New Haven

In New Haven, set in colonial New England, players must develop the riches of the land and build a thriving settlement. Players place tiles strategically to a shared game board to cut timber, quarry stone, plant fields of wheat, and fill pastures with fat sheep. Players then use these resources to erect buildings on their own village boards, attempting to complete rows and columns for population points. Whoever can build the biggest and most prosperous town will end up with the biggest population and win the game! New Haven is a tile laying game with a drafting component. The center board is the land between the player villages from which resources will be gathered. Player's select from their two hidden tiles and play on this board to generate available value in some of the four resources. Once per game each player can get a shipment which delivers a large value of one specific resource type. This value is then used by the player to play building tokens on their personal village board. However, you can only play building tokens already owned behind your player screen, and there are restrictions on how buildings must be arranged. You can elect to play a token face down for more flexibility, but this means a lower score if you are successful completing that row or column of buildings. Once a player is done building, any value they haven't used is available for their opponents to use to build! This means that often the goal in placing resource tiles is to generate just enough for what is needed, not the most that can possibly be created. Finally, the player drafts new building tokens for use on future turns. More tokens are the reward for planning your creation and consumption of resources to perfectly match. The base game lasts for ten turns. The winner is the player who has attracted the most colonists to their village by completing roads and avenues of buildings. New Haven plays well with 2, 3, or 4 players. Plan on about 15 minutes per player, a bit more for the learning games. Set-up and storage are nearly instant as there are only a few piece types and little to place before starting play. The game also comes with a side B board for a game with some twists lasting 9 turns. Finally, there are variants in the rules to make the game play either more forgiving or more strategic.