Loreley (1973)

Being a sailor is not easy. If basic navigation wasn't tricky enough, approaching any bit of rock that sticks out of the water somewhere, inevitably means being lured towards your death by the mesmerizing singing of a local hair-combing siren. Loreley, sitting on her rock, surrounded by the Rhine, is one of the more famous ones, and the German mythology is brought to life in this simple family game. Getting your boatmen from the boats surrounding the rock to the safety of the Loreley rock and reaching the fair maiden itself is what this game is all about.

Loreley sits on top of her rock in the center of the board, dutifully combing her hair. The Loreley rock is surrounded by 32 boats, and each boat has room for two to four boatmen. Players will first have to get all their 12 boatmen onto these boats, before the race to the top of the rock starts in earnest, by moving boatmen from the boats onto the rock itself. There are four tracks on the rock, one for each player's color, and all are exactly 11 spaces long. When a player places the 12th boatman on the rock Loreley is reached and that player wins the game.

Players start with 2 of their boatmen already placed on seats in the boats. By rolling the dice, these boatmen are moved from boat to boat. When a boatmen lands on a boat that already contains sailors, that player can place as many new sailors onto empty seats on the board as there are present in that boat before landing on it. You can't land (or place) in boats that are fully occupied. When all of a player's sailors are in boats already, instead of bringing a certain amount of new boatmen into play, that player can start to remove that same amount of sailors onto the rock and when someone's last sailor is moved from the boats to the rock, that player wins the game.

The game needs 3 or 4 players to work, and is mainly aimed at families with children around 7-9 years old.

Publication history: this game first appeared in a full production with Pelikan in 1973. "Altmeister" Rudi Hoffman's return to the game industry after a long illness was celebrated by the republication of his family classic by Spielbox magazine (5/1986 oct-nov), as one of the earlier entrants in the "Spiel zum Herausnehmen/Game to Remove" series. The graphics of both publications are showing their age.