Kavango & Lodges expansion
Hello and welcome to the Kavango-Zambezi transfrontier conservation area, that beautiful place where Angola, Namibia, Zambia, Botswana and Zimbabwe meet. It is rich in flora and fauna, both large and small, and with so many hidden treasures to discover you’ll need a few days to journey around to find them. Good job, then, you’ve chosen to safari with us at Board's Eye View Tours, as we have experienced guides who are ready to take you out into the wild - along with some help from Matt Brown and Zara Reid, the creators and illustrator of Kavango (Mazaza Games/Schmidt Spiele). So what are we waiting for? Let’s go Kavango!*
We know you’ve not come to Kavango simply to be a tourist, so we have to ask, what kind of conservation expert are you? Botanist? Ecologist? Maybe a Safari Guide like us? Well, whatever role it is you’re here to fill you get to pick from two options at the start of the game, and if you’re feeling like you want a little more of a challenge you could even try and spot particular kinds of animals - arboreal, crepuscular, scavengers, etc - as you oversee your own nature reserve.
Upon first look, it might seem that the reserve you’ve been given to manage is devoid of life, but as you raise your gaze you notice that something is there after all; is it some grass and fish? Maybe some trees and termites? Each of the five unique player boards have two of the four producers (grass, trees, invertebrates and fish) available to you at the start of the game, the rest you’ll have to grow or entice into your reserve so that you’re able to provide for the animals that you hope will populate it. As well as your initial two producers, you’ll also get to pick two ‘larger’ animals (in the sense of food requirements rather than simply size, as some can be physically small) but these will have to wait in your sanctuary (on the right edge of your board) until you’ve met the requirements to release them into the reserve.
There may not be such a thing as three-square-meals in the savannah, but in Kavango that’s exactly what you get: three rounds in which you’ll start with the same number of cards (15 in a 1-2 player game; 12 for 3-5 players) and from which you’ll draft 10 - either as what they are or for money. However, after you’ve chosen a card you’ll then pass the hand you have to your left, so you’ll see up to 50 different cards each round, depending on player count.
Just like experienced safari guides, being able to plan ahead and foresee what might come up will greatly help you in securing the right producers or animals for when the bigger critters come out to play. Very helpfully, five player aids are included in the game that tell you how many of each producer there are in total, but also what the maximum number of each you’d need to be able to play animals that rely on them – if you want that giraffe, you better have four trees! What it doesn’t tell you, tho', is what animal types you’ll need to attract - small, medium or large mammals, birds or reptiles/amphibians - in order to seduce the heavy hitters, those predators, birds of prey and larger reptiles that feed on other animals. The more animals you’re able to draw to your reserve, the more points you’ll get at the end of the game, so act wisely.
Our tour so far has been a rather straightforward and uneventful one: we’ve built up our reserve with the right amount of producers, and the smaller animals have been flocking in, with larger ones in the near distance getting closer. Yet, just like in the real Kavango Zambezi region, things are not that simple as there are a number of threats to your reserve which have to be countered...
Firstly, there is the threat of habitat loss and poaching, so conservation measures to combat these need to be invested in to ensure larger and/or more vulnerable animals are safeguarded. This is done on your own personal habitat and poaching conservation board, each one having investment levels of 1 to 4. Secondly, there is the communal threat of climate change that can be acted against corporately via the shared climate investment board. Should you fully invest in habitat and poaching protection you’ll earn 10 points at game end, and if you contribute at least $8 million to climate protection you’ll get another 10 points.
Habitat, poaching and climate protection aren’t a secondary thought in this game, they’re intrinsic to how you play, as without investing in them you will only be able to play a handful of animal cards that come round to you. Some animals only require one type of protection but many require two and some of those at differing levels. This focus on protection is something that is very important to the creators of Kavango, and 50% of all profits from the game are donated to conservation charities working on protecting the region’s rich wildlife.
To be able to invest in these protections you’re going to need money, and there are three ways you can get this. The main way is by completing different research tasks each round. These could be things like the number of small animals (0-5kg) in your reserve, having animals that need specific protections, ensuring you have a necessary amount of a certain producer type and many more. The more research you’re able to complete per round, the more money cubes and points you’ll get. Sometimes the public research cards that come out just aren’t ones that you’re going to be able to achieve, so in this situation if there is a Research Action card available to you we suggest you take it. This will allow you to draw three extra research cards for the round and keep one as a personal task that only you can complete.
In addition to research tasks, three of the other four types of Action card can be used to gain you money - and points in the case of the Climate Fund card - with the final type allowing you to gain a Rewilding card that can act as one of the four producers, should you need, for example, that final fourth tree for the aforementioned sanctuary-confined giraffe.
