Passing Through Petra

Board Game Geek Reviews

1. 7.4 out of 10

   familywontplay

   I enjoyed this game the most while others thought so-so & rating it in the 6’s. I found it thematic, pretty and far more strategic than races using dice. There is no scoring; first to remove all influence cubes, immediately wins. All agreed the mechanic for limiting two moves to the same location, clever. An objection shared by all except myself, was that the game board's 3-D walled entrance to Petra through which the caravan passes, as too tall. It is indeed tall, and provides only a glimpse of the caravan’s tiles, yet this is very thematic since the Siq is the Grand Avenue, a natural, very high, narrow rock gorge leading into Petra. (By the way, the aforementioned "glimpse" of the tiles in the 3-D entrance was all that was needed for me due to the obvious color & design of the tiles.) I do agree the Caravan’s tiles tend to pile up as they are pushed towards Petra, and to find the add-a-caravan line on the board was sometimes obscured, and required tile adjustment which is little fiddly. I would not have thought to mention these two objections if others hadn’t commented, since it didn’t bother me as much. One objection I did have, the circle by the merchants which indicates the particular merchandise they seek, was too tiny, faint, and hard to see. These minor objections were not enough to put me off the game and I quite enjoyed it. We found it interesting that rotating through various players at various times, it was apparent that player would win, yet the one who trailed all, ended up winning (me, heh heh). I like games where recovery is possible, sneaky & unpredictable.

2. 6 out of 10

   jax900

   Rather mediocre design in general, but at least it's quick. The game is in essence a race. And you can control only your own engine. Almost no interaction and if it happens it's mostly accidental. So basically a solitaire game of optimization of your engine and someone gets to win at the end. Hardly exciting. The ergonomy (or rather lack thereof) is a smaller issue. But terrible choice of colours make the game more unintuitive than it needs to be. Plus the layout of tokens is really confusing and unnecessarily gets in the way of playing too.

3. 7 out of 10

   misskitten

   I'm not a big fan of race to the finish line type of games, but it wasn't as bad in this one. I enjoyed the plaza movement and how it balanced out the opposing elements. And I liked the production. Ultimately I want to hang onto games with more longevity.