Niña & Pinta

About this board game

Niña & Pinta is a 2016 exploration and development game for 1–4 players, with games lasting about 120 minutes. Set across parallel New Worlds, it casts players as competing nations seeking wealth, influence, and victory.

Spain, England, France, and Portugal send ships from the Old World to map unknown lands and bring riches home. The game’s central twist is that ships can cross between neighboring universes, creating tense competition between captains regardless of which world they occupy.

Players begin by using their captains to flip land tiles, revealing and exploring each New World. Settlers then occupy explored territory to generate gold revenue. With the right combinations of terrain under their control, players can construct towns and cities and expand their nation’s presence.

• Explore three New Worlds by revealing land tiles.
• Place settlers to create gold revenue.
• Build towns and cities from combinations of occupied terrain.
• Spend gold in the Old World on items that support further development.
• Develop Culture, Science, Religion, and War to pursue victory points.

Captains can also launch offensives after being used for exploration, giving players the option to fight for control when peaceful expansion is not enough. Victory points come from the four areas of national development and are closely connected to what is happening across the New Worlds.

With no dice rolling, Niña & Pinta focuses on pressure, planning, and difficult choices. Much of the play is simultaneous and built around single actions, helping keep downtime low while players solve a tightly connected puzzle of exploration, settlement, conflict, and national growth.