The final way to get more money is by discarding cards, either from your hand - usually only if it’s what you absolutely need to do, as you’d otherwise likely be throwing away points - or from your sanctuary, tho' again these animals are probably worth a fair number of points so be careful as you likely won’t be afforded the opportunity to get them back!
Eventually you have to end your time in the Kavango-Zambezi region, and once everyone has played their final card of the third round it’s time to complete any last-minute research and then tally up final points. On top of the points you will have scored throughout the game for completing research (and from any possible Climate Fund cards or Conservation expert abilities) you’ll also gets points for all the animals you’ve housed in your reserve, protection bonuses and 10 points for having at least one of each of the four producer types and seven animal types.
Thus our tour is at its end. The only question that remains is are you now going to leave Kavango and head back to your normal life, the memories of your time as a conservation expert the only proof you were ever really here, or are you going to prolong your stay and remain overnight in one of the new Lodges that Kavango has to offer...?
Although Kavango is categorised as a strategy game, its complexity is light-to-medium. This complexity unquestionably increases with the new Lodges expansion because of the added depth it brings to the game.
First of all, there are wooden lodges that can be played into your reserve during the course of the entire game. Each player starts off with six lodges of three different kinds (one room, two room or three room) and nine distinct lodge goal cards that have to be pared down to six. Each lodge card has four animal icons on it, and in order to place a lodge those different animals have to be adjacent on your board with four of their cards’ corners meeting at a single point. That’s where the lodge gets placed, and once it’s down it can’t be moved, but the animals that contributed to that lodge can be used to help you place another lodge.
The presence of the lodges transforms your reserve into more of a puzzle as you try to work out the best placement of your animals in order to maximise the number of lodges you can get out: at game end, each of your lodges gets you 8 points! Being able to decide which lodge cards you’ll keep at the start of the game allows you to work out which combinations will work best together (eg: two cards may share the requirement of having two medium mammals, so placing those lodges next to each other becomes easier if the mammals are placed on the correct spaces). If you're good at spacial thinking, finding the right pattern of card placement will almost guarantee you getting all your lodges out; the only thing standing in your way will be the requisite animal cards coming out in the hands dealt.
In addition to the personal lodges, there is also the Golden Lodge that is available for any of the players to claim (tho' only one player can claim it) for which three individual goal cards will be selected at the start of the game, all having their own animal conditions but with the extra complication of having a minimum point total thrown in, too (eg: you might need two large mammals and two predators having a combined points total of at least 32). It’s harder to get but if you manage it you will get 10 bonus points for your hard work.
Playing solely with the addition of the lodges is the simplest way of implementing this expansion, and one that by itself will greatly increase the amount of intricacy in your plays of Kavango. For those wanting to take it to its full measure, there is an advanced module that can also be incorporated: Community Protection and Community Solar.
When playing with Community Protection, some spaces on your player board will be blocked off - much like some of the edge spaces in Zoo Tycoon (Treecer) - and will only become available to you if you invest in Community Protection. To offset some of this added cost, when you place a lodge into your reserve you will gain money equal to the level of lodge you place, and you can also discard lodge cards to gain money equal to their level.
Should you be running low on funds after investing in Community Protection, and income from research tasks is just too little, you can choose to place Community Solar markers onto spaces that are still locked on your board. When you place Community Solar you can instantly earn either $1 million or $2 million but any spaces with solar markers on them are now permanently locked and cannot be reclaimed later in the game when your cash supply may be stronger.
Kavango is a game that has a very strong theme and the emphasis it puts on conservation and sustainability is evident throughout, from the way it plays to the materials it’s made from: everything is either paper, card or wood - there's no plastic.
Thanks to the fact that each player has their own unique board, it is possible for players of varying experience levels to play harder or easier games at the same time, by changing which elements of the game they want to play with (eg: with or without role/goal cards) or having starting handicaps (beginning with no money, say) while maintaining the overall flow of the game.
Whether you play with only the base game or add the Lodges expansion, there is lots to keep you coming back to Kavango time after time: since purchasing the game 18 months ago, this reviewer has played it 45 times at time of writing). The game benefits from the wonderful art by Matt Brown and the fact that it plays well at every player count (the solo mode offering the opportunity to really test how good you think you are) so this is a game that will not just survive the test of time, but thrive, much like the animals it hopes to protect.
(Review by Andy Page)
* Let’s Go Kavango is a cards-only version of Kavango that launched on Kickstarter alongside the Lodges expansion, and will be generally available in the near future. It plays in the same way as Kavango, with the same animal & producer cards, but streamlines some things and removes others.
