Targi is a game that has been on and off my radar for years. A two-player-only game, it wasn’t ideal for game nights and I would forget it existed for long periods. Just long enough for Targi to go out of print.
The issue I had wasn’t in the gameplay. By all accounts, it was simple to pick up and a good brain teaser to play. But the art and theme made Targi immediately forgettable to me for some reason.
So when Alpal asked to play a game, I settled in to learn how to play it again. And fell asleep. I went to a How to Play video on YouTube – and fell asleep. Went to a different video, and same result. Targi looks and sounds boring from the outside.
But when Alpal and I played, it was a very different experience. Bottom line Targi is a set collection, and you collect resources and ‘tribes’ to score.
The board is a 4×4 grid, with the outside a timer and a place to put your tokens to select what to collect in the middle of the board. Where your pieces intersect, you collect that card.
The rules for placement are pretty simple – one token per card (there is a neutral token as well, acting as a timer). You can’t put your token on the opposite side of the row/column. That’s really it.
And this is what makes Targi look and sound boring, but fun to play. The puzzle of picking up what you need, while also potentially blocking your opponent and hiding your intent is fun.
Tagi is a kind of visually duller Istanbul in that regard, but like Istanbul once you play you will love it or hate it. I can’t imagine anyone being OK with Targi.
Check it out on Board Game Arena with someone, and see what I mean. Oh, and if you want to pick it up, Targi did get reprinted making it much easier (and cheaper) to pick up their days!
If you get really into it, also look at Targi the Expansion (yes, that’s what it is called!). Same principles, but one new resource and even tighter gameplay bring new challenges to the table!
