Players: 2-5
Time: 30-60 minutes
Difficulty: 3 (of 10)

This is a review of Fantasy Flight's 2005 edition of Through the Desert. They'd previously produced an older (larger) edition, while the game is also printed by Kosmos in Germany.

The Components

Through the Desert comes with:

• 1 gameboard
• 175 camels
• 30 riders
• 5 palm trees
• 45 water hole markers
• 40 scoring markers

Gameboard: A 4-panel gameboard depicting a pretty plain desert. There's a hexagonal grid across it all, with marked spaces to place water holes and palm trees. A few mountain ranges intrude along the edges, with one additional range toward the center of the board. Overall the board is fairly simple.

The board doesn't lay quite as flat as I'd like (though it's good enough), but that's a price of the the very compact box this new edition is shipped in.

Plastic Bits: The game contains a huge number of molded plastic pieces. These include: 34 camels in each of the 5 caravan colors (lime green, pink, cyan, light purple, and lemony whie), 5 gray camels, and six riders in each of the 5 player colors (red, green, blue, orange, and purple). The pastelly colors of the camels are intended to make them clearly distinct from the player colors, a good choice. There are also 5 palm trees, each molded in two parts.

Overall the pieces are attractive and evocative, and make the game very visually appealing.

Cardboard Bits: The rest of the pieces are printed on medium-weight linen-textured cardboard. These include: 45 circular water hole makers, each with either a "1", "2", or "3" value (and different shades of blue to make them even more distinct); and 40 square scoring markers, including 20 oasis scoring markers each with value "5"; 10 enclosure score markers marked "10", 5 caravan score markers marked "10" with the appropriate camel color, and 5 uncolored 5-value caravan score markers for ties.

Having score markers for everything, even the end-game scoring is a very nice touch because it makes the final score quite easy to calculate. More games should do this.

Rulebook: A mammoth 32-page rulebook, but only because the rules are included in 8 languages (English, French, Spanish, Italian, Greek, Hungarian, Finnish, and Dutch, I believe). The actual English rules are just 4 pages longand contain a few illustrative examples.

Box: In a world of hugely oversized game boxes, Through the Desert is notable for the fact that it's a very reasonable box size for this game. It's about double the width of FFG's other Silver Line Games, but that's still a nice, compact box. As a result Through the Desert has become one of my favorite game-night games because it's so easy to transport.

On the downside there's nothing in the box to separate out all your pieces, and this game has a ton of them that you'll want to separate. I have a whopping 9 plastic bags in my box: 5 for the differently colored camels; 1 for the camels with riders; 1 for the trees; 1 for the water hole markers; and 1 for the scoring markers. Whew.

Through the Desert, with all its plastic bits, is a wonderfully evocative game. It looks great when it's being played. In addition some subtle work has been done to increase the usability of the game (such as those differently colored watering holes). Through the Desert is visually one of my favorite games, something that I hold up as a benchmark, and thus it earns a full "5" out of "5" for Style.

The Gameplay

The object of Through the Desert is to earn points by reaching oases and water holes, by enclosing regions with your camels, and by achieving the largest caravan sizes in each of the colors.

Setup: The board contains 42 places for waterholes and 8 places for oases. This results in each game being slightly different from the others. At the beginning of the game the 5 oases are places on 5 of the 8 oasis spaces. Then the 45 waterholes are randomized and placed on the other 3 oasis spaces and the 42 waterhole spaces. All the water holes are then flipped up, revealing the game layout.

Each player is given 6 leader camels: 5 camels in the 5 caravan colors with a rider on them plus a black camel with a leader which helps keep track of which coors everyone is played.

Then the players take turn putting their leaders down one at a time. There are a few rules for this:

• Leaders can't go on water holes.
• Leaders can't go next to oases.
Leaders can't go next to other leaders.

The initial leader placement is entirely crucial--and is typically the most angsty part of the game--because every future placement in the game is going to be based on where your five leaders went.

