Players: 2-6
Time: 45 minutes
Difficulty: 2 (of 10)

The Components

Tongiaki comes with:

• 32 tiles
• 90 boats
• 1 rulebook

Tiles: The tiles are all roughly hexagonal, though each edge has a curve on it. I assume this is intended to make the tiles lock together a little more securely and not slide around quite so much, which seems to have been a general success. Each tile is printed full-color on solid cardboard with a linen texture.

16 of the tiles are islands. Each one has a name, a value between 2 and 5, and between two and six beaches. Each beach in turn has two or more moorings (for boats) and one or more footbridges (displaying possible directions of travel).

16 of the tiles are water tiles. Each one displays three foam trails, each crossing the hex from one side to another. Some foam trails are unlabeled while some representing more difficult crossings are marked 2, 3, or 4.

Each tile is also marked with a red icon to show how it should be placed.

Overall the tiles are beautiful and evocative. They look very nice when placed out together on your player surface. In addition the various icons and labels are obvious and easy to understand. My only complaint is that the moorings and footbridges become hard to see when you have a bunch of ships on an island. I've more than once miscounted the number of moorings on a beach, and thus made a tactical blunder, and have quite often had to pick up ships from a hex in order to count moorings or look at footbridges under them. I'd generally say that the boats are just a little too big for all the other info displayed on the tiles and this proves to be a minor annoyance during gameplay.

Boats: The boats are wood cut pieces painted in the six player colors (yellow, purple, red, orange, green, blue). The shape they're cut into is interesting and unique, though it's not quite iconic enough to really shout "boat" to me.

Rules: The rules are four pages long, printed full-color. They're full of illustrations, easy to understand, and seemed good for reference during gameplay as well. Listing out a number of "special situations" on the last page was very helpful, as that's exactly what I had to refer to during gameplay.

Box: The box is a smallish box--the same size and shape as that for The Ark of the Covenant. There's a tray which keeps the tiles on one side of the box and the boats on the other, though you have to fiddle with the tiles a bid to get them to fit.

Overall, if I was rating Tongiaki on the sheer beauty of its pieces and its general good use of iconography I'd have given it a perfect Style score. However, because of the need to occasionally move boats to count moorings and boardwalks, which comes up in most games, I've knocked it down a point and given it a "4" out of "5" for Style.

The Game Play

in Tongiaki you explore the seas with the goal of having colonies on the best islands at the end of the game.

Setup: Each player chooses one of the six colors, and is given 15 boats of that color. The island of Tonga is then placed in the center of the table, and players will get to place initial ships on that island.

The Islands. The structure of the islands is very important because it forms the core of gameplay. Each island has between 2-6 beaches and each of those beaches has between 2 and 5 moorings on it. Further, each beach has footbridges which lead to one or more hex sides. As we'll see those three variables come into play during the Expansion and Migration phases of the game. (Each island other than Tonga also has a score from 2 to 5, but we won't meet those again till the End Game.)

Initial Setup. One at a time, each player gets to in turn places two boats on Tonga. Tonga has 6 beaches of 3 moorings each and the boats are placed on these moorings. There's one restriction to initial placement: no more than 2 boats may be placed at any beach (e.g., the beaches' moorings may not be filled).

Regular Order of Play: Once initial setup is complete, each player begins to take individual turns. Each turn a player gets to conduct one Expansion. This may lead to Migration, Sea Travel and/or Landfall. (Alternatively a player may decide to create a Royal Island, which is covered further below.)

Expansion. A player chooses one of the islands on the table and places a number of boats on that island equal to the number of boats he already has on that island, but no more than one per beach. These boats are placed on empty moorings on the beaches.

Migration. For any beach whose moorings are completely full, Migration occurs. This means that all the boats (not just the active players') set out for the seas due to overpopulation. They will travel in a direction determined by the footbridges connecting to the beach (and leading to the edges of the tile). If there's only one footbridge that hex side is used for the Migration; if there are multiple, the active player gets to choose.

If there's already a hex in that direction, the normal rules are followed per Sea Travel and Landfall below. If there's no hex, one is flipped over; there's a special red mark on each tile and that's placed down next to the hex side which the footbridge is pointing to. Then, normal Sea Travel and/or Landfall occurs.

If multiple Migrations result from a Expansion, the active player gets to determine what order they occur in.

Sea Travel. Sometimes Migration will lead to a water hex. Each of these features three foam trails, each running from one hex side to another. These foam trails may have no number, a 2, a 3, or a 4 in them. These numbered foam trails determine whether the sea-roaming ships survive or not. If there are as many different colors of ships in the Migration as the number shown, they survive the sea crossing. If there are less than that number of colors, the ships are all destroyed, and that particular Migration is complete (though there may still be more to resolve from the current turn). Destroyed ships are returned to their owners.

If boats successfully cross a tile, they're moved along the foam trail to another hex side. Again, if there's already another tile in that direction, the normal rules are used; if not, a tile is flipped and placed before Sea Travel and/or Landfall occur.

Sometimes on the other side of a water tile, travelling boats will encounter ... yet more water, which is dealt with exactly the same. At other times they'll meet a new island and be able to make Landfall.

Landfall. Landfall occurs when Migrating boats encounter a new island. This may be immediately adjacent to the island they just left or it may be on the other side of a great ocean trek. At this point the active player gets to place the Migrating boats on the new island. He must first place one boat per beach (if he has enough boats). Afterward if he has boats left he may place them as he sees fit.

Landfall on a new island may cause yet more Migrations if beaches are once again filled. The player continues to choose the order of all migrations until they're all done. After that it's the next player's turn, and play continues.

