If my count is correct, Fresh Fish was Friedemann Friese's third game. It was released at Essen in 1997 with a print run of 300 and had sold out by the Saturday afternoon. I missed it. It was my second trip to Essen, but this time, with Mike Siggins being absent, I was doing my own navigating and not managing as effective a sweep as I had two years earlier, when he was there to take me under his wing. The problems as far as I was concerned were (1) that Friedemann had yet to make the "must check out" list, (2) that his stall was tucked away in a corner behind other, larger stands and (3) that if you do notice a dark corner full of burly men with green hair there is a temptation to remind yourself that the truth is out there and edge towards the exit. My loss and one that means that I very much welcome this new edition.

Fresh Fish belongs to the same group of games as [page scan/se=0135/sf=category/fi=stockin.asc/ml=10]Linie 1 and [page scan/se=0631/sf=category/fi=stockin.asc/ml=10]Metro in that you are laying tiles with the object of optimising the lengths of your own collection of routes, while at the same time thwarting your rivals' attempts to do the same for theirs. In this case "optimising" means making them short and the routes are those from four sources of goods to corresponding retail outlets. What makes the game different from the other two is that you don't actually get to lay the tiles that will make up the routes. Instead you place buildings so that their positions, in conjunction with the city's planning byelaws, force the road to go where you wish. It is a difference that makes this game significantly more cerebral than the other two. It is still a lot of fun, but it calls for a deal more thought.

There are four types of tile:

• 4 sources, one for each of four items
• 1 retail outlet per player for each of the four items
• non-commercial buildings
• sections of road

The board varies in size with the number of players but is always square and at the start one of the source tiles is placed in each quarter. The building tiles are shuffled and either placed in face-down stacks or in a cloth bag. The road sections are placed face-up near the board. The other components are 15 coins and 8 ownership markers for each player. (I mention the numbers, because the fact that these resources are in fairly short supply plays an important part in the game's strategy.) By the end the board will be covered in buildings and roads. The roads will form a single, connected network and all the commercial buildings will have road access. Your score for each item is then the distance by road between its source and your retail outlet, and your overall score is the sum of these four numbers minus the number of coins you have left. Lowest score wins.

On your turn you have two options: either reserve a plot of land by placing one of your markers on it or draw a building tile. If you do the first of these, the plot must be adjacent to one that already has something on it. Just what that something can be depends on whether you read the German rules or the English ones, since they differ. I don't think they were intended to, but they do and this is one of several rules issues which I shall come back to later. With the second option what happens next depends on whether the building you draw is a non-commercial one or a retail outlet. If it is the former, you have to place it on one of the building plots that you have previously reserved; if it is the latter there will be an auction, which is open to those who don't already have a retail outlet of this type. The winner will place the outlet on of their building plots and if this winner wasn't the player on turn, that player has another go. The consequences of all this are that your turn will always see you placing something on the board and that if you are going to draw a tile, you should first check to see that you have somewhere suitable to place whatever turns up. Failure to concentrate at this point can be very costly as you see the prime location that you had been saving for a games shop turn into a park full of joggers.

This brings me to the elegant idea that is at the heart of the game - the road system. The rules are

1. Every distribution centre and every retail outlet must have access to the street - or more precisely, to the street as it will be when the game is finished.
2. The squares that are either unbuilt plots or sections of street must form a single connected network.

The result of these is that as buildings are placed on the board, it will become apparent that certain squares will have to be part of the road in the finished layout and as soon as it can be demonstrated that one has acquired this status, a road tile is placed on it. If it was owned by somebody, tough. They get their marker back, but there is no other compensation. The city wanted and the city has taken. The second rule can also lead to situations where you are unable to build on a plot but where it isn't yet clear that the ban is permanent and this can often be worse, as your options are restricted and yet you can't move the marker to somewhere more useful. In most of the best games there are resources for both attack and defence, with neither mode of play being over dominant, and that ideal situation is what these two rules deliver. You can exploit them to force the road to take a path favourable to you and you can also use them to send it straight through the plot on which an opponent had been looking to place a retail outlet.

The general pattern of play is one of getting most of your markers on to the board in locations that look promising and then erecting buildings in places that will send the road where you want it to go. What makes this difficult is that the situation is fluid. What looked like a potentially good spot for a retail outlet can suddenly turn into a bad one and so you need to keep a close eye on what your rivals are likely to be trying to do and to be ready with some fallback positions. This is where the shortage of markers comes in: you need to be flexible, but the lack of resources means that you don't necessarily have the freedom of action that you'd like. You also need to watch to make sure that none of your opponents is having a free run. It makes for a complicated picture, but the good thing is that while you need to think and plan ahead, the game isn't one of those where you spend a lot of time watching other players think. You don't have the "what do I do with this one?" passages that you get in a game such as Metro, where a player desperately tries all the possible locations for the tile they have just drawn. Here planning where to place your next marker is something that you can think about when it is not your turn, since it is a natural part of keeping up with the play, while the right place to place the building you have just acquired is normally blindingly obvious.

