Lynx
From the 1600s to the 1870s, the fur trade was the main economic driver for European exploration and colonization of Canada and ultimately Canada’s nationhood. Trade companies relied heavily on trade with Indigenous trappers (predominantly supplying beaver pelts, but also lynx, mink, and other furs). The fur trade pushed economic and cultural relationships between Europeans and Indigenous people, but not without indelible impacts.
In Lynx, each player takes the role of a late 18th century fur trapper in the Hudson’s Bay region of northern Ontario, exploiting the lynx-hare cycle and outwitting other trappers. Each player has been supplied traps by the Hudson’s Bay Company with the agreement that all pelts be sold exclusively to them. By trapping when the lynx are plentiful and selling pelts at high prices, the trapper who earns the most money pays off their debt and becomes a free trapper.
Primarily an economic game, Lynx is about trapping fur at low prices and selling them at high prices. Since you are competing with other trappers, you need to outhink them and be able to trap at a lower price then them as well as selling Lynx pelts at a higher price.
Players will simultaneously choose Action cards each seasons, along with the appropriate trap, pelt, or venture cards each season. You can trap hare, trap lynx, sell lynx pelts, or go off-season to play Venture cards.
At the end of a season, the hare and lynx repopulate, but the lynx are very dependent on the population of the hares: trap too many hares and you “crash” the lynx population – making it harder and more expensive to trap lynx.
Expect to go into debt in the beginning and then propel yourself to a positive money flow by the end of the 14th season.
There are two modes of play:
Snowshoe: the beginner mode, where you plan your action for the season at the beginning of the current season.
Wildcat: the advanced mode, where you not only plan the current season but also the next season’s action (you’ll have two sets of action cards).