Canal Houses
- Board's Eye View
- 3 days ago
- 2 min read
Canal Houses (aka Grachtenpand) is a card drafting and tableau building game from Gigamic and Wulfhorn Games where the 2-5 players are laying out cards as storeys of houses on their individual street tableaus. Each building has a storefront on the ground floor. They can have any number of middle ('window') cards above the store but each house is only completed when a roof card is placed on top.
The game ends when a player has completed their 4th house (ie: when a player places out their 4th roof). Players score points as indicated on the store and roof cards in their tableau provided they meet the criteria on the cards; for example, a roof might score only if it is atop a house comprising exactly four cards, and a store might score only if the building has no cards in it that show birds. Players score for having the largest group of orthogonally-connected cards in each colour and for all the flowerpots visible on the cards in their tableau.
Players start the game with a ground floor store front on the table and a hand of three cards: one of each type. The three card types are in separate draw piles and, on your turn, you take a card from your choice of draw piles, place a card out onto your tableau and then pass your hand to your neighbouring player. It's simple and it means Canal Houses is a game that plays quickly: our plays at Board's Eye View have mostly come in at around 15 minutes. Because players can all draw, place and pass simultaneously, the player count doesn't materially affect the playing time: games with five players are almost as quick as those with just two.
If you already have an optimal choice of card in hand for your next placement, highly competitive players can use their card draw to give a possibly less helpful hand to a neighbouring player, but there's really only very limited scope for 'hate drafting' in this friendly and good-natured card game because players are always able to draw from any of the three decks. I may see that you are probably looking to play a roof on your next turn so I don't draw a card from the roof deck to add to the hand I pass you but you can still draw a roof card yourself on your next turn.
Designed by Zach Hoekstra, Canal Houses then is a light, family friendly game that's attractively presented with art by Jason Gamber. It's distributed in the UK by Hachette Boardgames UK. Oh, and if you fancy a slightly meatier game, click here for official 'Duel' rules that offer an alternative drafting system to the hand passing of the standard game and with tighter requirements for triggering the end of the game.
