Tsuro

24th November 2019

Sunday at 'The Sovereigns' in Woking. The 50 Fathoms hiatus continues, so it's board games instead.

We began with 'Tsuro: The game of the Path'.
And that's what Tsuro is, a game about paths, quite figuratively. It's also quite abstract and there's not much to say about the theme.

What's in the game?
The game comes in a small package.

• Board: The board depicts a 6x6 square grid. Along the outside the perimeter of the board, each grid square is marked with 2 'entry' paths that lead into the board.
• Path tiles: There are 35 of these square tiles. Each side of a tile has 2 entries/exits and a total of 4 paths that enter/exit the tile. The paths on the tile twist and turn so that the 4 paths can enter and exit in many different combinations.
• Player markers: These are designed to look like stones.

The board and tiles are well made but pretty much standard components. However, the player makers are quality; the game could have easily used tokens are markers, but the game goes ahead an extra step in providing little 3D stone (Plastic actually!) player markers.

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Empty board at game start.

Player marker & 3 starting tiles.

Yellow starter marker.

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How's it play?
Set up is quick and simple.

• Shuffle the tiles and randomly deal 3 to each player forming a hand. The remaining tiles become a draw stack.
• Give each player a player marker. Now each player places their marker on one of the entry paths on the board's perimeter.

​Now the game can begin.

• The active player places a tile from their hand on to the board on the grid adjacent to their marker. The tile can be placed in any of the 4 orientations.
• Then they move their marker along the path that they have connected to. If this connection causes them to leave the board, then that player is eliminated from the game. A player cannot deliberately make their marker exit the board, but may be forced to do so due to circumstances. When a player places a tile, it may move another players marker and cause it to exit the game - eliminating that player. Furthermore, placing a tile may cause one marker to crash into another marker, in this instance, both markers are eliminated from the game.
• Finally, the active play draws a new tile to bring their hand back up to 3 tiles.

As you can see, the rules are simple and straightforward.
Endgame
Play continues until one of the following conditions are met:

• Only 1 marker remains on the board, in which case that player is the winner.
• If, for some mind boggling reason, players manage to place all the tiles down and there are 2 or more markers still left on the board. Then all remaining players share a tied victory.
• If all remaining players are eliminated at the same time, then those players all share a tied victory. ​

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Board begins to fill up.

Yellow & White crash, Red wins!

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Overall
Tsuro is a small game, quick to setup, quick to learn and quick to play.
It is essentially a light 'programming' game that requires a small amount of scrutiny and forethought to try and predict your moves.
The real danger in the game however, comes from the other players, it's impossible to predict what tiles they will play and its impact on you. Essentially you can't rely on planning more than 1 move ahead and have to adapt to other player's moves as they occur, this is particularly true later in the game as the board becomes fuller and options become smaller.

All this unpredictability makes Tsuro fun, as long as you don't try and think too much about what moves you can make.
Additionally, Tsuro plays with up to 8 participants, combined with it's accessibility make it a good choice for party games and fillers.