Taking Your Turn: Once all the leaders are placed, Through the Desert enters its normal play sequence, which is very simple: on your turn you place two camels from the common supply. These camels may be the same color or they may be two different colors. There are a few restrictions on placement:

• A camel must always be part of a connected group (caravan) that includes your leader of the same color. (It doesn't have to be a singular chain, but instead is a blob of similarly colored camels.)
• You can't place a camel next to a camel caravan of the same color owned by an opponent. (In other words you can't merge similarly colored caravans, because then you couldn't see what belonged to who.)

As you play these camels you'll score points:

• If you place a camel on a water hole, you take the water hole token, which is worth 1-3 points.
• If you place a camel adjacent to an oasis you take an oasis token from the supply, which is worth 5 points. You can get points from reaching the same oasis with different caravans and for reaching different oases with the same caravan (but not for continuing to build around the same oasis with the same caravan).
• If you enclose an area with all of the same color of your camels and/or walls or board edges, then you get to immediately claim any water holes in that enclosure. You'll also get bonus points at the end of the game.

Early on, much of the game is grabbing 3-point waterholes and connecting up to oases--and trying to prevent opponents from doing the same. You'll also be building up enclosures and slowly setting yourself up for endgame.

Ending the Game: The game ends when all of the camels of one color have been used up. At this point some additional endgame scoring occurs:

• Each completed enclosure is worth 1 point per hex it contains. If you were almost but not quite done with an enclosure--tough luck.
• For each of the 5 colors, the player with the largest caravan in that color gets a 10-point bonus marker. If multiple players tie, they get 5 points each.

Whomever has the most points wins.

Relationship to Other Games

Through the Desert (2000) is usually considered to be one of Reiner Knizia's tile-laying trilogy, a set of games which also includes Samurai (1998) and Tigris & Euphrates (1999). I consider it a pretty loose grouping. Sure, the games are all about laying pieces down on a geographically significant board, but they're pretty different games. I actually think that Through the Desert is the most different, and pretty unlike anything else Knizia has done.

Some people compare Through the Desert to Go (-2000) because they both involve closing areas for points, but that's just one aspect of Through the Desert. I'd most closely tie it to two other games which involve blocking other players by laying down chains of pieces: Wolfgang Kramer's Hacienda (2005) and somewhat more distantly Stefan Dorra's Medina (2001).

The Game Design

Reiner Knizia tends to design subtle, yet deep games, and this is one. The rules for Through the Desert are very short; this is one of the shorter gameplay summaries that I've written. However, after half-a-dozen games I've no doubt that there's a huge amount of playability in this game.

TtD's biggest strength is that it's a game of brinkmanship. Every turn is agonizing because there are multiple actions that you want to take, and you have to constantly worry about other players taking the same opportunities that you're hoping to take advantage of. Alan Moon is the only other author that I've seen make this good use of brinkmanship & turn angst (in the award winning Ticket to Ride as well as the classic Union Pacific).

Another strength of TtD is that there are multiple paths to victory. I think that controlling at least one or two caravan majorities is absolutely critical, and I've lost many games by not thinking about enclosures, but you constantly have to balance those, as well as the oases and water holes. I don't think there's any good answer for winning every game. There are also lots of tradeoffs, as you give up one victory option to pursue another. This also combines pretty obvious with good tactical play . In addition I really like TtD's variability. The 8 oasis spaces and (to a lesser extent) the variable water holes can really change the game around a lot. I've more than once played a game where I was entirely surprised that someone did something that I'd never seen before (such as enclosing an oasis or using the central mountains for an enclosure).

I personally have no complaints about Through the Desert. However, one player that I play with finds it a little simplistic, because each turn you have only the singular option of placing two camels--but I find that the ever-changing board position and the high levels of angst and stress still keep things perfectly interesting.

I give Through the Desert a full "5" out of "5" for Substance. It's one of master game designer Reiner Knizia's best games.

Conclusion

Through the Desert has recently been rereleased in a smaller, more compact edition by Fantasy Flight Games. This simple yet deep game of camel placement is one of Reiner Knizia's best games, and so it's great to have it back in print, particularly in such a portable form.

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