Episode: 2843
Title: HPR2843: Afrikan Tähti (or Star of Africa)
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2843/hpr2843.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-19 17:50:36

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This is HPR Episode 2843 entitled, African Tested or Star of Africa, and is part of the series,
tabletop gaming, it is hosted by Tuku Toroto, and in about 11 minutes long, and Karina Cleanflag.
The summary is, Tuku Toroto talks about one of the most important finish-board game ever.
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Hello, you are listening to the HAKAPOP crazy and this is Toroto. Today, I am making a
episode about the part-time tabletop game that I recently replayed called African Dirty
or Star of the Africa, or the first one of the Amanten or Africa's Fair.
It has a different name in different languages. This is a finished part-time that's originally from
the beginning of the 50s, so it's relatively old, and it's probably the one of the most popular
finished games ever made. The idea is that the game is about finding the African Dirty,
the huge Kulinan diamond that was found from the Africa. It's a game for two to six players.
It's a set-up. It's quick to set-up. The game doesn't long. It doesn't take
last that long. It's usually over in maybe in a half an hour and rules are simple.
I played that when I was... I played this before I was in the school, so about four
years ago almost, and I played it just recently with our kid. The idea is that the part-of-the-presence
of Africa, and cities are connected with the land routes, air routes, and some four routes.
Every player is starting either from Cairo or Tangir, and they have a free choice of how to
proceed through the Africa. Moving between cities is done by throwing our dice, and then moving
your heart, there are just little plastic pieces, along the land routes. If you choose to pay
100 pounds, every player gets 300 pounds at the beginning of the game. You can travel
zero or you can pay 300 pounds and then you can fly between cities. Some cities, not all cities.
And then each city has a counter. These counters have been mixed in the beginning and random
replays in the cities. When you reach a city with a counter, you can eat the very 100 pounds,
and turn it immediately. You can choose to not to do anything. You don't have to try to reveal
the counter. All you can wait for next turn and then try to throw your dice, and in four, five,
and six, you can turn the token. You have 50 percent chance to trade some time for the money.
So instead of paying money, you can use time. In the tokens, there are different types. If you have
black blank token, nothing happens. If there's a game stone, you immediately sell that for the value.
There's a top pass, that is 300 pounds, there's a Emeralds, 500 pounds, and there's a rupees
that are worth 1000 pounds. There's a two rupees in the game. Take them idea, Robo,
the thief, Robo, that takes all of your money. And they can be a horseshoe. In the first phase,
the horseshoe doesn't have any sickly fangs, you just discard it immediately. And then there's
the start of the Africa, the big blue diamond. If you find the start of the Africa, you haven't won
yet. You still have to raise back to the starting city. Actually, you can raise either to the Cairo
or the down here. You don't have to go to the starting city. If you started from the down here,
but the Cairo is closer, you can raise to the Cairo. And when you reach that, you win the game.
In the meantime, all the other players are trying to find a horseshoe. And if they find a horseshoe,
they can start raising back to the either of the two cities. And if a player with a horseshoe
that has been found after the diamond has been found, gets there before the player with the diamond
he wins the win. There's some special places in the game. For example, there's a slave coast
at the coast. So if you turn a plank token there, you get enslaved and you have to wait three turns
before you can continue. That's a pretty long time in such a short game.
Next to the slave coast, there's a cold coast, with a value of every canstone is dappled.
Whoever gets into the Cape Town first, at very South tip of the Africa, gets a 500 pounds
of some bones. And there's a couple of places in the map. There's a one at the Sahara and two
around the side Helena, the island, where you can get attacked and you have to wait there
until you throw roll one or two. The Sahara they do inside, I think remember, around the
side Helena they fire. And the thing is that the same Helena has a one token. And it's always a
bit risky to go there because if there's a rober, you lose all your money and then in the old
rules that I trade when I was a kid, you were stuck there. You couldn't go anywhere anymore.
You were stuck in the center Helena. But they actually change the rules at some point. And
now there's an amendment that if you don't have any money, you can travel zero but only two steps
at a time. So getting out of center Helena takes very long time. And you still get out but you
usually lose so much of time that you are kind of lost the game. There's some Madagascar on the
other side of the Africa that has two cities. It has a similar problem than with the center Helena.
And I have noticed that some players actually they just avoid going through the islands because
they don't like, they don't like the idea that maybe if these are rober and I get stuck there or
maybe I use my black 100 pounds to turn the token and there's nothing to do. But on the
other hand, it's really cool to go to the center Helena and find the dog and the African
and the star of the Africa. Then it's like really daring thing to do and you get a big
date at that. If you have enough money, you can fly from the center Helena to the coast of Africa
and from there close to the Cairo and then on the next turn to the Cairo. So it takes only three
turns to get from the center Helena to the not Cairo but the Tangier of course. It gets only three
turns to get from the center Helena to the Tangier and then you win the game. If you have enough money,
you need a 900 pounds for that. And I really loved this game as a kid. It was really exciting
because you're going into this huge continent and trying to find gemstones and you are
fighting against robers and blank tokens and what not.
It's pretty random game. There isn't that much of tactics involved. You just move from city to city
and try to find the star before anyone else finds. There's some. You can pretend that you have
some sort of strategy that you concentrate on your search for for example at the north of the
Africa because it's the strongest rules from the starting cities. But other players will do
the same thing because everybody starts the north of the African tentators to proceed to access
out clean and old cities from the tokens. And recently I learned that there's an extension
to this game called Kreiske Gunnar. I think it's called expeditions. I don't know if that has been
translated to a different language language. I haven't played that but I have heard that it's
very luck-based also and doesn't have that much to do the game. This was really popular game.
When I was checking I actually learned that there's a 4.5 million copies of the game sold
internationally. I think that's a pretty big number for a silver and sport game.
And in Finland there's over 2 million games that have been sold. It's not that every household
has a one but it's still big because Finland has one. I think between 5.5 and 6 million
people. I haven't checked it. But we have 6 million people so if there's 2 million games so
of course not every game has been sold to a different individual. I'm sure that some people
have bought game and lost some pieces and then bought another copy. And the losing the pieces
is really annoying because those little cardboard canvas get lost pretty easily.
So I remember the copy that we had at our parents place had one of the topaxes.
Had gone missing so we had to take a decalty. It's a spare spare. It's a huge spare token software.
It was a one spare one that had been brought with a self-pen yellow blob that was supposed to represent
our topaxes. All in all this is fun game, best played with the kids or kid-minded.
Thank you for listening and bye bye.
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