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KORRIGANS

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Authors:
Arnaud Urban &
Ludovic Vialla

Publisher:
MATAGOT / ILOPELI
2014

No. of Players:
2 - 5

EVALUATION

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Gamebox author Ralf Togler writes about the game:

As far as design and playing components are concerned, new games by MATAGOT are always something very special. That is also the case for their new game Korrigans which revolves around a well known legend in Brittany. In this legend it is claimed that a pot of gold appears at the end of a rainbow and that tribes of Korrigan, some kind of Leprechauns, fight to be the first to get there. Here in my area of Germany only the first part of that legend is known, but as we all know, games always teach us something new...

MATAGOT has spent the game a fantastic production. Irrespective of any comments on gameplay, I can say that it is really enjoyable to set the game up and examine the colorful game board and the different Korrigan and Menhir miniatures that are put on the board. The player screens and the rest of the game material are lovingly designed and illustrated as well, and although I heard some negative comments about the used colors ("shrill and too colorful") I personally like it very much. The design also suggests that Korrigans is not a deep strategy, but a family game. And keeping this fact in mind, I will resume my review...

In the game the players each take control of one tribe of Korrigans. Each player is equipped with two of these funny characters, and together they move through a mystic, collecting one of several clover tokens in every region they enter. The players may inspect all tokens in a region before taking one, and the different kinds of benefits associated with each token can be used in quite different ways. On the one hand the token may display some gold which will count as victory points, but on the other hand the token also may show different animals which can be used by the Korrigans as companions for movement. Because they are so tiny the Korrigans are in need of companions allowing them different kinds of movements. So, for example, you need a rabbit to move over a gate, a frog to move from a pier to another region with a pier or a mouse to cross a bridge. Once a player has revealed one of the animals it can be used for movement which is possible with that token.

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If the last clover of a region has been taken, the player also takes the menhir that has been placed in each region during setup. Those menhirs can give the players additional bonuses such as gold coins or a second movement, but there are also negative effects like a goblin who steals gold coins at the end of the game, if the player was not able to get rid of him first. For this he has to move to a region with a Korrigan of another player and pass the Goblin token on to the other player.

While the Korrigans are moving around the rainbow appears. The whole board is divided into rows and columns and each time the current start player begins his turn, he randomly draws a colored rainbow pawn from a bag. This pawn is placed on one of the free columns which determines that the pot of gold will not appear in this column. If however the color of a drawn pawn already lies on one of the columns, it is placed on a free row instead. Again, this indicates, that the pot of gold will not appear in that row. So, with progressing time the players get an idea where the pot might show up. The exact moment is given when the seventh rainbow color is drawn. Then the active player places the pot of gold into one of the still available regions on the board.

The players then have exactly one final turn to get both of their Korrigans to the region with the pot. Other than in the regular movement phases before, in this stadium each animal can only be used once. So, you either have collected enough animals before behind your screen or you should try to maneuver your Korrigans close to the possible regions where the pot of gold might appear. Players who got there with one or, even better, with both Korrigans will earn a nice amount of extra gold for the final scoring.

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Korrigans is a good-looking, modern family game and it is great to play with kids. The colorful board makes it easy to identify the different regions and after some plays children also remember which animal can be used for which kind of movement. For the learning phase, MATAGOT has spent the game a second board (on the backside of the regular one) on which animals are printed at every passage from one region to another. So, even if you do not remember for what movement you can use your mouse, you will find it on the board. Children also are fascinated by the bag of rainbow colors and the screens. Although I believe that the screens are not necessary for this game, I made the experience that younger players like them a lot. Besides, it helps them to remember which kind of animals they still have in reserve for later use.

Having said that Korrigans is a family game, I have to add that even a round of grown up players can find fun in the game. The game features some elements of optimization games, and so you have to decide whether to keep another companion token for the end game or better take a shiny gold coin token whenever you can choose between several clover tokens in a region. In addition, thoughts about optimized movement and the memory aspect concerning the contents of each region lead to a quite competitive gameplay. However, these tactical elements are partly relativized by a palpable element of luck, since even though the nice mechanism of finding the region where the gold pot appears gives you some hints, in most games it is not sufficiently predictable where you should position your Korrigan. This is because the seventh rainbow color often is drawn before there are enough rows occupied by the second color, and so a player may find his Korrigans quite far away from the final goal.

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