Longboard Review

boardgamequest.com:

We review Longboard, a ladder climbing game published by 25th Century Games. Designed by Reiner Knizia, Longboard has players building stacks of cards in the hopes of earning the most money.

One of the great debates around the water coolers at Board Game Quest Headquarters is whether Unmatched is a skirmish or dueling card game. It’s obviously a dueling card game, thereby making our semi-fearless leader Tony Mastrangeli entirely wrong. Another, less-great water cooler debate is the difference between a trick-taking game and a ladder-climbing game. Tony is similarly wrong here as he can’t seem to get the two definitions straight. (This isn’t even a subjective conundrum like Unmatched’s status. These things have actual definitions.) Andrew Smith, BGQ editor and trick-ladder-taking-climbing aficionado, is regularly angered by these errors. It’s very amusing to those of us who, overall, don’t care one way or the other.

Anywho, today’s review is of Reiner Knizia’s Longboard, a fast-playing ladder-climbing (trick-taking if your name is Tony Mastrangeli) game for two to four players.

Longboard is a ladder-climbing game in which players will be constructing surfboards along the beach in front of them. (This is called “shaping” the boards apparently and there is no beach. The beach is a lie.) To do this, players have a play area in front of them and can take one of the following actions on their turn in relation to this play area:

• Draw a card from a shared deck and add it to their personal play area (this is the surfboard parts store they own I guess?); • Take a card they already had in their play area and either start shaping a new board with it or continue a previously started board; or • Trade any number of cards in their