A Path of Decisions

Once again my wife and I showed up to Noble Coffee & Tea for our weekly gaming.  This week we brought in the oriental path strategy game, Tsuro.
Tsuro is a 2 - 8 player tile-placement, abstract-strategy path game consisting of each player placing down tiles and following the paths specified on the tiles, trying to avoid running into walls or each other.  The idea is that you want your player token to last as long as possible on the board.  It offers up very simple, very fun, strategic planning along with an uncertainty of where you may end up near the end.  Claire and I played three rounds of Tsuro today, and one of those rounds proved to be one of the most unique rounds that we've ever played.

I was the black piece and Claire was the olive green.  As you can see here, we accidentally ended up meeting side by side which oddly enough, seems to happen to us frequently when playing this game. Although this time, I was faced with a choice to make that had never come up before. I thoroughly went over my three tiles in my hand, and all three tiles would have ended up running my player into the wall.
Essentially, the game was over for me no matter what I chose, but I had to make sure that Claire would not get the victory over me in the process.   

Thus, I decided to place a tile that would take us both out and end the game with neither person winning.
Out of all the times we've played this game, this is the first time this situation has come up, and even though it seems like a slightly evil move on my part, it was the most logical and strategic move to make. This is probably one of those essential games that you should have in your collection.  Tsuro provides a sort of "Chutes and Ladders" feel with all of the path sliding, except there's no dice rolling and movement only occurs when a new tile is placed down.  This game is definitely more advanced than a mass-market game like Chutes and Ladders, but it's not overly difficult either.  Tsuro just happens to have more strategy involved during the gameplay.  Path games are not for everyone, but this one is definitely for us!

Tsuro
Overall Meeple Rating: 6.5/10


Disagree or have other thoughts?  Leave a comment below.