Kariba sees players scare off animals from drinking at a waterhole.

As adorable as it is mean!

All animals are thirsty after an adventurous day in the savannah, so they’ve all trekked to the drinking grounds. Every animal wants to be the first to drink, but watch out! The elephant scares the rhino, the rhino scares the ostrich, and the ostrich scares the zebra. Anything can happen… The mice might even scare the elephant!

Kariba Game Play

The waterhole is put together to form a circle with numbers in order. The cards are shuffled and each player gets 5.

Players take turns playing 1 or more cards of the same animal from their hand next to their number around the waterhole. They are placed overlapping and can be played on top of other animals already at that position at the waterhole.

If there are 3 or more of the animal just played at the waterhole they ‘chase away’ the closest weaker animal. A weaker animal is the one with a lower number. So a 3rd 6 will chase away any 5’s, or any 4’s if there are no 5’s etc

The player will take all cards of the chased animal from the waterhole into a face down score pile.

The exception to this is the mouse, value 1. It is the only animal that can chase the value 8 elephant away.

After playing and collecting, the player will draw back up to have 5 cards in hand.

When the draw pile is empty players continue playing without drawing cards. When a player is out of cards the game ends.

The player with the most cards in their score pile at the end wins the game. It’s suggested (and works best) if you play to see who scores the most points over 3 games.

Theme

Animals at a watering hole is a rare them and having animals scare each other away is thematic.

Kariba is a town on the Zambezi in Zimbabwe and translates to “where the waters have been trapped” as it’s near a large lake created by a Dam.

Setup

Put together the puzzle piece board and shuffle the cards, very simple (Assuming you’re good at jigsaws :D)

Components & Artwork

The component quality is pretty standard. The long “Stick of Gum” card size I’m usually not a fan of but it works for this game, keeping the piles of cards narrow.

The artwork is adorable!

Ease of Teaching

This is a very simple game to teach. Players will be able to, at the very least, play cards to get a stack up to three animals to score points.

Kariba Summary

I usually mention similar games and the same day I played this I played Recycle for the first time in a long time. Both have a similar-ish way of playing but Recycle has the risk of giving yourself minus points too.

Following on from how easy it is to teach, it’s very difficult to play. You have to play cards but you don’t want to set up a big scoring opportunity. But every card you play setups up an opportunity for your opponents to score.

If you play 3’s, your opponent could play 4’s and score 3’s, or play more 3’s and score 2’s, for example.

I thought this game was a lot of fun with really tight decisions and was not at all surprised the next day when I found out it was designed by Reiner Knizia.

Jesta ThaRogue