Durch die Wüste is Knizia's game of deserts, camels and water. The game comprises a hexed board showing the desert, camels in 5 pastel colours, oases and various waterholes. In a nutshell, the game is one of placing camels to score points by connecting to oases or waterholes, encompassing areas and having the longest chain of camels in a colour.

To set up, each player is given a brown camel with a rider of his chosen (primary) colour on it and one camel of each of the 5 pastel colours, also with a rider of his colour on it (the 'camel-rider'). First, the oases, represented by palm trees, are placed on the board. In the final reckoning, having a camel adjacent to a palm tree scores 5. Next place the waterholes. These vary in value from 1 to 3 and should be distributed randomly on marked hexes. Having set up the board, each player takes it in turn to place one of their 5 camel-riders on the board until they have all been placed. This initial placement is subject to a few restrictions, namely that you may not place a camel next to an oasis, nor may you place a camel next to a camel of the same colour. From then on, players take it in turn to place any two camels so that they are connected to their camel chain of the same colour, ensuring that camel chains belonging to different players never come into contact. Effectively each player (and his primary colour camel-riders) ends up with one chain of camels in each of the five pastel colours and it must be obvious which camel belongs to which player. Placing a camel on one of the six spaces round a palm-tree gives 5 points for each player achieving this, while the waterholes score from 1 to 3 points but only for the player who places the camel and then removes the waterhole. The game ends when all camels of one colour have been placed. Then it's time for the reckoning. As said, an oasis is worth 5 for each chain connected to it, waterholes are from 1 to 3, longest chain per colour scores 10. For areas enclosed you score the number of unoccupied hexes within that area and also get any waterholes within it. Most points wins.

When I first got the game, read the rules and then played by myself, the immediate comparisons were favourably with Shark, Acquire and Manhattan but with fewer placement restrictions (there's even more than a hint of Blazing Camels/Wurmeln in it). I thought then that the greater flexibility would make it a better game but I can't help feeling now that it doesn't. If my group plays again, we reckon we'll probably start imposing some limitations such as drawing 5 camels unseen from a bag and having to play 2 of those. Having said that, while this game may not have the depth or complexity of Tigris, it is good, quick, fun and to be recommended.

SWD: The trouble with that as a variant, Neil, is that it loses one of the game end conditions -- the one which says that the game ends when one of the colours has been exhausted. In our games, that has been the condition that has actually finished the game and this has added quite a lot to the tactics.