Mississippi Queen Board Game First Impressions

Mississippi Queen involves ‘Racing’ down the Mississippi…

..as steadily as possible.

In this light, fun family game, players race their paddle-boats down the Mississippi, picking up passengers along the way. But on-board coal supplies are limited, so each ship’s acceleration and manoeuvres must be carefully planned. Perhaps most interestingly, the twists and turns of the river are unknown at the start of the game, and are only revealed as ships progress downstream.

Each player has a Paddle-boat with 2 dials… The red shows the ship’s current speed, and the black is for how much coal they have.

On your turn, you move your full speed and can make one 60-degree turn for free. You can also choose to accelerate or decelerate one point for free each turn.

Any additional turns or changes to speed require 1 coal for each. The race is quite long and you only have 6 coal so use it sparingly!

Your aim is to pick up 2 passengers and head towards the end. To pick someone up you have to land in the right space with a speed of 1 so they can hop on.

When the first boat gets to the end of a tile they roll a die, this determines where the new tile will lead on the map. This builds the map out over the table.

The first player to pick up two passengers and get to the dock wins.

Mississippi Queen Summary

This won the Spiel Des Jahres in 1997 and it feels like a Spiel winner as much as it feels like a 20-year-old game.

It’s nice, not as relaxing as I thought it would be as you realise you’ve overdone it and you need to slow down but you ran out of coal and can’t…

It’s OK.

Update 10/06/2018

I’ve thought about this game quite a bit since that first play. But, I’ve never been bothered about playing it again. If I’m racing boats I’ll play Jamaica which while not as tactical is more fun. There is always Pirate Dice: Voyage on the Rolling Seas which is a tactical racing game that is also more fun.

But Mississippi Queen is more relaxing than both of those.

Jesta ThaRogue