each dock, place the remaining ferry cards as a reserve in the centre of the board.
  Noah: Place the Noah token on one of the ferries, any ferry will do.
• Cards: Sort the cards as per player count and shuffle the cards being used into a face-down deck.
  Deal 1 card each face-up on to each of the 5 ferries.
  Then deal 8 cards face-down to each player.
  Any remaining card will not be used during this round.
  
• First player: Determine a starting player.

On to play
Noah is played over 3 rounds, the objective in all 3 rounds is for players to empty their hands as quickly as possible and thus, score as few points as possible. This is done by playing animal cards on to the ferry cards.
Noah follows a typical turn order with the active player acting, before play progresses to the player on their left.

• Play card: During their turn the active player must play a card on to one of the 5 ferries, there some rules and restrictions though.
  • Noah token: The player must play their card on to the ferry where the Noah token is located. Cards should be played on top of previous cards but splayed so that the information from previous cards is still displayed. This is actually quite important.
  • Setting type: Now it gets a little fiddly. Every ferry starts can start with a single animal card of any type. After a 2nd animal card is played on to a ferry, it will determine what following cards can be played on to that ferry in later turns by any player.
    Same type: If a male animal card is played on to another male card, then all cards that go on to that ferry from now on must also be male. The same applies with female cards; a female card played on another female means all cards played on that ferry must be female.
    Alternating: If the 2nd card played is of the opposite type (A female card played on a male card or vice-versa.), then all following cards on that ferry must alternative between male and female as indicated.
  • Move Noah: The Noah token is moved and the active player will be given a choice of 1 of 2 docks to send it to. The animal card they just played will indicate which 2 docks they can send it to.
    Female cards send Noah to one of the 2 adjacent docks and male cards to one of the 2 opposite docks.
  • Weight limit: Each animal card has a weight value and each ferry cannot hold a hold a combined weight of all cards that is greater than 21.
    If a player cannot play a card that would keep the weight to 21 or less, they must instead pick up and add all the animal cards on that ferry to their hand. This is a bad thing as the objective is to discard cards!
    Then they play any card from their hand on to the now empty ferry to make it the new 1st card on that ferry.
  • Hitting 21: Conversely, if the card just played by the active player takes the weight to exactly 21 (Which is what players will want.), then the following 4 actions occur:
    Move Noah: Move the Noah token as explained above.
    Remove cards: All the animal cards on the ferry that got to weight 21 are discarded out of play as is the ferry card itself.
    New ferry: A new ferry card is drawn from the reserve to replace the one ust discarded.
    Give cards: The active player gives 1-4 cards from their to another player, the exact number will be dependant on how many ferries have already been discarded out of play (1-4 ferries.).
    Out of cards: If either there's no ferry card to replace one just discarded, or a player empties their hand, then the round is over. More on this below.
• Activate ability: Some cards will come with a special ability is played, it's ability should be resolved as per the text for that ability.
  Abilities include actions such as looking at an opponent's hand or swapping cards with an opponents.
• Pairs: If the species of the card just played by the active player matches the species it was played on, e.g., a cat is played on another cat, then the active player gets another turn after the current one is completed. This can be chained multiple times.
• End of turn: Once the active player has completed their turn(s), player progresses to the player on their left.
• End of round: The current round will end if either of the 2 following criteria are met.
  Empty hand: If the active player has emptied their hand.
  No ferries: Once the 4th ferry card has been discarded, they will be no ferry card remaining in the reserve.
  • Tally points: All players tally the penalty points of all cards they still have in their hand at the end of the round and increase their score on the tracker correspondingly.
• Next round: A new round is prepared as per setup above.

Endgame
Noah is played over 3 rounds. After the 3rd round has concluded, players count their finishing scores.

Points are tallied, lowest score wins!

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Overall
Noah is in essence a light trick-taking game and most of the mechanics are pretty straightforward; play a card and try to get that set to 21 but there's a couple of wrinkles in there.

Firstly, the rules for all male, all female or alternating animal cards will present players with some interesting conundrums. Players will need to try and think ahead, a card they play early in a round will have a significant effect later.
For example if a player only has 1 female card and plays it on another female card, then they won't be able to play any of their male cards on that ferry.
Players will also need to pay attention to the tears on their cards, playing cards with high penalty-points is vital to keep a score low.
As expressed above, I feel this rule is a bit fiddly but without it, the game would be too simple. Having to think about numbers and colours is what marks the game out as a bit different and forces players to make meaningful decisions

Secondly, the mechanic for moving the Noah token can throw a real element of unpredictability and even some 'take that' into the game. A player can move Noah to a ferry that has a weight of '20' for example, making it hard for the following player to play a card on it.
It goes both ways though and sometimes, Noah will just by chance be moved to a ferry where the following player cannot play a card.
I'm not sure how I feel about this, it adds some much needed unpredictability to the game which prevents players from over planning. However, it veers very close to the frustrating side, fans of heavier games may find this off putting.

For me, it was a little frustrating, simplistic and unengaging.
Noah is also a quite 'negative' game about not gaining points and having the lowest possible score. Generally, this type of scoring doesn't sit well with me.

Having said that, It's fair to say that I'm probably not the target audience here
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From its colourful, cheerful presentation, light trick-taking mechanic and easy to setup and learn rules, it's clear that Noah is a family friendly game.
It also has a reasonably quick play time that does not outstay its welcome.

If you're looking for a light card game with some distinctive gameplay to play with more casual or younger players, then Noah might be what you're looking for.