Rheinländer

Found duchies along the Rhine, but only where your hand of numbered cards lets you place a knight.

Designer: Reiner Knizia
Published by: 25th Century Games
Editions by: Hasbro, Parker Brothers, Face2Face Games

Reiner Knizia sends you to the banks of the Rhine as a duke with big plans and a handful of knights. Each river bank is lined with numbered plots, and your hand of cards tells you where a knight may go: you can only claim a plot whose number you hold. Once a duchy exists, you stretch it across more land and add castles, cathedrals and cities, which make it worth more and hand their owners small perks along the way. The game ends the moment someone has no knights left at the end of a turn, and the highest score wins. A 1999 land-grab puzzle with the cards in the driver's seat, done in about three quarters of an hour.

Numbered cards decide where knights may goDuchies grow with castles, cathedrals and citiesGame ends when one player runs out of knights

Who it's for

You like a Knizia land grab where the cards in hand constrain you more than the board does, with three to five players and under an hour.

Not for you if…

You want a strong story or lots of interaction beyond racing for plots. This is a clean, slightly dry area-control puzzle.

Vibe's take

Quiet and calculating. You are always matching your cards against the plots still open, and the tension lies in grabbing land before someone else's hand lets them wall you in.