Pyramid Review
La Strada
Published by Mayfair Games
Designed by Martin Wallace
Illustrated by Tanja Donner
Multi-piece board, 124 Road tiles, 19 Settlement tiles, eight Workshop tiles, four Resource tokens, 48 wooden Merchant cubes, & rules; full-color boxed set; two to four players; $36
In La Strada, you play merchants in northern Italy back when that meant something, trying to open outposts for your goods in all the towns you come across. To get your workers and your products there, you have to build your own roads to connect your burgeoning empire.
The object of the game is to secure the most gold from your shops.
The board comes in six sections; changing their placement makes a new map each game. Scattered about are 19 settlements, placed randomly and then flipped over. Players place their home base -- called their Workshop -- where they think it does them the most good. The playing pieces and board spaces are hexagonal, so your tiles overlay the spaces.
During a turn, a player has up to 10 resources to build their business. Each player gets a selection of roads in his color, and pays to build them. Tougher terrain costs more resources, so paving the hills costs more than cutting through plains. You must connect to a settlement all at once -- you can't leave a road unfinished and come back to it -- but you can hopscotch to new places from anywhere along the network you've established.
Once your road reaches a settlement, a merchant block shows . . .
This article originally appeared in the second volume of Pyramid. See the current Pyramid website for more information.
Article publication date: October 14, 2005
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