My BGG trade for Hacienda arrived today and I read through the rules while looking at the bits. I traded away my copy of Amyitis…good riddance.
Hacienda plays 2-5 players (supposedly best with 4) but supposedly good at all player counts. Hacienda is a relatively simple to understand tile laying game. Players vie for placing land tiles (top left) along the bone-shaped perimeter of the board, placing animal tokens (top center) or watering holes in the yellow-ish areas of the board. In two scoring rounds, players score their herds of animals and land tiles in how they’ve been placed relative to fixed markets, watering holes, etc.
In reading the rules, the ever growing herds of animals can flow in an almost Through the Desert-like caravan in attempts to reach watering holes and markets. However, there are no area encirclement rules and there is an economic addition with money being used to purchase land and animal cards. In another interesting twist, the board is two-sided providing the bone-shaped symmetric layout of land tiles and the flip-side providing a asymmetric layout. Looks like neat stuff and looking forward to playing with Lisa and/or the kids.
Now, to get writing my review of Cambria over the next couple of days…