Alpina Board Game Review

There is something to be said about small box games that pack a powerful punch. What do I mean by that? I mean a small game with only a few components that is easy to table and tons of fun to play. After about a half dozen games of Alpina, that is exactly how I would classify this game. With only a handful of cards and some wooden player pieces, you can enjoy hours of puzzly entertainment that’s easy for almost all ages.

In Alpina, players will be playing cards from their hands to a central 5×5 grid, and then deciding whether to place one of their hiker pawns on the card they just played, or an orthogonally adjacent card. Every card in Alpina has some kind of end game scoring condition. Those conditions might be getting 1 point per frog in that cards column or row, or perhaps scoring 2 points per goat in the column, or perhaps 1 point per bird card with a hiker pawn on it.

With only so many pawns to place throughout the game, players need to balance the desire to get out all their pawns while also making sure they are maximizing their points. Because everything is public and viewable, it’s easy to see what strategies other players are trying to create for themselves, and perhaps how you can thwart those.

Our games were really quick, and it was fun trying to determine when you should play hikers and when you should hold off. Do you place a good card this turn, or wait to see if perhaps it will be better somewhere else? And ultimately, you play the entire game trying to figure out what a “good score per hiker” would be. Is it 6 points? Is it 7? 

There are a lot of decisions to make in Alpina, which makes it a fairly strategic game in a small box. Younger players can definitely play, but it will take them longer to figure out how the game works – we found our 10 year old was a drag on the experience for 2-3 games before figuring out how it all worked.

Overall, I’m really impressed with Alpina and it’s a game that will stay in our collection for a long while. It is an easy game to table and teach, which makes it perfect as a filler for board game nights!