Samara

About this board game

Samara is a board game for 2–5 players that takes about 50 minutes, placing you in charge of builders at a settlement shaped by history.

At the beginning, your group can build only a sandcastle, cave, or huts. More complex buildings require preparation, so you must invest in skills, strength, or additional workers before pursuing greater prestige.

The central mechanism is the worker timetrack. Every choice costs a number of your workers a number of months, making time an important resource. The spaces on the board show how many workers are occupied and for how long: from 1–4 workers on the left board axis and 1–9 months along the bottom axis.

• Improve skills for building with wood, stone, and glass.
• Build houses or special projects.
• Recruit a new worker or exercise to make a worker stronger.
• Send workers on vacation.

Special projects can provide useful benefits or hurt all of your rivals, adding another way to influence the competition. You must decide when to spend time developing your workforce and when to commit to construction for prestige.

In Samara, effective planning is the key to making your workers’ time count. Build the most prestigious buildings and finish with the most prestige points to become the best foreman of Samara.