Passing Through Petra Review

Petra is perhaps bizarrely better known as the resting place of the holy grail than as its historical position as a major trading centre. From the 4th Century BC, Petra grew as a major trading hub on the Silk road connecting the great civilisations of the age. But eventually it fell to decline and was forgotten for hundreds of years. It’s this later role that Passage to Petra wants to examine. No bull whipping here.

Players: 2-4
Time: 60 min
Designer: J. Alex Kevern
Artist: Jeff Oglesby, Jani Orban, Jeanne Torres
Publisher: Renegade Game Studios

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I am constantly confused by this game’s name. I know it has Petra in the title. But then is it Passage To or Passing Through? My brain can’t ever seem to remember. And both are totally appropriate. Here is the passage to Petra.

The canyon walls leading to that famous treasury building carved into the rock walls are not just represented here, they are reproduced in full! These chunky plastic pieces are both lovely and borderline insane as far as components go but it’s an insanity with practicality in mind. Between the walls forms a long line of trader tiles in officially board gaming’s longest queue. This, of course, speaks to me on a deep level as a British man. The wall pieces keep the line neat and tidy even when pushing it along to replace those who leave.

We’ve all seen cycling markets of, normally, cards, but I’m quite sure this is the longest I’ve had the pleasure of seeing. Which is used to good effect. You can take two of these traders but only from the open section far away at the end of the queue. The length here creates the opportunity for considerably longer term planning. But a different action lets you grab a single trader directly from the canyon in what must make for a thoroughly exciting escapade in the real world. Thus you are offered the chance to snatch exactly what you want at the cost of a slightly less efficient action.

The ‘Passing Through’ is neatly encapsulated in the player boards. These pleasantly double layered boards are where your new traders go to. Come, come, you’ll say, let me show you my wares. And they’ll be added to the queue at the bottom of your board, sidling along and pushing the people at the front out. I swear I don’t just like this game because of queues.

This queue of folks are your buyers. Any pushed out the front end move to the stacks on top of your board to become sellers. Oh, do I see a match here? Have we facilitated a trade? Oh yes indeed. At a well timed point you can trigger a market action. Each of your trader stacks has a particular type of trader they want to trade with. In a market action, you choose a stack and multiply the number of traders in the stack with the number of their preferred trader in the queue. This gives you a number. A number that opens up the game…

Well, it gives you a number of moves around the track matching the colour of the trader stack you just used. Ok… you’re thinking. That’s not immediately exciting. Well, see this is a source of excellent bonuses and, ultimately, how you’ll win the game. Complete a loop of the track, possibly over multiple trades, and word of your excellent reputation will reach that particular civilisation. You’ll place a cube out in one of the track’s slots. And you’ll be one cube closer to winning.

Unexpectedly, Passing Through Petra is a race game. A race to shift all those cubes off your player boards and onto either the tracks or collectible influence cards that can be completed for having certain combinations of things. Races are exciting, and here they are almost always tight affairs thanks to how those trades also return all those stacked traders to the bag. They’ve made their trade, they’re heading home. They were, after all only passing through.

Your marketplace is an unending cycle. New traders arrive, move through and open stalls, to leave once their wares are traded. It is your task to manage this cycle as efficiently as you can. And there are certainly big opportunities for efficiency. When there is no upper limit on the size of your stacks you can get big trades happening but only if you correctly manage the mix of traders entering your market and that is dependent on the great queue in the passage.

Those bonuses I briefly mentioned and pictured above offer further efficiencies, options to strategize around. Each track offers you some upgrade for passing a certain point on it. Queue extensions from Egypt help you build up bigger trades, the gold traders from India can trade with every stack, but then go home after they leave your row. Permanent settlements go into a stack and aren’t removed with the rest of their stack during a trade. Dwellings earn you helpful camels when traders enter that stack; resources that can be spent to increase your movement around the tracks when you sell.

Both dwellings and permanent settlements show how focusing on a couple of trader types can be rewarded, but you won’t want to do that forever either. If the Chinese stack wants to trade with Egypt, the Egyptian stack might want to trade with the locals, and so on, each player with their own unique combination. So, you will be pushed to pivot as different stacks build up. Finding the ideal path through is where the enjoyment, and the challenge, lies.

Your options are further constrained by an excellent action selection mechanic. A 3×3 grid sits on the board and in it your avatar sits. Each turn you’ll move one space, with the direction of movement determining what action you will perform. I like to imagine the players sprinting from one side of the settlement to the other.

But that means when you are at the edge of the square and can move no further, you also cannot do that action! This forces you to plan ahead in a whole other way. If you know that taking traders this round will mean you’ll have to trade before you can take any more traders again, you’ll make those new traders count! This action selection mechanic was why Passing Through Petra was one of my most anticipated games of Essen and it absolutely delivers.

What is fascinating to me is both how it is similar to last year’s Otys, and yet where I disliked that game, I have thoroughly enjoyed this. Both games have this cycling loop where you are trying to manage the flow of people through a queue, timing your actions for maximal effect. But Otys was horribly over constrained and left me feeling frustrated. Passing Through Petra on the other hand strikes the perfect balance, difficult, but not rendered impossible. Furthermore, the open ended nature of the trading means it feels like an achievement when you perform big trades!

Playing Passage Through Petra is a mostly solitary experience aside from the trader taking, but as a race game I am constantly concerned with how well everyone else is doing, and turns loop round quickly enough. There is a card market of bonus powers which feels a little forced and uninteresting, but it’s a sideshow to the main gameplay loop. The theme and artwork  is also a little dry, though I struggle to see how trading in the desert could be anything else. That’s fine by me.

If there is any reason not to look into Passing Through Petra it is the price. Sadly, it seems raising those canyon walls has pushed Petra to a price that I would hesitate to pay. I thoroughly enjoy it. More than that, I respect it as a design. But I think the production lets it down. Those walls look impressive, but the overall look (beyond the box) is bland, the graphical elements like the circular tracks are strangely angular in a way that is neither visually appealing, nor aiding the players in understanding the game. The rulebook just about gets the point across, but not elegantly. The best way to describe the final production is: fine. And for a £50+, 1 hour game, I wanted a bit better.

Rating: Passing Through

Our copy of Passing Through Petra was provided for review by Asmodee UK. You can get a copy for £57.99 RRP from your local hobby store.