Tokelau 2027

Tokelau is a race across Polynesia for two to six navigators. Twelve island tiles form a circle of open ocean, and a two-sided Winds token, tossed at the end of every round, decides which way around the circle is cheap to sail and which way is punishing.

On a turn a player gathers provisions, then either recruits crew or sails to a new island, then either settles it or trades there. Travel costs one provision per tile with the wind and three against it, so every route is a negotiation with the weather. Arriving at an island means facing its face-down encounter cards, resolved by discarding crew of matching colors. Resolve at least one and you claim resources; resolve none and you are pushed back to where you started, having already paid the fare.

Resources are crafted into goods, goods are sold on settled islands for seashells, and order cards pay a premium for delivering the right category of goods to the right island. Seashells come from a fixed bank that is never replenished, so money itself grows scarce as the game goes on.

Points come from tiki tokens left on islands you settled, seashells in hand, and the printed value of your goods cards. The game ends when any player reaches 20 points, and the round is finished out so everyone has taken the same number of turns.

—description from the publisher