Targi

In Targi your goal is simple: travel the desert looking for oases and camps where you can acquire goods you need to make your tribe the biggest and the richest.

Unlike in other cultures, the desert Tuareg men, known as Targi, cover their faces whereas women of the tribe do not wear veils. They run the household and they have the last word at home in the tents. Different families are divided into tribes, headed by the Imascheren (or nobles).

In Targi, you are the leader of a Blue People Tuareg tribe. Your goal is simple: travel the desert, near and far, looking for oases and camps where you can acquire the goods you need (dates, salt, pepper) to make your tribe the biggest and the richest.

With the gold and other benefits you gain from trading goods, you can enlarge your family. Each round provides new offerings. Cards are a means to an end: obtain the popular tribe cards. But other tribes are also looking for these precious goods, so you must hasten your travel. Moreover, bands of robbers are also scouring the desert, looking for an easy prey. Always keep your eyes peeled and your mind open, lest they be deceived by a mirage...

Game Play:

The Targi game board consists of a 5x5 grid: a border of 16 squares with printed action symbols and then 9 blank squares in the centre onto which cards are dealt. Meeples are placed one at a time on the spaces at the edges of the board (not including corner squares). You cannot place a meeple on a square on which your opponent already has a meeple. Once all meeples are placed, players then execute the actions on the border squares the meeples are on and also take the cards from the centre that match the row and column of the border meeples.

The game is predominantly scored and won by playing tribal cards to your display. These provide advantages during the game and victory points at the end. Usually cards are played (or discarded) immediately once drawn. A single card can be kept in hand, but then requires a special action to play it (or to discard it to free the hand spot for another card). Each card has a cost in goods to play. Goods are obtained either from border spaces or from goods cards.

The display (for scoring) consists of 3 rows of 4 cards that are filled from left to right and cannot be moved once placed (barring some special cards). There is also a balance to be found between the victory point score on the cards themselves (1-3 VP per tribal card) and in the combinations per row (a full row of 4 identical card types gets you an additional 4 VP, and a full row of 4 distinct card types gets you 2 VP).

The winner at the end of the game is the player with the most victory points.