Overview
At a glance
Is this game right for my group?
ABG editorial scores on a 1–5 scale.
Harder to teach
High replayability
Highly interactive
Scales well
Deep strategy
How it plays
How does it play?
Canal Mania is a game about the great canal-building era of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that captures the feel of the period and gives players plenty of decision making in their attempts to complete some of the most famous British canals.
Core mechanisms
Key systems that shape the decisions players make.
Open Drafting
Select cards or items from a shared face-up display.
Pick Up and Deliver
Collect goods at one location and transport them to another for rewards.
Network and Route Building
Create connected routes that improve reach, delivery, control, or scoring.
Tile Placement
Place tiles to build a shared or personal spatial arrangement.
Read the full game description
Canal Mania is a game about the great canal-building era of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that captures the feel of the period and gives players plenty of decision making in their attempts to complete some of the most famous British canals. Players will engage brilliant engineers such as James Brindley and Thomas Telford in their efforts to create canals linking emerging manufacturing centers, thereby providing the waterways that supplied the goods generated by the Industrial Revolution. The goal of this game is to have more victory points than your opponents. You gain victory points by building canals (with 0-3 victory point for each hex and 2-8 victory points for the contract) and moving goods through canals (1 for each town you visit, including the first one). Each turn has 3 phases. In each Phase you can chose one action: First Phase: - Take a contract from parliament - Exchange engineers - Discard the five face up building cards Second Phase: - Pick up three face up build cards - Build tiles Third Phase: - Move one good token Any Phase Alternative: - Draw one card from the top of the build deck