Rauha (pronounced Rr-ow-ha), meaning ‘Peace’ in Finnish, is a game about rebuilding a desolate world using shamanistic powers. You compete against the other shamans to garner life energy and compete for the favour of Divine Entities, who bestow gifts upon you based on your progress in rebuilding the lands.
Introduction to Game
Rauha, by Grrre Games, is a 2-5 player game which takes 45 minutes at base, with an extra 10 minutes per additional player.
Rauha (pronounced Rr-ow-ha), meaning ‘Peace’ in Finnish, is a game about rebuilding a desolate world using shamanistic powers. You compete against the other shamans to garner life energy and compete for the favour of Divine Entities, who bestow gifts upon you based on your progress in rebuilding the lands.
Introduction to Game
Rauha, by Grrre Games, is a 2-5 player game which takes 45 minutes at base, with an extra 10 minutes per additional player.
Rauha is a light strategy game with a unique, if not literal, take on world-building. Your objective is to obtain the most Life Energy (victory points), gained through rebuilding your desolate world. This is done by playing biome cards onto your player board, which will increase the vegetation, wildlife and eventually civilisation of your world throughout the two ages of the game.
Set Up
In the box, there is a scoring board, 5 double-sided individual game boards, age 1 biome cards, age 2 biome cards, star/moon placemats for the cards in play, a placemat for discarded cards, crystal chips (currency), purple spore chips, player and scoring tokens, and 7 Divine Entity tiles. The game components are of good quality and pop out nicely from the punchboard upon first opening the game.
The setup for the game is fairly simple and takes about 5 minutes to do. The instructions that come with the game are clear and have a diagram to help first-time players. We recommend having small bowls or containers to hold the smaller game components, like the currency crystals and spores, but this is optional.
Each player will have their own playing board with 9 base biomes (3×3), which they will build upon using biome cards. To start, the player piece is placed on the top left corner of the player board and will keep track of the rounds and scoring. Between each player is a placemat which will hold the biome cards. These have a star on one side and a moon on the other (moon on the left of each player, sun on the right) which will help players know where to draw cards, as they will alternate which pile they draw from. There are different cards for the first and second ages. The cards of the second age are generally of higher value and are swapped in at the start of the second age (start of round 3).
Summary of Gameplay
Rauha consists of four rounds (two per age), each divided into three turns, followed by an additional scoring phase. The turns in Rauha alternate between day and night, shown by the moon and sun symbols on the player boards. Each round, the player pieces will move along one space around their board. At the start of each round, four biome cards are placed on the card placemats. The cards will be refreshed each round, and at the start of the second age (after round two) are replaced with the higher value cards. Each turn, players will take the cards from their left or right (based on whether that turn takes place during the day or at night), and choose one to play on their turn.
Each biome card is a little different, but will always feature at least one of the four biomes and may include an additional biome symbol, wildlife symbols, water, and activation bonuses. Some biome cards have placement restrictions or will cost you crystals to play.
Starting with the player who has the most Life Energy, each player takes it in turn to play their biome card onto their player mat. Biome cards can be placed on top of previously placed cards. When you get three of the same symbols in a row, you take the accompanying Divine Entity tile (from the middle or another player). Each Divine Entity has a unique special ability, which usually helps you gain Life Energy and is activated when claimed and during the scoring phases. Alternatively, players can discard a card to “The Void” instead of playing it, gaining 4 crystals and a spore token. At the end of each turn players will activate all biomes in the row or column that their player piece is adjacent to. This will give Life Energy, crystals, or allow for the placement of spore tokens.
After three turns, we reach the scoring phase (when the player pieces reaches the corner of the player board). During the scoring phase, each player will reactivate their Divine Entities, score water points and activate spores. Water is scored based on how much more there is in your world compared to the player with the least, so falling behind too far will benefit your opponents. Spore tokens are played onto biome cards and cause the card beneath to be activated in the scoring rounds. Each card can only have 1 spore token, so it cannot be activated more than once per scoring round. Scoring actions can be done in any order.
The game then continues on until the end of the fourth scoring phase, at which point the player with the most Life Energy wins.
Opinions on Gameplay
We found Rauha to be a fairly straightforward light strategy game, as you do need to think about how you play the different cards, but you are also fairly limited in your options, making the gameplay quite quick. There are also times when you may need to change your priorities as you go through the different rounds. We found that these factors add to the replayability of the game as it moves swiftly and is different every time.
It can be quite enjoyable seeing your world come alive, especially in the second age when the card illustrations are more detailed and, as such, your world becomes more bountiful. The need to prioritise water can be frustrating if another player is getting ahead, as in some rounds, you may not get the cards you need, and as such, will fall behind on Life Energy without being able to do anything about it.
Spores are useful to get as early as you can so that they benefit you in as many scoring rounds as possible. They often have additional payoffs in the second age when some biome cards score life energy based on how many you have.
Final Thoughts/Conclusion
We found Rauha to be an enjoyable world-building game. We have played it multiple times, both as a two-player game and with multiple people, who also enjoyed it. We found that the water component of the game works better with more people, as there is less opportunity to fall too far behind a single player. For first-time players, it can take a couple of rounds to get the hang of it, but by the end of the first age (second round), most new players can play independently.
Something we wish was more developed is the mythology and storytelling of the game, as Rauha doesn’t expand much on the world itself or the divine entities. Although it can be nice to leave it up to the imagination, we think it would have added a bit more ‘flavour’ to the gameplay. However, this game is different and unlike any of our other games, as such it can make a nice change.
Overall, we would recommend the game; however, more strategy-focused players may find it a little too simple.
