❥ Whale Riders - The Card Game
2 - 5 players
20 min
Age: 8 +
Weight: 1.17/5
Publisher: Grail Games
As they prepare for winter, the whalers are surprised by a sudden drop in temperature. The Ice Coast will freeze early and will make the journey to resupply even more perilous than usual. The riders tie themselves together and travel as a group one last time from port to port.
Whale Riders - The Card Game consists of 65 goods cards and 12 harbor cards. The commodity cards are: shells, kelp, meat, pottery and pearls. These are numbered from 3 to 7. You only use the harbor cards if you play with the advanced rules.
Each player gets 6 goods cards face down. With the remaining goods cards you form a draw pile in the middle of the table.
On your turn, you take two actions:
1. You play one card from your hand and place it on the table in front of yourself.
2. You take a new card from the draw pile.
Players 'buy' the goods cards when there are in total on the table as many copies of a certain type of goods as the number on the card. All players who had cards of that type in front of them place them on their own face-down scoring pile. All other goods cards are removed from the table and discarded.
Bonus goods cards
Some cards show two goods, such as the shells, so this counts as two cards.
Snowstorm Cards
If a player plays the Blizzard card of a certain type, this card is immediately discarded along with all other cards of the same type
Advanced Rules with the Port Cards
At the start of each round, a new harbor card is turned over. The drawn map indicates the specific trading habit of this port. Because of this, you may not be allowed to play certain commodity cards in this round or that an extra card must be played before they can be sold (4 instead of 3 in the shells)
The game ends when a player draws the last card from the draw pile. There is then still played to be able to sell one last good, it may also be the case that that no longer works. Then the game ends immediately. All players count the points on the cards from their scoring pile and the player with the most points wins the game!
❥ My Thoughts
Whale Riders - the Card Game is simple and smooth card game. The rules are simple, you collect cards that you place in front of you and as soon as there are as many of one type of goods cards as the number on the card, this type of card goes to your scoring pile. All other cards are discarded and you play another round. Because of this simplicity, it is advisable to use the Port cards almost immediately. These ensure that there is more action in the game, you can no longer just play all the cards. Some ports don't let you play certain types of cards anymore. The storm cards that are in it are not very easy to distinguish from the other goods cards, I've also overlooked them once.
Whale Riders - the Card Game is a light card game that would work well as a filler. But maybe I still think this one is too light as a filler. I do like to have some challenge in a game and I feel like I miss that too much in this one. For that reason, it's not a game I'd pick up anytime soon, but I'm sure others will like it. If you're looking for a light card game that can also be played well with children, I think you've got a nice one here! I also like the theme and secretly this makes me very curious about the Whale Riders board game.