Designer: Reiner Knizia

Artist: Alessia Cimata

Publisher: Ludonova

Sometimes, a simple action of picking up tiles from a common pool to score points is enough to form a solid framework for a game. However, there are two other important design choices that will influence the outcome of this mechanism – what you do to pick the tiles and how the tiles will score. Essentially, what you do before and after the tile selection. There are many examples of games in this genre with plenty of novelty and variants coming from how tiles are drafted or selected and how they are then scored. It is also increasingly clear to me that how you decide to handle these two before-after variables can push the game either toward a more multiplayer solo effort or one that requires more interaction between players, or at least attention paid to what other players are doing. It is perhaps not too surprising that Herr Knizia’s Sumatra falls in the latter category where both selection and scoring requires your attention on other players.

Simple set collection where the decision lies in prioritizing needs

The main board in Sumatra is small. It shows a chain of linked locations on the island of Sumatra where meeple explorers will start from one end of the chain and end the game on the other. In each location of the board, there will be a number, between 3-8, indicating the number of tiles drawn from the bag to be placed in the common pool. In addition, there is a journal/notebook wooden token that moves hand in hand with the group of meeples. During a player’s turn, if the journal is in the same location as your meeple, you can either choose a tile from the common pool if available, or move to the next location. By moving the meeple, you forfeit your chance to pick a tile in the current location in lieu of the prospect of getting better picks in the next location. This is particularly true if you are the first meeple to arrive at the next site. At the very next turn, the journal will move to the new location, allowing the first player to to draw a number of new tiles from the bag based on the pre-printed value on the board. Corollary to the journal moving to the new location, players left behind can no longer pick new tiles since the journal has now advanced to the next site. This means the remaining unpicked tiles are placed in the discard pile and the laggards now have no choice but to move toward the leader of the pack in the new location. All of this just means one thing: each player must decide when to move to a new location if the current tile selection no longer suits your priorities. By being the early bird, you will get juicier picks from a larger pool of new tiles while forcing those players behind you to catch up. But all tiles are good to a certain degree, and will contribute toward scoring. So abandoning a site early means missing out on the current selection. This mechanism for tile selection delivers plenty of tension, angst along with a dash of push-your-luck tile draw at the new location. It delivers quite a punch in producing some tense moments despite how modest the rules sounds on paper.

Nobody does player interaction-driven scoring like Reiner Knizia

So what of scoring? Well, here is where Knizia’s design philosophy probably differs from the more popular designs in the market. There are multiple types of tiles to collect, but each type has a distinct style for scoring and also linked in a way. Most importantly though, the type of set collection does not prioritize the individual space but forces players to pay attention to what others are collecting and the turn order of tile selection. For example, collecting local inhabitant tiles is for end of game majority scoring. Player with the most tiles scores five points while the fewest is penalized by the same score. To add a twist to this conventional scoring criteria, Knizia gifts five extra points per tile beyond the fourth one collected to incentivize hoarding for this type of tile. In addition to majority scoring, you also get set collection scoring of jewelry (e.g. 1 tile is 1 point, 2 tiles is 5 points….etc.), paired scoring of flora and fauna tiles (i.e. higher value of the pair of tiles is scored), conditional scoring of villages and volcanoes (i.e. villages scores only if GPS and location tiles are present in the same column and volcanoes score only if three matching equipment tiles are present). To add to the tension, at the end of the game, each column of tiles will be discarded in its entirety if at least one unique equipment tile is not present to anchor the bottom of each column. The collection of the equipment tile has far reaching consequences since it ties together the entire collection from one column.

Sumatra is not your individual point scoring efficiency engine like Cascadia

I would contend that scoring in Sumatra is very different from the modern day design where the focus is more on the individual and where how to maximize scoring by tile placement. This is probably the most evident in Cascadia where the main objective is to capture the most points by assigning a spot that not only captures the pattern of placement for the same family of animal tiles, but also by grouping together terrain tiles for scoring. Again, the focus is on the individual experience and little to no attention is required on other players. In fact, the game can be similarly experienced if players are scattered across continents. This is not the case for Sumatra. The scoring categories themselves are not all that glamorous or novel, but during play, it is obvious that each selection must depend on what your neighbors are aiming for. Because the scoring needs are many, one must prioritize tile selection based on the competition and also availability. As the number of tiles are known and all tiles are in play in a four player game, it is possible to roughly calculate the odds of pulling out specific tiles and delaying acquisition of some in lieu or others because you know there are other chances down the road to pick up those tiles. The key difference here is that a Knizia-designed scoring is focused more on player interactions and taking educated guesses on what might be drawn from the bag and what is likely to be selected by others. When tile selection is coupled with the movement of meeples on the board, this creates a palpable of tension between moving ahead to pick the first few tiles vs. staying behind and picking at the bone for scraps that others ignore, but is no less lucrative. It depends on the style of play and also priorities.

That said, I am thrilled that Sumatra appears to be deeper than first anticipated. I am having fun playing the game and think it should be rated much higher than its current position. The game is simple, no doubt, and won’t be scratching any Pfsister itch. But it does what it sets out to accomplish: a simple set collection game with easy to digest rules, but with complexities between interacting players that extends beyond a simple understanding of the rules. In other words, it is a Reiner Knizia-designed game.

Initial impressions: Good