Autumn Games - Kahuna

Having won the right to pick the next game, Carol decided to get one of my best games out of the way.  That game would be the second Kosmos game I ever bought, Kahuna by Gunter Cornett.  I used to play this with Rachel a lot.

In Kahuna, two players fight for control of a group of south sea islands.  Each player has a hand of cards, a bunch of wooden bridges and 10 Kahuna stones.  On your turn, you play from 0 to 5 cards and then draw one card from the top of the deck or from three face up cards.  The deck is composed of 24 cards, 2 of each of the twelve islands.  Playing a card lets you place a bridge from that island to one of its neighbors.  If you then have a majority of the possible bridges on that island, you take control and place your Kahuna stone on the island.  When you do this, you remove any enemy bridges touching your island, which can result in the other player losing control of neighboring islands.  You can also use two cards (same-same/same-neighbor/neighbor-neighbor) to remove a bridge already placed.  You can only hold five cards in your hand at one time but since you can play all of them, big plays with multiple bridges is a definite possibility.  (Followed by rebuilding turns where you're mostly drawing cards.)

I took an early lead and at the end of the first round had five islands to Carol's three, scoring 1 point for winning the round.

After the second round, I still had five but Carol had grown to four.  Note how we've substantially shifted positions.  For my win of the second round I scored 2 more points, giving me a total of 3.

For the third and final round, whoever has the most islands scores the difference between the number of islands they control and their opponent.  If the game is then tied, whoever won the third round is the victor.  So, if Carol could best me by 3 islands, she would match my score of 3 and win the game.

Going into her last play of cards, Carol was able to do exactly that, run up a total of 3 more islands than me. Unfortunately for her, I had a decent hand of cards left and was able to steal some islands from her on my last turn, giving her only a 1 island advantage.  Here's the final layout of the board.

Final score:

        Ipecac: 3
        Carol:  1

The tally is now two games each.