Knizia Game Round-up: Craft Longboards, Dive Into the Blue, and Build a Cable Car Network in San Francisco

For San Francisco, the first half of the 20th century is an era of dynamic growth and new opportunities. It's also a chance for you — junior urban planner — to take part in a contest for the most amazing reconstruction plan of the city. Sit down with your sketchbook and create a project that will make you stand out from the competition. Design a beautiful city in this game by Reiner Knizia, world-famous board game designer.

In the board game San Francisco, you become an urban planner whose goal is to create the greatest redevelopment plan of the famous city in California. Design districts in each of the five types, racing against all the other planners. Choose the right moment to take on new projects — but be careful, if you take on too many projects it'll be harder to gain more. Earn more prestige by cleverly designing a system of cable car connections. Lay foundations and carefully design the nearby landscape, allowing you to build new skyscrapers. Create a new vision of San Francisco that will gain the most rewards, and win through fame and recognition.

It's a beautiful day at the beach, and the surfers are out shopping for new boards. Create the coolest and biggest longboards to establish your surfboard-shaping shop as the best in town. Surf's up!


In Longboard, players draft and trade surfboard pieces as they attempt to build the tallest and most surfboards. More specifically, on a turn you take two actions, with three types of actions being possible:

—Add a card from the deck to your personal supply, that is, cards lying face up in front of you.
—Take a card from your supply to start or lengthen a board; all cards in a board have to be the same color (or wild) and each new card on a board must be equal to or greater in value than the card below it.
—Place one or more cards in your supply in an opponent's supply, then take a single card from their supply of value less than the sum of what you gave them and use this card to start or lengthen a board.

Each board card features 1-3 stickers, which count as points when the surfboard is complete, that is, when it contains at least four cards. When a player has 3-4 complete boards, at least one of which contains 7+ cards, they can choose to end the game. If that doesn't happen before the deck runs out, the game ends at that point. Players then score sticker points on completed boards, lose points for incomplete boards, and score bonus points if they have the longest completed board or the most completed boards or if they have completed any of the four random objective cards put into play at the start of the game.

In Into the Blue, you take on the role of a team of divers who are seeking mysterious treasures hidden underwater, but you are not the only one who wants to grab these sunken wonders. Explore the depths and try to bring the most precious items to the surface. Mark your presence in the different areas to control them and claim their riches.

On a turn, you roll the six dice up to three times, keeping and re-rolling dice as you wish, to simulate a dive. Dice show the numbers 1-5 and a treasure chest, and when you stop rolling, you place shells one of the levels that you reached. If, for example, you rolled 1-1-2-3-5-5, you place two shells on level 1, one shell on level 2, or one shell on level 3. You can't place shells on level 5 because you didn't dive through level 4 to get there. If you roll a perfect sequence of 1-2-3-4-5-chest, then you grab one of the five random treasure chests, which are worth 5-8 points, then take another turn. If you don't roll a 1, then you don't place any shells at all!

When the fifth chest has been claimed, the game ends immediately. Alternatively, when someone places their last shell, each other player takes one final turn. On each of the five levels, whoever has placed the most shells scores the main treasure token for that level; whoever has the secondmost shells takes the secondary treasure token, and in a game with 4-5 players, the player with the thirdmost shells also scores. Ties are broken in favor of whoever has the most shells on the level immediately above the one being evaluated. Players sum their points from tokens and chest, and whoever has the highest score wins.

On a turn, you first move your pawn 0-5 spaces if your two dice are still on the ranking chart. Next, you roll the dice, which show 1-2-3-4-7-X on one dice and 1-2-3-5-6-X on the other. After your first roll, if you roll doubles, move your pawn 1, 2, or 3 spaces based on what you rolled. You then treat your dice as a two-digit number, say 31, 22, 54, or 70, with the X counting as a 0. You can stop and place your dice on the ranking chart in an empty space — it contains six spaces numbered 0-5 — or you can roll again. If you roll doubles, you advance you pawn and face the same choices. If you roll an X or two Xs, then your turn ends and you move your pawn back one or two spaces.


When you place your dice on the ranking chart, if you place your dice on a lower-numbered space and your two-digit number is equal to or larger than dice that are on a higher-numbered space, then you bump that player's dice off the chart, which means they won't move at the start of their next turn. You can place any number on an unoccupied space, but the higher the space, the greater the odds of you being bumped before your next turn. How risky do you want to play?