Pyramid Review
Amazonas
Published by Mayfair Games
Designed by Stephan Dorra
Full-color boxed set with board, 48 wooden tents in four colors, 58 playing cards, 64 research tokens, 28 gold counters, 16 silver counters, four value chips, rule booklet; ; $49
Mayfair Games, purveyor of several versions of Settlers of Catan, has taken a somewhat loftier stance with Amazonas. In the Catan series you're trying to hew a living from the rough, untouched lands, but here you're just a scientific sightseer. You've been tasked to look for new and rare species of plants and animals, and you've got a reputation to maintain (and the grant money doesn't hurt either).
The object of this game -- designed for three or four players -- is to score the most points for your research by the end of the last round.
The board depicts a chunk of the Amazon River, with areas for small settlements on either side. Each site is connected to some of the others through overland trails in the jungle or passages over the water. Players get a hand of bidding cards, some traveling money, and a map of locations for their secret mission.
Each turn, an event card gets flipped over from the deck. These determine the special effect for that turn. Sometimes it's a brushfire, eating into everyone's profit. It could be an animal attack, cutting off access to neighboring villages. And it might be a chance to make extra money through your sponsors or find new specimens with the helpful natives . . .
This article originally appeared in the second volume of Pyramid. See the current Pyramid website for more information.
Article publication date: March 17, 2006
Copyright © 2006 by Steve Jackson Games. All rights reserved. Pyramid subscribers are permitted to read this article online, or download it and print out a single hardcopy for personal use. Copying this text to any other online system or BBS, or making more than one hardcopy, is strictly prohibited. So please don't. And if you encounter copies of this article elsewhere on the web, please report it to webmaster@sjgames.com.