Niagara
Niagara is a game for 3 to 5 players. Each player has paddle points 1 through 6 with and a cloud. Once you've used all paddle points then you'll get them all back and go through them again. Object of game is to go down river near the waterfall and collect gems and bring them back up in your two canoes back to safety. How to win (see very bottom).
Setup: Place 7 gems of each color purple, white, orange, blue and pink. Note game comes with additional gems so put aside those extra gems.
Each player puts a paddle card face down (as to not reveal to others what they'll play) and starting with yellow (who has the life saver) moves their canoes. Yellow moves his canoe 2 spaces, blue 4 spaces, red 4 spaces and green 3 spaces.
Note each player was only allowed to move one of their canoes because both are on land. If one is on water and one on land then you can move both of them.
Since the lowest played paddle card was a 2 the river flows two spaces and all the canoes along with it.
Now the player to the left gets the life saver indicating they are the starting player and turns over his paddle card 5. He loads a blue gem (loading a gem cost 2 paddle points).
So blue loaded the gem (2 paddle points) and moves up 3. You must always move the exact number indicated on your paddle card. Only exception is when landing back on land it can exceed the paddle points. Also blue has a canoe in water so he moves the one previously on land 3 down the river and loads a purple gem (2 points) for a total of 5.
To load a gem you must either
begin from that spot and load a gem and then move
- OR -
land on a loading spot with exactly 2 paddle points remaining and load a gem.
This is probably the toughest rule for newbies to grasp.
Also a canoe can only move in ONE direction either UP or DOWN the river
Red plays a 5 paddle also and loads a blue gem.
Red pretty much mimics what blue did.
Green plays a 2 card and is in a position to STEAL. When stealing you must be moving up river and must land EXACTLY on a river space as another player with a gem. Stealing a gem doesn't cost 2 paddle points like loading or unloading a gem does.
Green steals the blue gem from the red canoe and moves his other canoe previously on land down 2 river spaces.
Yellow plays a 6 and loads a white gem for 2 paddle points.
Yellow with 4 paddle points remaining moves the white gem safely on to land and now owns the white gem. Yellow's other canoe is moved down 6 spaces since he knows the most the river is going to flow is 2 down (since green 2 was the lowest played). Plus getting pink gems are pretty hard in this game.
River flows 2 down. Note yellow canoe is at the edge of the waterfall but now in a position to load a pink gem.
Red plays a 6 to start this round and moves the purple gem to land and loads the orange gem and moves it up 4 spaces.
Green plays his cloud card which affects the river flow. He moves the cloud to +1.
Yellow plays a 5 and loads the pink gem and moves up 3 river spaces. Moves his canoe that was previously on land 3 down and loads a purple gem.
Blue plays a 6 and moves the purple and blue gem to safety. Do smell disaster?
The lowest played card was a 5 and the river flow was set to +1 so the river flows 6 down and along with it many canoes fall off the Niagara.
All gems get placed back on the board and if the owner wants one of their canoes back (optional) from the bottom of the waterfall he must pay a gem for it. If someone lost both of their canoes and has no gems then he gets one canoe back for free.
Only one yellow and one red canoe were spared. Also both blue canoes were safely on land so casualties there.
The first player (at the end of the round, players could tie) is to meet one of the following conditions.
- 7 gems of any colors
- 5 gems of each color (purple, blue, pink, orange, white)
- 4 gems of the same color
House rule say it must be 5 games of the same color. 4 purples is too easy especially when others are stealing like they should and not watching what others are collecting.
niagara_rules.pdf 5MB
Updated Dec 22 , 2005