Founding Royal Islands: Instead of engaging in Expansion (and Migration) a player may take his entire turn to form a Royal Island. He must have an island where he has boats and no one else does. He lays down one of those boats in the middle of the island and returns the rest to his hand. No one else may land on the Royal Island afterward. Any ships that try to through Migration are bounced right back where they came from.

A player may only declare 2 Royal islands during the game.

End Game: The game ends when either the 16th water tile or the 16th island tile is flipped. The active player completes his turn and the game ends. Afterward each player scores each island that he has at least one boat on. The player with the highest score wins.

Special Situations: The rules also include a number of special situations, including: no boats on the board (place two on Tonga or one elsewhere); all boats on the boat (pick one pick from the board and use it for Expansion); not enough boats (use what you have); and bad position (remove all your boats from the board and found a new island). Inevitably, some of these come up each game.

Relationships to Other Games

Tongiaki is an abstract strategy exploration game.

The exploration element is pretty obvious. It's a popular genre in German games, from Entdecker (1996) to The Seafarers of Catan (1997) to Nautilus (2002). The genre of course goes back much further to classics like the Anglo-American design Source of the Nile (1979). Many exploration games have issues with randomness, and Tongiaki is somewhat affected by that, but also partially alleviates it because of its high strategic component.

Calling Tongiaki an abstract strategy seem a bit odd because it's very well themed. The game purports to be about ships exploring the seas to find new islands, and really plays like that. However, the true heart of the game is in its clever system of movement. This can be easily manipulated in any number of strategic manners that don't really connect up to the theme. For example, if an island has a beach that has a foam trail that leads back to the same island, you might force a Migration there, just to get the boats back to the same island so that you can redistribute them. (By placing one boat during the Expansion phase, and then another during this Landfall phase, you manage to get two new boats on the same beach, which wouldn't have been allowed during the Expansion phase itself.) A lot of the game is spent figuring out how Migrations will slowly cascade across the board and improve your position.

This game reminds me a bit of another recent Uberplay release, The Bridges of Shangri-La. They both share features of a unique movement system which allows all players to move all the pieces across the board, hopefully in a way beneficial to him and not his opponents. Tongiaki is definitely more thematic, but beyond that the difference is in the designers.

Shangri-La is a somewhat dry design. It plays very smoothly and allows for lots of strategy, but it doesn't feel like it takes a lot of chances. It's a conservative design by a seasoned professional. Tongiaki meanwhile has a number of rough edges, but feels very vibrant and innovative. It's a progressive design by a freshman designer.

The Game Design

Overall Tongiaki is a very original and innovative game that plays quite well. Here's some of my favorite game design:

Hard Decisions: I believe that the core of any truly good game design is the inclusion of very hard decisions. In Tongiaki you have two conflicting pressures: the need to cluster ships together for improved Expansion and the need to spread out ships to maximize colonization and thus scoring. On any turn the decision to keep branching out or keep grouping together can be difficult.

Cooperation Rewarded: I also believe that many games are made better when cooperation is a well-rewarded strategy. That's the case in Tongiaki because of the ways the sea travel works: you have to stay with at least some of your opponents or you'll be penalized. In a couple of different playtest games, one player ended up by himself, got some pretty wildly lucky draws, but still lost. (One of the playtesters in one of my games said Tongiaki is like bike racing: you have to stay with the pack for most of the game and judge just perfectly when you can breakaway to ride to victory.)

Great Strategy: The core mechanics of Tongiaki's Migration allow for very clever strategies. It's not just about spreading out your ships, as you might think on the surface. There's also opportunities to destroy enemy ships, force them off your islands, and use loops and Landfalls to multiply your efforts. Better, since constructive and destructive results alike come out of a singular decision, you can work against opponents while still helping yourself (unlike a game like Carcassonne where working against opponents takes valuable turns and thus can really cost you in the end).

Decent Theme: Though many of the game decisions feel like abstract strategy, the theme of exploration fits the game very well.

Exploration Innovative: This is one of the most innovative exploration games I've seen, thanks to th enforced movement system. It really helps the game stand out.

Here's some of my complaints:

Randomness is Notable: The randomness of the game has a real effect on the results. The designer has tried to alleviate this somewhat, I think, by having lots of departure directions available from each island thanks to multiple beaches and footbridges. Still, in each of the two large-player games I played one player got entirely wiped out due to bad luck. In its defense, Tongiaki really does play in 45 minutes, with 2 or 6 players alike, so if you do happen to be the single odd guy out, you'll do better on a second game.

Some Sharp Corners: The game also felt like it had sharp corners, as shown by the list of special situations that can arise, wherein players end up with very few or very many boats (basically because they're on the outskirts of a random bell curve). Having all those special rules costs the game some of its elegance, but also makes you appreciate the thorough playtesting.

I played four games of Tongiaki prior to reviewing this game, and with just one exception everyone really liked the game and most were very pleased to play it again. (The one exception, I should note, was someone who simply doesn't tend to like conflict-oriented games.) In my own opinion the game is a lot of fun to play, with well-designed systems that work quite well. However, Tongiaki is also something more: it's one of the most original games that I've played in the last year. It develops some old ideas in fairly innovative ways and that alone increases its play value quite a bit. Tongiaki thus earns a perfect "5" out of "5" Substance rating. It's great fun.

Conclusion

Tongiaki is one of my most unreserved game recommendations of the last year. It looks at exploration games in a whole new light thanks to a very innovative migration movement system. It's very simple to learn but allows for a high level of strategy, and it plays quite quickly. If you like German designer games, you should pick this one up.

I'll also bet that you'll see this game on the 2005 Games 100 list in the "Best Family Strategy Game" section.