Review

Components

Printed in Germany, the board and components are of the usual high quality we'd expect. There is a large, colorful gameboard depicting a landscape of deep gorges connected by broken bridges. Twenty-three small wooden bridges are set out to complete the paths between the 13 villages. Each player gets a set of 42 "master" tokens. There are also 12 glass stones used to mark villages that become isolated when all their surrounding bridges collapse. So, you can see there's not a ton of different little bits and many sets of cards. As it is, though, the game sets up very quickly and that's a big plus for me when it comes to replayability.

Rules Summary

The rules are very simple and the basics can be explained in about two minutes. After a round of initial placement of masters on the board, players will have three options on a turn.

First, a player can add a master to a village where he already has at least one master. Master tokens come in seven varieties--Healers, Dragonbreeders, Firekeepers, Priests, Rainmakers, Astrologers and Yeti-whisperers. All masters have the same effects and are only distinguished by which square they are placed on in a village. No more one master of each type can reside in the same village.

A second option a player has is to recruit students. A student is a master token placed on top of a master token already in play and a player choosing this action can place up to two of his tokens anywhere on the board where he has a master. A master can only have at most one student. These students will eventually travel to neighboring villages and hopefully become masters themselves.

And that leads to the third option on a turn--the journey of students. When a journey takes place, the active player chooses a village all students (regardless of their controlling players) move to a new village that is still connected to it by a bridge. The strength of a village is determined by the total number of tokens in the villages at the start of the turn. If the village they travel from is strongest, all students move into empty squares in the new village or displace opponents' masters who may already reside there. Displaced masters are returned to the player who controls them for later use. In rare cases a player may choose to move from a weaker village to a stronger village. In this case, only empty squares are taken over by students. Squares that are already occupied by a master cause incoming students to be returned to their owners' supplies. These rules for traveling students are the hardest to learn, but they are quite intuitive. Players have picked them up quickly in the games I've led so far.

After students travel over a bridge, the bridge breaks and is removed from the board and no further travels will take place over that path. When a village is totally isolated from the others, a "stone of the wise men" is placed on the village to indicate no further actions may take place there. From this aspect of the game, it should be clear how timing becomes so important during the game. With only one action to choose from each turn, this adds a nice sense of urgency on each turn.

As soon as the eleventh stone is placed on the board, the game ends. Players count their masters (not students) on the board and the player with the most wins.

Conclusion

With simple rules and a quality presentation, The Bridges of Shangri-La is an excellent addition to the Uberplay line. From what Jeremy Young has told us, his goal with Uberplay is to make families and gamers in the US more aware of the great games being designed in Europe. I have no doubt this game is accessible to a wide range of gaming tastes and it should help to further that goal. It was a hit with the high school club this week and I'm looking forward to playing it much more myself!