Contrabando: Vale do Côa

Contrabando: Vale do Côa is an adventure game based on ethnographic research about smuggling on the eastern border of Northern Portugal, during Salazar’s dictatorship.

Each player controls both smugglers and border officers, on one hand trying to guide his own smugglers to Spain and on another trying to catch the other players smugglers. On each of the six nights of the game, each player guides two groups, but every group has a different number of members and cargo value, as well as different points of departure and arrival. So movement must be planned and sometimes a group must be sacrifice in order to save other. The length of each group's journey, the value of its cargo and the phase of the moon influences the strategy as for example, on a full moon, the officers can better see and thus control the territory. Also there are different terrains like forests, unpredictable and dangerous lookout points, mounts and a canyon river (the Douro, famous for the Port wine) influence the movement and hiding capacities of the smugglers. The action cards add different dynamics to the game allowing to momentarily break the rules and get a flavor of the tactics of both smugglers and officers.

"Night is falling. Amidst the silence and shadows of the villages, men and women leave their homes with suspicious bags. Walking for hours and hours, they cross mounts and valleys, smuggling merchandise to Spain. But the portuguese border force officers know the paths and are always on the lookout for the nightly adventurers. This game, based on the heritage of Territórios do Côa relives the smuggling stories from the period of the portuguese dictatorship. Can you get to Spain?”