Introduction
Curious Cargo is a 2-player board game by Ryan Courtney and published by Capstone Games. The game is set in a factory where you aim to quickly build pipelines for efficient goods delivery while handling trucks. It’s a unique blend of logistics, spatial puzzles, and resource management.
But what exactly is a closed drafting card game? It’s a strategic decision-making game where players select cards from a known pool of cards and pass the remainder to others. This gameplay requires careful planning and anticipation of opponents’ moves. Choosing the right balance of luck and strategy should lead to victory.
Components
The game has high-quality, well-designed components, including double-sided player boards, shipping boards, a turn order board, truck cards, cargo tokens, a forklift player token, conveyor tiles, truck tokens, construction tokens, trucking tokens, and scaffold pieces.
Gameplay
In Curious Cargo, your goal is to score points by efficiently shipping cargo and managing resources. Each turn has two phases: construction and trucking. In the construction phase, you can take up to three actions to draw or place conveyor pieces. The trucking phase involves loading and unloading goods, playing truck cards, and trading tiles. The game ends when certain conditions are met, and players can only win if they have shipped at least 2 goods of each color.
Pros:
- Unique and challenging gameplay
- High-quality components
- Relatively short playtime
Cons:
- Can be complex
- Reliant on luck for conveyor and truck cards
- Slow start
- May cause tension if you dislike competitive gameplay
Not for Me
While I prefer Ryan Courtney’s other game, Trailblazers, I’ll be keeping Curious Cargo because it’s beautiful and maybe one day I’ll enjoy it. However, I found Curious Cargo to be too complex and luck-based. It has numerous elements to track, and the influence of truck cards is significant with no way to mitigate luck. The rulebook is cumbersome and the game can be very slow at the beginning.
Conclusion
The game is not for me. The game is beautiful and if you have ever worked with logistics or manufacturing it may be worth the try. Beware of it’s complexity and extreme luck base component.
About the Author:
Coty is an avid reader, board gamer, reviewer, and play tester who enjoys everything from fine-tuning rulebooks (even in Spanish!) to designing 3D print upgrades. Follow her on Instagram. More thoughts and favorites are shared at KaCo Plays.
