This review needs a significant disclaimer.
It should be understood up front that I have never enjoyed
the classic Hex – I find it about as boring and uninteresting as any game I
have tried – even after repeated forays into trying to discover why many rave
over it.
So I wasn’t expecting too much from Kanare Kato’s Borderland
even though several of his games have impressed over time such as Stairs, Lines
of Fixation, Meridians, Iago and RosenKreuz.
Now according to the designer Borderland is a game that
combines Hex-like connective goals with Go-like territorial goals. The
objective is to create a border with pieces by combination of placement and
movement so that your territory occupies more than half of the board.
It was also noted Borderland was inspired by Dale Walton’s
Make Muster – also published by Kanare Abstract.
So Trevor and I found the game more Hex than Go, and I
suppose not surprisingly Make Muster has been our least-liked game among those
from Kanare Abstract not created by Kato himself.
That all said Borderland rates well in limited ratings on
Board Game Geek.
The game is played on a hexagonal board (91 hexes).
The objective is a border which is an unbroken group of
same-colored pieces that connect non-adjacent sides of the board.
When the board is divided into two or more areas by the
creation of your border, all but the area containing the most opponent pieces
becomes your territory.
The player who has more than half of the board as his/her
territory wins.
On a turn a player may perform up to two actions: placing
one piece and moving one piece.
However, placement cannot be done twice in one turn. Also, a
player cannot move a placed piece or move the same piece twice in the same
turn.
When placing a piece, it must be at least one step away from
all of your pieces and at least two steps away from all of your opponents'
pieces – this makes blocking an opponent’s progress a challenge one we found
more frustrating than interesting.
If one player makes a border but fails to achieve the win
condition, the game moves to the Emergency Phase. In this phase, players can
place their pieces one step away from the opponent's stones and can move the
same piece twice in the same turn player. This all seems a tad forced into the
game – although it is probably a rare situation for those who want to explore
this game more than we will.
Now we have probably 20 games from Kanare Abstract if I were
to count, and while Queen’s Guard might be the lowest rank it holds some
interest as an historic game, pushing Borderland to the bottom for us. Now
there of course has to be a last place if one were quantifying games from
Kanare Abstract, and I know many will likely disagree which of course is normal
as we all do not like the same thing, but alas Borderland was not for Trevor
and I.