Fresh Fish is a very good game and its reappearance in this well produced edition is excellent news. Plenary Games are one of the new companies that are springing up in North America and this is their first publication. First outings in any field rarely go completely according to plan and this is no exception, but they have got closer to that ideal than anyone could reasonably expect and they will, I am sure, learn from the few mistakes they did make. For the components the mark is 9 out of 10. They are first rate, with my only gripe being with the ownership markers. It would have been better had they been larger and the choice of colours was unwise. If you must use both red and orange (and with only five colours to select there is no good reason why you should), then the red should be a shade that is a long way from the decidedly orangey that we have here. At this size you can tell the two colours apart when you place the markers side by side, but it becomes hard once they are on the board. For the rules, 7 out of 10. They are well laid out and well illustrated, but the proof reading wasn't up to scratch: spelling mistakes in the German section and some small errors and omissions in the English one. However, all this was spotted quickly and the game now comes with an errata. All in all, a very good effort and I hope that the game does well for them. It deserves to.

Only the freshest fish are welcome. Four factories in a new city are seeking outlets to peddle their goods, ranging from fish to nuclear waste. As city planners and real-estate moguls, players try to shape the emerging city to build the shortest street routes from the factories to their outlets. The only problem? You can't actually build a street! You bid on outlets as they are drawn and place them on lots you've reserved. The placement of your outlets guides the emerging road network by forcing the streets to flow around them. At game's end, the player with the best combination of money in hand and short routes from factories to outlets wins.

The cascades of expropriation and road-building form a unique brain-burning exercise in visualization. Take the shortest route to the store to buy this game!

I found the look of this game to be eye-catching both in its design and feel. It looked simplistic but was anything but. The wood playing pieces are, as have been said already, far too small and the colors are too similar for easy distinguishing but if you're handy, you can create new and larger pieces quite easily. I have still not caught on to the strategies involved but I'm definitely hooked and will likely invoke the optional rules in the future.

I just got the Plenary edition of 'Fresh Fish' and have only played it a few times, but so far I would say this one is a winner!

It is a tile-laying game. There are four 'producing' tiles, that make the four essentials of life, that is, fish, nuclear energy, gasoline, and boardgames. Then there are outlets, one for each player of each of the four essentials. The idea is to get each of your outlets as close as possible (in distance over roads) to the corresponding producers.

You start off with the four producers placed on a grid of otherwise vacant pieces of land. You get 10 dollars and 8 markers for reserving land. On your turn, you can either reserve one piece of land (up to a maximum of 6) or turn over a tile. If you turn over tile, it will either be an outlet or a building (apartments, offices, park, etc). If it is an outlet, it is auctioned off (by blind auction). In either case, whoever gets the building or outlet must place it on one of their reserved pieces of land. Some conditions must always be in effect. All outlets and producers must have access to a road. It must be possible to connect all roads (eventually). It must be possible to connect all undeveloped pieces of land. These conditions make certain pieces of land illegal to build on and also determine when a road is placed. It is also what makes the game interesting. By building here, you can force the placement of a road there, or perhaps make it impossible to build over there. The auctioning also serves to make the game interesting. You get ten dollars for the whole game. You have to use them wisely because if you run out, you will be the last person to get each type of outlet from that point on, which means you may not get a good placement even though you have a good piece of land reserved.

Of course, no game is perfect. There is a problem with the rules in that they don't do a good job of explaining the most essential part of the game, the streets, or more precisely, when streets are placed on the board. We have been playing based on my best guess. One other problem is the color of the player markers. The red and the orange are too close in color. So, I painted the orange ones yellow (I also repainted the money from green and orange to gold and silver). But even if you find that you have to do this, too, it's worth it.

Great game. Highly recommended.

Fresh Fish is just that! You start with a open green field, and by games end, its completely covered with buildings, businesses, and roads.

For as simple as Fresh Fish looks on paper, it is a mind-numbing, high screw factor gaming fest. On a player's turn, you either obtain a piece of land (building site) OR flip a tile and build (place it on one of your sites). That's it. But oh, does it get nasty. You must try to create the shortest routes from your four businesses to four common suppliers. Unfortunately, your opponents are trying to do the same thing, and if they beat you to the punch, you are HOSED! Fortunately, there are four businesses, so you have the opportunity to be the HOSER as well. Game over when the board is filled; count # of road squares, orthogonal, for each business to supplier, total and subtract any remaining money you might have. Low score wins.

I doubt you will get any family members into this game. It starts out very harmlessly, a type of business Carcassonne, but you when start forcing roads (city expropriation) on everybody, it turns very quickly. The whole 'road' debate around this game is really the challenge. The errata sheet that comes with the new Planery edition clears up a lot. The bottom line is every road/empty field MUST be able to orthogonal get to every other road/empty field. Commit that last sentence to memory when playing this game. This ensures every business can somehow get to its supplier. If you manage to do a better job of this than your opponents, you win. Quite simple really, except when you start placing the neutral road tiles, the best laid plans fall asunder. Whenever a player 'builds', all players become 'The City Fathers' and see if any roads are needed/mandatory. Again, in the beginning, you've got PLENTY of area to work with. NO PROBLEM! By middle game though, the squeeze is on, land becomes scarce as mandatory roads are built, your choices limited and quite possibly, your sites taken away for roadwork. This will always ensure rousing cheers/raspberries from your opponents as they pave over your un-built sites. Nasty, nasty stuff. We love it!!

BGoR are a vicious group of players and this game was EXCELLENT. It actually plays at a good pace once everyone grabs the road requirement concept. Plenty of interaction, screw factor, and gray matter decisions. Our one gripe? The site blocks. They are the smallest, weakest markers I've seen since 'Clippers'. Fortunately, if you own 'Carolus Magnus', you can raid some of the blocks there (it has more than enough) to use. The tiles aren't quite Carcassonne quality either, but the game concept makes up for it. a solid 4 star.